The difference between love and friendship

For me, friendship is about investing currency in one another.

Be it financially, or in other currency like (i "pay") attention.

If i can help making you feel whole, the return of the investment is that i can enjoy the whole you more.

Love, on the other hand, is a completely different game.

For me, love is about dedication.

While friendship is about currency, love is not computable.

Love is irrational. Love is where you go despite the odds. Love is where your heart is.

So many times my friends said why don't you leave her?

This is what separates friends from loved ones.

Baard

Voor het eerst in mijn leven heb ik een baard. En dat in een periode waarin ik zo te zien aan het switchen ben van de logica van de computer naar het gevoel van medemens zijn. Vrijwilliger bij Humanitas. Penningmeester bij de Johannes Wier Stichting.

Ik zoek verandering in mijn leven. Wat ik deed, dat wil ik niet meer. Wat ik ga doen, dat weet ik nog niet. In de tussentijd heb ik bedacht dat de oplossing is niets doen. Assembly language (= computer instructie taal) heeft daar een speciale instructie voor: NOP - no-operation. Ook wel genoemd busy-wait.

Het verschil met stilstand is dat er stroom door de processor gaat. En daar moet wat mee. Stilstaan is geen optie. Zoals een tuinslang volgepompt met water onder druk staat is ook de mens maar dan met aandacht. Als je je aandacht niet richt dan vliegt je aandacht alle kanten op. En als je je identificeert met je aandacht - ik ben mijn aandacht, ik ben waar mijn aandacht is, probeer het maar eens - dan ben je jezelf kwijt. Dan zoek je je zelf buiten je zelf.

Terug naar de baard. Die zit niet binnen, maar ook niet buiten. Een voor mij totaal nieuwe ervaring.

Ik was gewend aan de vier seizoenen. Ik voel me alleen, zoek iets op, ik stap erin, doe mee, word eruit geknikkerd of stap er zelf uit, en voel me weer alleen. Opgelucht of niet, ergens zit ik in een vicieuze cirkel.

De baard zit niet binnen, maar ook niet buiten. Ik heb daar een gevoel bij, als bij een bonsai boompje. Snoeien. Onderhoud. Richting.

Net als aandacht.

Stoppen met roken

Op de verjaardag van mijn oudste zwager - misschien beter gezegd: mijn oudere broer - afgelopen 24 mei 2019 werd ik wakker met het idee: o ja, het hoeft niet meer.

Daar en toen besloot ik, na 37 jaar, te stoppen met roken.

De dagen erna waren nogal heftig, zo van: mind vraagt weet je het zeker?
En honderden, zo niet duizenden, rituelen die vervanging vroegen.

Zoals: het is 1 sigaret lopen naar de supermarkt.
Hoever is het dan zonder sigaret?

Of: ik stap in de auto, en neem een peuk.
Ja, niet dus. Wat ga ik dan nemen?

Ik wilde geen vervanging. Geen kauwgum. Geen nicotine pleisters. Geen chips.
Gewoon voelen. Wat gebeurt er?

Nu, 5 maanden verder, is de conclusie: minder vaak, maar als dan heftig.

Inmiddels gemerkt dat het niet gaat om het lichamelijke ritueel. Er is een verband met iets anders.

Ooit heb ik gekoppeld: roken aan innerlijke vrijheid.
Als ik rook dan kan niemand aan mij komen. Ik voel me vrij.
Roken is als dat kleffe handen van mij af glijden.
Stom, maar waar.

Nu, na 5 maanden, merk ik dat het niet iets is van 'dat doe ik even'.
Ik ben er inmiddels achter dat stoppen met roken - voor mij althans - iets is van 'erbij blijven'.
Ik ben dus gestopt om te denken dat er nog wel een tweede ding bij kan.
Dit jaar ga ik niet nog iets anders doen.

Ik zoek nog naar een verklaring, hoe stupide dit verhaal op mij zelf overkomt, als ik dit teruglees.
Maar stupide is verstand, en mijn gevoel zegt dat het waar is. Er is aandacht nodig. Dan maar stupide.

In memoriam Remmelt Schuuring

Gisteren had ik het met iemand over Remmelt. Terug in de trein las ik mijn email en vond daarin het overlijdensbericht van Remmelt, gestuurd door de familie.

Ik voel mee met zijn geliefde Astrid. Zulke prachtmensen als Remmelt zijn zeldzaam, als bloesem in het voorjaar, de aankondiging van het nieuwe groen. Blijkbaar zit de natuur zo in elkaar dat er geen groen kan zijn zonder bloesem, en dat eerst de bloesem moet vallen voordat het groen kan ontstaan.

Er zit een wisselwerking in, tussen de vernieuwers en datgene wat vernieuwd wordt. Mijn interesse heeft de organisatievormen van de 21e eeuw: hoe willen wij met elkaar omgaan? Remmelt bracht een volstrekt nieuw idee tot leven, vertelde daarover in Tegenlicht

- - -

PS ik vond dit afschrift terug in Concepten van blogspot.com
De datum van overlijden Remmelt is 13 mei 2018.

back in 1990, i was a support engineer and manager (1 person dept) for Unify Corp (Sacramento, CA)

when i came in, no customer calls arrived. i thought this could mean only one of two things: one - the software is great; two - the support is not so great.

then i started calling customer and found out which one of two was true. guess what?

so i encouraged customers to start calling again. soon enough i had a lot of work to do. it kind of swamped me. these were like 150 support contracts.

i also noticed a habit: customers would call when they had a problem. so whenever my secretary passed a phone call, i knew this was a customer trying to solve a problem. 

i remember my collegue in presales suggested that i should change the sentiment in any phone call from reactive to proactive (she would help from time to time in customer service). so while i continued to accept problems, sometimes being able to solve them, sometimes putting them through to the tech team, at the same time i started a counter-initiative.

i asked my customers: call me also when you are proud of something you did with our software. call me when you found out a solution to a problem on your own. call me when you plan to migrate from one version to another. because i knew, when the planning would start, over the next few weeks calls would come in.

i also suggested that, instead of searching their own software for three days, they might as well first call me. and if i confirmed that i knew not of such problem, they could still search their three days. but if i knew, i would save them three days.

magic started to happen. one customer calls in, saying he found a problem, told me the solution. then another customer calls in, same problem. depending on if it was in our software, i could relay the first customer's solution, or saying this other customer found a solution - would you want me to connect them to you?

my last move was that there were a lot of phone calls, but most of them were from happy customers, knowing i was on their team, wanting them to be successfull with our product, providing them with all the help from me in Europe and the tech team in Sacramento, as much as we could.

What is a Food Community?

Imagine you love organic food. Imagine you own a local organic store, where you can find all the products you love. You know where the food came from, who produced it, how it was produced, etcetera.

Imagine the store is so big, that there are perhaps 4,000 products. From goat cheese to butter, from bread to wine, from fresh lettuce to Lovechock. You know you can't eat it all. Also, other people might know about products you would love if you knew about them.

Now imagine there are 500+ of you. Together you co-own this local organic store. There is no need to go to the bank, paying high interest rates to finance the products on stock. There is no need to make a profit, because the profit would go directly back to the 500+ of you, the co-owners.

One step further, and also the producers are involved. And the staff in the store are involved. All of you are joined in a cooperative, co-owning the local organic store.

Imagine for one moment, that the 500+ of you are having a dialogue: producers, consumers, and staff. All of you have equal say, because you are members of a food community. There are shared values, the store is becoming more of a marketplace, with the staff as market supervisors. How cool is that?

The findings of our first two pilots, Lazuur in the city of Wageningen, and Rio de Bio in the city of Utrecht, both in the Netherlands, are quite extraordinary. People introduce themselves to the staff, saying "I am a member of this food community". They know that staff is also a member. They also go meet and greet other people in the store: "Are you also a member?"

People can join in for a minimum of 100 Euros. Many go for more. Instead of interest in money, they are entitled to a coupon with which they can buy food in their own shop. Values of these coupons may differ from store to store, anywhere from 6 to 7.5 percent of the total amount invested.

Many members feel that they steal from their own money if they would go shopping elsewhere. They also convince family and friends to join in.

Another example of a food community is LocoTuinen in the most southern city of the Netherlands, Maastricht. Here, 140+ people formed a cooperative. Their goal: to contract a horticulturist who will grow their favourite products. For the horticulturist this means a (partial) guaranteed income, for the community a guarantee that they know where and how the food is produced. The harvest, good or bad, is what they will get.

There is much more to say about food communities. It is a very effective way of crowdfunding; perhaps 95% of the participants live in the same town. Some members refuse to accept their coupons, they want to support the movement and not profit.

To me, as a student of attention, it is a wonderful feeling to be part of this grass roots movement. The combination of very experienced retailers within the Lazuur foundation, best practices statutes, round table conversations conducted by an experienced facilitator, the many requests throughout the country for more information and guidance in the process of creating one's own local food community, this all is heart-warming.

Perhaps more at some later time.

Best regards,
Ron

The economics of being authentic

Abstract

In today's world, terms like "Personal Brand" and "Authentic Self" seem to be "hot". The question is: why?
My hypothesis is that there is a structural scarcity of attention worldwide, and therefore dealing with an authentic person costs the least amount of attention.

Introduction

Materials and Methods

Results

Discussion

Is normal ideal?

In the film Yo Tambien there is a scene where the main character, someone with Down syndrome, is presented with the question: "Why do you want to be normal?" Then he bursts into tears.

In my life, I recognize that I am trying to be "normal. " It would be perfect. I just do not know why .

Since 2004 I am on a quest for " What is attention? " I define the term "attention" as my overall energy system, not just "focus (as a cognitive process)". If I get a call while walking, I notice that I'm going slower. Apparently there is a total amount of attention in my system that I can spend, be it on walking, or on being on the phone, but not both at the same time.

I began to regard man as an attention processing piece of nature. The term "resistance" took on new meaning. After all, resistance is the light bulb converting electricity into light (the main product) and heat (the byproduct). Would it be possible that resistance is also in humans, in me?

I searched for definitions. "What is normal?" I read about geese, who save 71% energy through their V-shaped collaboration. Is "normal" somehow related to "resistance", something to do with preservation of energy? I set up a preliminary conclusion: "normal" is what costs the least amount of energy for the group. The goose who flies out of formation not only consumes extra energy for herself, but she also withholds from the group a fair amount of energy savings. Would the group want to invest  extra energy to get the advantage back? Should I understand the request "Act normal!" to be an appeal to both the individual and the group for mutual energy gain?

Back to the movie. I was hit real hard by the insight that I thought "normal" was the same as "ideal". I wondered if I had mixed up the two terms, "normal" and "ideal". Is normal the same as ideal? Maybe I had always hoped that normal people experienced less resistance in their lives.

In 2004 fellow Mensa member Alexandra asked me the question: " How much surface below the line of the normal distribution do you believe is normal?" I thought 67% or perhaps 98% . She thought 100% .

Today I understand: from the ideal perspective every human being is "normal".
I "am" normal, because I am seeking the ideal of less resistance.

The penny dropped.
Thank you, Alex !


Enschede , January 6, 2014
Ronald Wopereis
NL-3183

The impossibility to share an experience

After my mother died, december 2003,
i spent at least one night per week with my father.

Week after week,
he would tell me the same story,
over and over again.

I had been practicing my belief system,
and the latest belief i experimented with was:
"i want what i get".

No longer would an opinion about this repetition suffice,
no longer could i get away with my wish to be spared from this same story.
it happened in my reality, so i needed ask my self: "why does this happen in my life?"

and, after some weeks,
i began to understand.

i sat with my father,
and said to him:
"you know, i think i understand.
you want to share an experience!
but, you know what?
until i have had this experience that you speak of,
i will not know what you are talking about.
and when i have had this experience,
i will already know what you tell me."

my father, at that point,
said nothing, he just smiled,
and never again told me that specific story.

Is humanity responsible for the earth?

while we are alive we should do what we can
but the idea that humanity is responsible for the earth is like saying a child is responsible for their mother.

no one on earth has travelled deeper than 6 km into the earth's center
we can not know her, as we can not know our parents

the way out imho is to accept that we ARE our parents, that we are made up from them, that we carry their thoughts, their genes, their beliefs
in the same sense the way out is imho to accept that we ARE the earth and that we ARE the sun
i think this is what is happening to us today

the human mind is slowly recovering from a long term malnutrition in terms of attention
guilt has no place in this - instead we should consider that we can not be in control while we are sick

initiatives such as WeForest show that we want to become healthy again
so my belief is that it is not the trees themselves who will rescue us, but our attitude towards our parents

humility, gratitude, and playfullness once we're feeling better, are the way forward
:-)

warmest regards Ron
(fellow human being)