Liberal Arts Blog — Complete, Organized, Prioritized
Liberal Arts Blog — Monday is the Joy of Math, Statistics, Shapes, and Numbers Day
Today’s Topic: Simple, Complete, Organized, Prioritized
Imagine a matrix with three columns and four rows. The three columns are the basic units of life — the breath, the day, and the week. The rows are simple, complete, organized, and prioritized. Is the structure of each basic unit of your life characterized by simplicity, completeness, organization, and prioritization? If so, how so? This is the subject of today’s post.
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
THE BREATH CHECKLIST — How to be kinder, smarter, stronger, and better looking with every breath you take (below is the best diagram I could find of proper posture, do you know of a better one?)
1. Inhale with gratitude and kindness or not. There is a right choice. The physical analog of gratitude is the smile. The smile myelinates the axons of gratitude in your brain, re-sculpting your brain, making you a better person with every gratitude breath you take. A smile also projects kindness and goodwill making others more likely to experience these same positive emotions, making the world a kinder place. The smile also makes you better looking — a genuine smile takes at least 10 years off the age of someone over 60.
2. Inhale with perfect posture or not. Perfect posture maps to the virtues of courage and strength. it tells yourself and others that you are strong and capable of doing what has to be done. It maps to I can” and “we will.” Perfect posture is driven by the optimal angle of the head which is common to all soldiers in every army in the world and every Olympic athlete. Why? It lifts the sternum, engaging the abdominal muscles, making you stronger with every breath as well as maximizing your height making you look like a more desirable ally and a more fearsome enemy. Unfortunately, the optimal angle does not feel normal to most people. The chin is a little more “in” than seems comfortable. But, as with the smile, the proper angle of the head will make you more attractive and take 10 years off the age of someone over 60. If you have a parent or grandparent who slouches pass on the good news on the smile and the head angle.
3. Inhale through your nose or not. Mouth breathing is shallow. Nasal is deep. Eureka! It took me forty years to figure this out! Deep nasal breathing maps to the virtue of taking time to think before you act. It maps to common sense — what used to be called prudence. It maps to what Benjamin Franklin called “doing the moral algebra” before you decide to act. It maps to patience.
THE DAY CHECKLIST — how to “make each day a masterpiece” (Coach Wooden) — the Thank You Thing, the Thinking Thing, The Universe Thing — can every day be Christmas?
1. The Seven Thank You’s — to close family, extended family, friends, co-workers, strangers. How many people did you thank today? Do the math. You are awake for roughly 16 hours. is one every two hours a reasonable target? Doesn’t take more than a few minutes for each. How about engineering a little “thank you break” spaced throughout the day? Or bunch them all into a half hour stroll around the office?
2. The Thinking Thing — have you been a robot today or have you thought about something important related to work, family life, or other? Have you written those thoughts down? Thinking without writing is like eating without digesting.
3. The Universe Thing — have you been outside? taken a stroll? have you soaked in the wonders of nature broadly defined — that is encompassing both the natural and built environment — from the sequoias, the sun, and the moon, to the bridges, skyscrapers, airplanes, and cars.
THE WEEK CHECKLIST — how to divide and conquer time, bringing order to chaos, and creating a life long legacy of sustained thought and joy
1. Continuity is key to depth of thought and joy.
2. Have you given each day of the week its own joy?
3. Have you given each day of the week its own civic issue?
NB: Have you modeled for your loved ones the practice of taking the time to learn something new related to those practices that bring you the most joy and those civic issues that matter the most to you? Have you modeled the practice of writing down what you learned and sharing it with others based on the simple ideas that reading without writing is like eating without digesting and that writing without sharing is like, well, drinking alone. Real thinking is collaborative, iterative, distillation. This is the core of civilization — the passing on to the next generation the torch of knowledge and understanding.
QUOTE OF THE MONTH — Have you made your own Bible yet?
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
ATTACHMENTS BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
Last four years of posts organized thematically:
Updating PDFs: 2023 — Google Drive
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned this week related to math, statistics, or numbers in general.
Or, even better, the coolest or most important thing you learned in your life related to math.
This is your chance to make someone else’s day. And to consolidate in your memory something you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than otherwise about something dear to your heart. Continuity is key to depth of thought.
