FRICTION
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I've been tossing and turning on this word all day. You might say something was blocking me. Enough friction to impede the action. The friction of not understanding it yet. I wasn't ready to release my thoughts on friction until I'd built some basis for them. So I let my mind drift. I collected. Friction. I pictured sandpaper against wood. Woodwork class. Pushing a block against the automatic sander, shaping it. I made a spoon my mum used for years. That's when it landed. The friction of the sandpaper against the wood. Causality. Destruction. Reduction, even. The friction you feel shapes you. Just like the wood. The conditions around you have a major effect on how you turn out. Then I thought about the absence of friction. Flow. Being in flow state, it's like flying. No barrier to the mechanism. A well-oiled machine. A beautiful engine. Clean. I was playing padel today. The first set, I dropped all my thought. Hit the ball over the net. Look at the ball, hit it. Over. The. Net. Like a dog, my eyes glued to the ball. I had focus. I was clear on what I needed to do. Flow. The next set my energy dropped and I fell flat on my face. But it was there. I'd felt it. So flow is the opposite of friction? I don't think it is. I think friction doesn't stop you all at once. It's more like a barrier. Like the wood. Some of it gets shaved off, but it gets shaped. If you never experience any friction, your flow never gets sculpted. And that's where taste comes in. And character. By positioning yourself into the friction, you select who you become. What are the challenges you're giving yourself? How big are you thinking? What do you want this piece of wood to be remembered for? For me, right now, I'm going to finish off yesterday's lasagne. Have a cold shower. And remember that the challenges are the thing I'm actually seeking. That's what makes it an adventure. Thanks for reading, |
Sticky Notes
I notice things and write them down.
When someone is convicted of murder, rape, or another heinous crime, there is always a degree of shock involved. "How could they bring themselves to do that?" This morning, I sat on the balcony of my apartment in Cefalù overlooking the turquoise water. Down on the rocks below, a German couple were performing some strange sequence of stretches combined with whole-body tapping. Almost like ancient aura farming. The husband kept one eye on his wife's movements, making sure he stayed in sync. As...
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He had, quite possibly, the most annoying voice I had ever heard. But it filled the largest lecture hall in Strathclyde University and the classes were always full. Think about that for a second. Students have no compulsion to go to lectures. There's no intake form, no attendance sheet. You get those on workshops, not lectures. Lectures were voluntary. Every person in that room could have been at the pub, three pints deep, reinventing themselves for a stranger across the bar. Instead they got...