Development for the past, the present and the future

February 14, 2010

IMG_0193A photo of yours truly, truly blending in…

I’ve recently arrived back from a 2-month holiday. None to bad in anyone’s books and that’s probably partially to blame for my current somewhat dreamy perspective. On return, I wrote a letter to a friend which I felt encapsulated some of my key thoughts about development and being in the moment that I wanted to share.

I sincerely hope that my friend doesn’t mind my repeating some of the words that were a personal note to her and that you don’t mind my somewhat stream of conciousness-esque thoughts, which were tumbled into the letter. Here goes…

Long ago, especially working in Madagascar and other parts of Africa, I’ve questioned whether the big white land rovers, the good intentions and the money, effort and suffering of development workers, really actually does much to help… or whether it hinders. Certainly when you look at Ladakh, for example (I read a great book called Ancient Futures – see my post on the book here), you see that in touting the latest development tools, us do-gooders actually did a lot more harm than good. In fact, the last thing they needed was ‘development’. They needed to maintain the delicate equilibrium that they had fought for many generations to develop. Things like high child mortality, low incomes, disease etc were all actually just natures way of balancing the system and ensuring that this equilibrium was maintained. But then in plops the WHO and the American tourists, who can’t believe that people live in such squalor, ‘I mean, some of the babies had dribbly noses and the children were so dirty’, and we introduce roads, and vaccinations, and education systems, and tools and machines… and voila. The equilibrium is upset, the local farming methods die, the population booms and suddenly you have a load of apathetic youngsters desperate to escape to a better life, which in reality is to slums in cities with no community and nastier conditions, so that they can become the next 2Pac and while away their days, if they are one of the million who make it, in an empty apartment full of modern art and revolving water beds that are hard to share… and a bunch of old folks who remain behind lamenting the lost simplicity of the past with grandchildren to look after them.

My own sense, is that the key is just learning to enjoy and not worrying too much about whether or not we’re making big bucks or big impacts. The next stage of my journey is to truly work out what I enjoy and to maximize that enjoyment in the long-term, rather than seeking the little, immediate highs that feel powerful but leave you with little to show for it. Being an Epicurean, in the true sense of the word (rather than the over-indulgent sense of the word).

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Breaking things – taking time off and away

February 3, 2010

The Parisians - rather good at chilling

I haven’t posted since the 4th January, as I’ve been on a break. You probably haven’t even noticed! Yet for many bloggers, this would be a serious no-no. You have, they chime, to keep posting ‘every day’ or ‘at least once a week’. Your blogs have to be a certain length, or include a number of urls or photos to ensure that you maximise your readership.

Well, it is nice to have readers – but to me this is endemic of the impatience of the internet age. I’d rather write posts I enjoy writing at a pace that works for my lifestyle. Frankly, I believe that my readers will appreciate it all the more if my posts are representative of me and my style, rather than hammered into conventional internet shape.

What happened to the writers of old who had to wait four months for a letter from their loved ones if they happened to be sailing far a field? Not much… they waited, and the world kept turning, and wonderful novels, treaties, tomes and philosophies were still written. In fact, they probably had more time to write them, rather than look for interesting urls to pepper their works with.

In my experience, taking a break from things can actually help you be more productive. Perhaps not in the sense of ever-increasing GDP, but if you measure productivity as I do – which is about producing more moments of value – then certainly.

Yet people take less and less holidays despite the labour-saving and timesaving technologies we now have at our fingertips. Americans, poor souls, take an average of 14-16 days holiday a year, in comparison with the ~30 that Europeans get. This article in the Weekly Standard explores a few arguments. However, despite a few promising moments, its conclusion is woefully trite and blinkered by the limitations of traditional, machismo-influenced economics.

Does being progressive really have to mean focusing on progress (although the inherent philological link might make it difficult to break the two)? What is this progress and toil accelerating us towards? At the moment the future seems bleak as a result of our labour, certainly from an environmental perspective. Mother nature would much rather we were all less productive (feel free to use this as an excuse next time you miss a days work!).

So when you find the screen swimming in front of your eyes, or work interfering with your dreams, or stress closing in… take a break. You deserve it, it may even be more productive.

Taking a break is a very powerful tool. It helps you relax. It helps you find solve problems you might not have the time to concentrate on. It enables you to ‘do’ and see more, rather than less – as the last few weeks have proven for me. It helps you watch the world go by, rather than going by the world.

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Patience – part two

January 4, 2010

The second patience is the one you and I grapple with. The very same patience that allowed me to write and you to (I hope) read the whole of the last story without feeling the need to go and do something else, or be more productive. Although I forgive you, of course, if you think it was crap. After all, there wasn’t much to it – somewhat like most of our lives (remember the humility virtue – this week’s my week!).

What I’ve noticed in my post-Patience life, is the importance of patience in our every day (please play close attention to the capitalisations).

In my week focusing on patience, I noticed that I continually anticipate other people’s points in conversation. I’m constantly wanting the future here this very minute. I want to have finished my to-do list. I want to be more successful. I want to be back in Africa. It is an entrepreneur’s curse – to see the potential of the future and want it here, now.

What I’ve learned by focusing on patience in the last weeks (notice that this is weeks, not a week – because what’s great about the Franklin guide to self-improvement is that even without the direct focus, there is a positive residue from previous weeks), is that patience is incredibly powerful. If you wait for someone to finish their point without interrupting, you are often able to reply in a more meaningful way. If you leave longer before you sit down to write, you often find that your mind has been working away at your subject matter subconsciously and it’s more perfectly formed when you do sit down.

At the moment I’m writing a proposal for a book and I find myself impatient to get it finished. But the longer I leave it and the more time I give it, the more coherent, crystallised and complete my thoughts. I find that if I’ve given myself time, I can sit down and the structure and words assemble themselves very satisfactorily. If I sit down out of guilt and impatience and try to push the proposal through, I often do more harm than good.

I’m not suggesting for a moment that we all have the luxury of time to only do things when we want to. I’ve been overdosing recently and there must be a balance. All writers (and I certainly wouldn’t categorise myself as one, yet) talk of times where they have to force their work… perspiration rather than inspiration and all that.

Yet I’ve noticed that I continually grab at things when the grabbing is counter-productive. So, with renewed patience and focus, I’m enjoying the process of letting things come to me, rather than running to them and for the time being it’s working and I find myself relaxed, happy and surprisingly productive. Here’s to patience and, of course, wonderful Patience.

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Introducing Patience and patience – part 1

December 24, 2009

This autumn, I met Patience twice.

And I suspect that you’ll need some patience to get through this article, which for the purposes of yours, I’ll split into two parts, especially as the first is a simple story of slapstick insignificance.

Patience 1

The first Patience is my wonderful friend Tara’s (of Wildfitness fame) housekeeper in Watamu, Kenya. Patience is a huge Kenyan lady with a beautiful chubby child-like face from which two large luxuriant eyes sparkle (note the lady above is another patient-looking Kenyan lady, but not the same). Patience would turn up at the house most days with a smile and a waddle, and proceed to completely invalidate my already meagre efforts around the house. Frankly neither of us had a huge amount to do during the days, the house being small and its occupants being fairly low-impact – but my attempts to offer help were quickly thwarted and I relaxed into a somewhat guilt-ridden laziness.

I know, I know – a housekeeper is hardly in keeping with a simpleTom. Yet we must remember that Kenya is a very different place from where most of us grew up and I truly believe that the arrangement is wholly symbiotic, at least in today’s Kenya.

Whilst Tara rushed around being super-productive and I took the time to read and read and read – Patience moved slowly and deftly around the house. In the garden, the gardener proceeded to mow the four-acre lawn. When I say mow, no doubt you imagine a sit-upon mower (after all four acres is quite a spread), or at least a petrol number, or at the very least a push-along contraption. Not even – he proceeded to mow the lawn with what looked like a sharp-edged sand wedge (a golf club, for those of you not in the know). He’d move, very slowly, thwacking his grass wedge back and forth, back and forth, not so much cutting the lawn as swinging great big divots into the ground leaving a driving-range effect behind him as he continued indefatigably. He was exercising the ‘Russian/American/Chinese foreign diplomacy’ approach to lawn-mowing. Namely, the finished product was deeply unsubtle, damaging and perhaps would have been better left. Although unlike these countries, it demonstrated his patience and my comparative sloth.

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Now is the time – Hafiz

December 14, 2009
Here’s  a great poem I read this week by Hafiz about taking time and trusting yourself. I’m flying back to the UK tonight, I’ll write more from the other side – Simpletom!
___
Now is the time to know
That all you do is sacred
Now, why not consider
A lasting truce with yourself and God
Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong
Were just a child’s training wheels
To be laid aside
When you can finally live
With veracity
And love.
Hafiz is a divine envoy
Whom the Beloved
Has written a holy message upon
My dear, please tell me,
Why do you still
Throw sticks at your heart
And God?
What is it in that sweet voice inside
That incited you to fear?
Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred.
This is the time
For you to deeply compute the impossibility
That there is anything
But Grace
Now is the season to know
That everything you do
Is sacred.

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A Frank(lin) guide to self-improvement

December 7, 2009

Benjamin Franklin was by all accounts a fairly prolific character. His modest resume includes, being a founding father, an author, a printer, a scientist, an inventor, a soldier and a diplomat. In his time aboard planet earth, he invented the lightening rod, bifocals, a stove.

Many of us are plagued by an overwhelming plethora of self-improvements we’re just waiting to subject on ourselves. New Years eve is perhaps the perfect example when resolutions come a-tumbling forth and you decide you’ll become a vegan non-smoking teetotal exercise freak (and mini-dictator). Sure enough, after a week of self-flagellation, you relapse and become a cigar chomping, meat-eating slob (a republican? – whoops, sorry).

Franklin realised that despite the will to improve, doing so all at once was confusing, often contradictory and almost impossible. So, at the tender age of 20 (fret not, people grew up a lot earlier in those days) he came up with 13 virtues, which he focused on, one per week, meaning 4 sets each year.

His “Plan” was made up of 13 virtues, each with short descriptions:

1. Temperance: Eat not to dullness and drink not to elevation.

2. Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself. Avoid trifling conversation.

3. Order: Let all your things have their places. Let each part of your business have its time.

4. Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve.

5. Frugality: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself: i.e. Waste nothing.

6. Industry: Lose no time. Be always employed in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary actions.

7. Sincerity: Use no hurtful deceit. Think innocently and justly; and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

8. Justice: Wrong none, by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.

9. Moderation: Avoid extremes. Forebear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.

10. Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanness in body, clothes or habitation.

11. Chastity: Rarely use venery but for health or offspring; Never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.

12. Tranquillity: Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

13. Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

I’m following the same idea, with my own variations and so far, it’s proving to be a much easier, simpler way of dealing with the process of working on the self. Here are mine, in brief:

1)    Health, 2) Eat and Drink, 3) Happiness, 4) Patience, 5) Humility, 6) Tranquillity, 7) Industry, 8 ) Fun, 9) Mind, 10) Kindness, 11) Compassion, 12) Impermanence, 13) Do whatever the hell I want.

I’ve yet to do a full cycle, and I definitely moved the eat and drink away from Thanksgiving week, but I’m enjoying the process and by writing about it and throwing it out into the ether, I’ve goaded my stubborn self to keep at it. My happiness week resulted in only one blemish… my eat and drink week looked a bit more like Franklin’s ‘Order’ week in the photo above, even without Thanksgiving temptations. When you take one step at a time, it’s easier to ‘be the change you want to see in the world’. It’s also easier to see where you’re going wrong.

I’m leaving his daily schedule for a decade or two which, if currently implemented, would leave me grumpy, tired and a little middle/old-aged before my time. Baby steps, but steps nonetheless.

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Simple vs ’smart’, why advertising is the new heroin

November 29, 2009

This morning, feeling slightly fluey and wanting to take it easy on myself, I picked up a copy of GQ Magazine, a magazine that promises to help me ‘look sharp and live smart’ that is read by ~1m every month globally. A closer reading of that catchphrase might indicate that vanity is something to be desired. Let us have a quick look inside this magazine and just pretend, for a minute, that I’m highly impressionable and vain, obsessed by looking sharp and smart – a marketer’s dream consumer who buys everything he sees.

By the time I’ve got to a piece of ‘smart’ in the intellectual sense within the magazine, the letter from the editor – which is the first page that isn’t an index or an advert (or the first one that has any meaningful writing), I’m on page 60. This is a rare oasis, the next piece of content that is unrelated to consumption of goods or services is on page 151 of the 320 page magazine. A total of 185 pages within are dedicated exclusively to adverts. The remainder include index pages, pictures, contents of features that persuade you to buy things in the adverts, or see films, or go to restaurants. In total, there’s very little ‘smart’ within the magazine measured purely by the number of pages dedicated, without going so far as to analyse the content. Plus there is an awful lot of stupidity. For example, purchasing a $27,000 Rolex (note that I need not tell you what this is – the brand is so effective you already know), when you can buy a watch for $5 that performs many more functions and doesn’t turn you into a walking security risk would seem somewhat foolish.

Let’s say I bought one of each of the items advertised on pages 1 to 59 at the cheapest price a quick search of the internet can provide. My total shopping bill comes to $78,253.66 and I’ve bought a total of 40 items, including 7 jumpers, 3 watches, 5 jackets, 7 bottles of cologne and a host of other accessories that should rightly make me ‘smart and sharp’. I’ve also noted that 5 brands are now claiming that their products have the environment in mind. Whether that’s the truth or to induce me to believe the brand is worth buying, I’m none too sure, but boy do I feel better about the $78k hole in my bank account. The poorest country in the world, Zimbabwe, has a per capita GDP of ~$200, meaning that my little shopping spree would cover a mere 391 years of an average citizen’s life there. 80% of the world’s population lives on less than $10 per day. In their case, we’re covering 21 years of life. 21 years of life versus 40 items that, as far as I can tell aside from car insurance and a laptop, provide very little net additional utility to an individual’s life. Especially considering that aside from the car insurance, two bottles of liquor and a laptop, I’m fairly confident that I could purchase an item of replicable quality without a label for less than a tenth of the price. If I went second hand, we’re looking more like a twentieth or more of the price.

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Simply stand and stare – ‘Leisure’ by WH Davies

November 25, 2009

This was sent to me by a friend Lucy, and I wanted to simply stand and share…

Leisure – WH Davies

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

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Simplification and your perfect day

November 18, 2009


A perfect day, with friends, deep on Hampstead Heath…

Here’s a little exercise or for you, dear reader. Not, I should add, the type of exercise that convinces self-help junkies they are minutes away from enlightenment. Nor one that has the slovenly amongst us feeling droopy-lidded. Instead, an exercise that should be fun…

Try to imagine your perfect day.

Now, before you imagine winning a gold medal at the Olympics in the morning, being massaged by Natalie Portman whilst she lectures you on micro-donations in the afternoon (perhaps that last part is unique to me), and having a fondue and poker session with Yoda, Cleopatra, JFK, Jesus, Jane Austen and Kurt Cobain in the evening, let’s set a couple of rules.

Rules and exercises – I’m sorry – this is rather uncharacteristic. After you’ve spent a number of good hours fantasising about a day that requires time-travel, re-incarnation (whether you include Jesus here is up to you), 84 hours and more energy than a puppy can muster in a room full of squeaky toys, let’s reign it in slightly shall we. No? OK, take your time. After all, my unrealistic day carried my mind happily through an extremely uncomfortable 8-hour journey from Johannesburg to Swaziland in a minibus not much larger than a camper van containing 20 humans, 10 chickens, 1 goat, more luggage than Hannibal took on his trans-alpine jaunt, and an extremely large dollop of tolerance. Read the rest of this entry »

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Simplicity is simple

November 9, 2009

‘There is no path to peace. Peace is the path.’ ~ Mahatma Gandhi, “Non-Violence in Peace and War”

Here’s a beautiful piece by mnmlist. Please excuse me for repeating, but some things are best left as they are…

Simplicity, many people think,

is an end in itself

But they’re getting it backwards

Simplicity is the path, the means

It’s not a far off destination,

somewhere in the future

It’s right here, right now

It’s taking things one at a time

It’s asking simple questions

It’s taking simple actions

It’s doing it slowly

It’s considering and being conscious,

with everything

When you find yourself becoming overwhelmed

on the path to simplicity

Taking a complicated, frenzied path

to get there

Stop, consider, and choose

the simpler path

And take it slowly

And easily

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