1. Esther Perel is wise and fierce and compassionately skillful. Any chance CxD can engage with her in any way, CxD takes. Join us for these upcoming online workshops. Link here.
2. In any conversation, you can be right or you can stay in relationship. When you interrupt someone while they are speaking, you are privileging your views and impulses over connection. This should not happen. Especially on the Presidential level.
That’s why in the Zen tradition, we practice the art of sitting still in silence––the form of stillness helps us from slinging our poo on others.
Poo should not be flung at the Presidential level.
If you find yourself interrupting others consistently, ask yourself why dominating someone feels more urgent than listening and understanding them.
A leader’s top priority is bringing people together. Giving neo-nazi groups any semblance of legitimacy should also not be happening at the Presidential level.
I need a Scotch. If you’d like to help fund CxD’s quest for a Yamazaki 18, hit the subscribe button below.
If you missed the Debate, here’s a useful summary:
https://waitbutwhy.com/2020/09/debate2020.html
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3. Gentle reminder of what Grace sounds like:
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Thanks to CxD patron Eric for this inspirational essay.
Long hikes, casual breaks, and leisurely river sessions immediately went out the window. There was no time. In part, because we hadn’t anticipated the little things. The forest floor was steeply sloped and covered in rain-slicked clay and fern root balls that grabbed at our feet. Our shoes became caked in mud. We slid and fell, and when that happened, our tape measure’s delicate hold on some distant piece of lumber was lost, forcing us to start over. We never overcame these time warps, like how long it took to shift a ladder on a hillside—we had to dig new holes with every move to provide equal footing for the ladder’s legs. Or how easily we lost entire days sourcing materials at the lumberyard 45 minutes away. Hundreds of boards went into the structure, and we hand selected every one, eyeing them carefully to ensure they weren’t overly warped, bowed, twisted, or cupped.Â
Days cascaded into weeks. We’d rise at 5 a.m. and build until the dimming light made it impossible to work anymore. By 9 p.m., we’d head to the bar and use the Wi-Fi to madly produce copy for freelance writing ventures that barely kept our bank accounts afloat. Many of our casual promises—the family camping trips, the birthday parties, the breaks to spend time with our girlfriends—would soon be broken.Â
On a hot day in August, we experienced what was by turns the most bewildering and soul-crushing task of the build: getting the ridge beam in place. It was 28 feet long and hundreds of pounds, and it needed to be perched atop the highest point of the cabin, spanning the gap between the two tallest walls. We eventually produced a jimmy-rigged contraption that, in the kindest terms, might be called a slow-motion catapult that could (maybe) hoist the ridge beam into place….
Eventually, the only promise we couldn’t break was completing the cabin. Throughout the region, real estate listings of half-finished cabins abound, places where tattered bits of insulation hang from unfinished walls. They haunted us. As we progressed through the build, we understood how they came to be. People run out of time and money. They realize they don’t know what they’re doing. They give up.Â
If we gave up, this experience would only show us another thing we didn’t want to do with our lives. Or worse: that maybe our jobs hadn’t been the problem, but we were; that the empty feeling that had been bubbling up inside us at our nine-to-fives would follow us wherever we went. We’d get over the money we’d lose, but the dream would be harder to let go of. The cabin fantasy had buoyed our spirits through all those years behind a desk. If we quit, we’d would lose our vision of another, happier life.Â
On breaks back home, it became hard to relate to people who weren’t directly involved. All we could think about was the cabin: what needed to happen next, the materials, the money that was draining from our accounts, the tools we needed. And always, always, what might go wrong….
During those last few weeks of work in the spring, if we had the energy, we stayed up late talking about where we wanted to be in ten or 20 years. There was something about building that was exactly as we had hoped. We loved that we weren’t staring at our computers all day. We loved how stiff our backs felt. Loved that our hands were so sore by dinner that squeezing a lime onto a taco felt like an Olympic event. We loved the excitement that would come from kicking the friggin’ bejeezus out of a task, screws flying into boards straight and strong, music blaring, working as a team without the need for communication beyond high-fives. Building felt like a natural extension of everything we valued in our lives: creativity, friendship, purpose, responsibility.Â
Read the rest here:
https://www.outsideonline.com/2415766/friends-diy-cabin-build-washington#close
6. CxD Office hours going strong @Radio Coffee on Thursdays from 7pm-10pm.
