The Elisabethenkirche (Church of St. Elizabeth) was built in the mid-1800s (A.D. 1848-1857). It is interesting in that it was the first church built in Basel since the Protestant Reformation.
The Basel Town Hall (German: Rathause Basel) was built more than 500 years ago. It served - and continues to serve - as the seat of the Basel government and council.
While continuing the general packing up and relocation of items at the Ranch, I came across this plaque which I had set aside in our initial cleaning.
This plaque originally hung in our kitchen, just to the right of the door space that led to the entry to the house. As far as I know it belonged to my mother (I can surely not visualize TB The Elder having this). The name - "Flavia" listed above the quote matches a sticker on the back. The date there is 1969. It hung there as long as my parents were in the house I grew up in and then moved with them when they moved to The Ranch, where it hung next to my parents' bed until I took it down.
My mother was one to collect certain things - sheep for example, or bears - but she seldom if ever collected this sorts of things. Which makes me wonder of course: What is the history behind this?
She was a teacher, even then. Was this a gift from a student? Was this something from a teaching friend? Or something she purchased for herself, a reminder of the impact that a teacher can have? And why did this stay with her 50 or more years?
I have brought the plaque back home to be with us now, one of the few definitive things I can place as being in the house I grew up in as a child and, perhaps obviously, associated with my mother. It will hang here - or wherever the next "here" is - as a reminder of home, my mother, and the gentle sorts of mysteries that can permeate our normal lives.
(Editors Note: A bit of research finds Flavia Art Studios, in existence since 1961. The dates and location seem to match.)
Sometimes in a world where we hear so much messaging, and especially in a world where so much of the messaging can seem to mimic God, it can become difficult to pick out the actual things we should be listening to.
Feofil gets it right.
If it leads us to becoming more humble and judging ourselves rightly, it is of God. If it encourages us to be proud or boastful or great in our own minds and leads us to not judging ourselves, likely it is not of God.
Funnily enough, I know the difference if I think about it for a moment. The problem is I too often rush forward without stopping to consider the immediate outcome. And the outcome can be illusory as well: we believe we are doing "good" when really we are self serving or pointing out "an issue" when in fact we have the same issue or something of equally bad value that we ourselves practice.
If I need to practice anything, it is to ask those two questions:
1) Does this help me become more humble?
2) Does this help me to judge myself?
"Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough." - Josh Billings
Those of a certain era - myself included - may recall the miracle of the Concorde jet, a passenger plane which made the trip from London to New York in a little under 3 hours, less than half the time of the traditional plane flights. It was an aeronautical marvel.
It was also a financial failure.
In four decades of service, the project consistently lost money - yet every time it went over budget, the national governments of France and the United Kingdom continued to pour money in. They did the consciously, knowing that it would never turn a profit (final total was over 16 Billion Pounds Sterling).
Why did this do this? Beyond just what was likely the face saving nature of not discontinuing a national project, it was sunk cost bias, that tendency of humans to continue to invest time, energy and money into something that we know is not going to succeed because we have already invested time, energy and money which cannot be recovered.
A sunk cost bias, suggests McKeown, is the mark of a Non-Esssentialist: realizing that they are continuing to devote time and energy to something which they clearly realize has no chance of achieving what they had hoped and indeed may be a dead end (Teenage and early-20's TB, your dating life is calling), they continue to plod on, not able to simply admit things are not working and stop.
But, McKeown points out, this is not the only sort of Commitment trap that lies in this area:
1) The Endowment Effect: In this trap, we tend to undervalue things that are not our and overvalue the things that are ours - thus insuring we never get rid of them. This applies to things (any collector always believes their items are top of the market, when the market says otherwise) or activities (that project or committee we cannot let go of because we believe that we are critical to it).
The Solution? Pretend that you do not yet own it. Instead of asking "How much do I value this item?", ask "If I did not own this item, how much would I pay to obtain it?" Likewise for opportunities: instead of "How will feel if I miss out on this opportunity?", ask "If I did not have this opportunity, how much would I be willing to sacrifice to obtain it?"
2) Get Over the Fear of Waste - As adults, per Hal Arkes (professor of psychology, The Ohio State University), we are more vulnerable to the sunk cost bias than children because we have had a lifetime of exposure to the "Do not waste" rule. As a result, anytime we abandon something we feel that we have wasted it, something we are told to avoid.
An example: If a person had purchased two trips, one more expensive but less enjoyable and one less expensive but more enjoyable, they will tend to do the more expensive trip even though they will enjoy it less. Why? Because they will have "wasted" the money on the more expensive trip if they do not take it.
The Solution? Admit failure to begin success. The classic example of this, says McKeown, is driving around endlessly instead of asking for directions. Realizing we made a mistake in committing to something and simply letting it go releases the power it has in our lives. Or to use the old adage, "First rule to getting out of a hole: Stop digging".
3) Stop Trying to Force a Fit: McKeown uses the example of Dustin Hoffman's character in the film Tootsie. Every time Hoffman auditions, he is told he is too young, too old, too tall...just different. Like Hoffman, we often try very hard to become something we are not.
The Solution? Get a second opinion. Certainly just because it seems we are a mismatch something is no reason not to try - but often we are too close to see this. We can benefit a great deal from a neutral third party who has no emotional investment in the situation and has no vested interest in the outcome. They can give us the "permission" to stop something that is clearly not working out.
McKeown here gives an example from his own life, spending months trying to force a project that was not moving forward. He was unwilling to give it up - "I can make it work" - until he shared his frustration with a friend, who listened and then responded "You're not married to this". This allowed McKeown the emotional space to stop.
4) Be Aware of the Status Quo: Sometimes we do something because we have always done something. Anyone that has worked at a business that has a system that has long been outgrown by the company has seen this in practice; it is known as the "status quo bias".
The Solution? Apply Zero-Based Budgeting. Like an accountant starting a new budget, use zero as a baseline and begin to justify every expense from scratch. This does several things: It allocates resources based on needs rather than history, it detects exaggerated budgets, draws attention to obsolete operations, and encourages people to be clear in their purpose and how expenses align to their needs.
Assume the same, McKeown suggests, to our own endeavors. Instead of trying to budget our time we simply assume that all previous commitments are gone. Then, starting from scratch, we ask ourselves what we would add to our schedule now: "Every use of time, energy, or resources has to justify itself anew. If it no longer fits, eliminate it altogether."
5) Stop Making Casual Commitments: Some people have the habit of making soft commitments, things they have unintentionally agreed to in casual conversations or a comment. We are chatting with someone about something and suddenly we find we are going to a restaurant or have a hike this coming Saturday.
The Solution? From now on, Pause before you Speak: McKeown suggests a simple enough solution: Pause five seconds before you respond to anything. In that five seconds, ask yourself "Is this essential?" And if you have made a casual commitment that is not essential? Humbly apologize and say that you did not fully realize what you were committing to.
6) Get Over The Fear Of Missing Out: This is a plague on modern society. We fear on missing out on something, so we commit to everything.
The Solution? To fight this fear, Run a Reverse Pilot: In business one often hears the idea of a prototype or pilot program, a small scale model representing a larger idea or system. In a reverse of this idea, McKeown suggests testing if removing something from one's life has any negative consequence.
In this model, one chooses a thing - a report at work for example, or a commitment to someone that you assumed always made a big difference to them - and you scale back. If something happens or it is noticed, it indicates it is important. If it does not cause any impact, perhaps its value is only in our own mind.
McKeown notes that this can be hard for us, because when we uncommit we may feel like we are saying no to someone or abandoning something. This may feel true. But the Essentialist, suggests McKeown, has the larger view of their most important things in view.
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Application:
So rather unexpectedly, last year I got to apply this in an unexpected way: I moved.
All of a sudden, every activity I did in New Home 2.0 was effectively eliminated. All I had a New Home 3.0 was my stuff, my rabbits, and a dojo in my sword style.
This was, in a way, a combination of a great many of the recommendations that McKeown has above. Suddenly I was faced with a blank slate and the question "What do I want to do?"
Some things I kept. Some things I was doing I have not done since I moved. Other things I continued to do, but have asked the question from time to time "Is this still something I want or need to do?"
It was not the way I anticipated it working out, but I can say that it has done a pruning I was not likely to do of my own accord.
(Thanks for your patience over the past weekend with my absence and my sincere apologies for the delay in responses - as I have learned, trying to answer anything from beyond the basics on The Computer In My Pocket (TCIMP) is little more than an exercise in mis-spellings and short, bland responses.)
I have often read and seen portrayed in films and books the concept of returning to the dojo that one started at. The best scene I have seen is, perhaps, from the remake of Thirteen Assassins in 2010, where one of the characters returns to the dojo of his master. The scene portrays him there, practicing in silence, noticed but not interrupted by his master and teacher, until after training his master enters and asks if he would like a match. The moment is profound, the student returning after years away implementing the training that he had undertaken there.
That is fiction of course, and fiction can portray whatever it would like without a basis in fact. What I did not anticipate about returning for this seminar is that I, too, would be confronted by the same sort of reverential feelings.
Oh, I had been back since my move in May, once for last year's seminar and once for a single class when I was back for other reasons. But those seemed more like continuations of class, not the hard break that had happened with a full move.
The dojo itself had not really physically changed since my last visit - oh, certainly, a few things had moved around and there were more weapons than before, but the core of it remained the same as the day we moved there (this is the third "location" that the dojo has been in but that is irrelevant; the dojo is where the sensei is and training happens, not a single physical space). The people, too, had changed: old faces I recognized, new faces I had met online but not in person. Suddenly one realizes that one has now become "that student" that is referred to in dojo stories.
But - surprisingly to me - the sense of coming home was palpable.
In the fifteen years I had trained there, I cannot count the hours that I spent in that space training. It is a meaningless number of course: even if I could give you a number that does not portray the fullness of what happened there, the hours and hours of repeating and repeating the same actions, the learning of new things, the correction of techniques and overcoming of bad habits. It does not account for the friendships that developed and the friends that moved on, either to other arts or simply stopping training.
It does not account for the personal learnings that happened there, learnings that continue to serve me to this day. And it does not account for the personal struggles, the triumphs and repeated failures and occasional overcoming of those failures.
The hours and the place do not account for the fact that the first dojo really is like either the place one grew up all one's life or that one location in a series of locations that sticks out to one as home.
I train here now at a dojo in New Home 3.0. This is my home dojo, to whose sensei I am bound and where I meet the same challenges, learnings, and (occasional) victories. And there is an argument that a different dojo and different sensei challenges one in new ways, much as any change can do. I have no reason or expectation that I will not continue to grow and mature here or that I will not spend many fruitful years here perfecting my art.
And yet - perhaps much like the first place that we have a particular experience or our first love - it will somehow always be different, even thought perhaps only in my emotions. Because I suspect that, like a first love, one never forgets one's first dojo.
The Church of St. Gallus and Othmar in Kaiseraugust Switzerland. You know, your average 125+ year old church you just stumble upon when taking a walk. Happens every day...
In order to get to the Augusta Raurica Museum, I needed to take a train and a bus - which lead to me getting up early on a Saturday morning.
Crossing the Rhine:
From the train:
