Let's Be Present

Here I am again telling you the story of my newly found interest in the spiritual side of the human beings!

After I finished reading Many Lives, Many Masters by Dr. Brian Weiss, still kind of dizzied by the surprising story, another book came to my hands. This time it was The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Ekhart Tolle (funny I mentioned this to a colleague at work only to discover that he had also read the same book, several times!)

People not familiar with spirituality and non religious folks like me can be put off by Tolle's way of expressing himself. But if one looks beyond the form then I think this book indeed has value and actually many people consider it a great book.

I am among the most common human beings that have trouble being present in the Now. My mind too often fantasizes with the future. Also the past pops in, although much less. I've been observing myself since I started reading the book only to confirm how undisciplined my mind is, how much it apparently dislikes being fully in the Now. Tolle insists in his book the past and future are not real and that focusing on them only creates unhappiness. The present moment holds the key to liberation form our unhappiness. 

Tolle asks us to observe our thoughts and observe our emotions and be conscious of them; also he urges us to not identify with our minds. Tolle says "The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self-created as long as your unobserved mind runs your life". 

The recipe Tolle gives us to free ourselves from the mind is to be present on the Now, to end the delusion of time, to escape from the trap of time. Furthermore, he tells us that present-moment awareness creates a gap in the stream of mind and in the past-future continuum and that true creativity can only come to this world through this gap. 

I personally find some of these concepts totally fascinating. For the time being, I keep on reminding myself to come back to the present whenever I realize my mind is drifting to the future or the past..I have no personal experience with the "gap" (yet)

My next read, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra reiterates the benefits of being present in the Now. It will be the subject of my next post.

My readings this summer: beginning a journey to deep transformation?

It's been a long time since I last decided to write a post on my readings. It was not for lack of reading but rather for lack of comments worth sharing.

About three months ago I was given a gift: an online basic training on energy polarization ( "polarización energética" in the Spanish original version). The training consisted of a two hour video recording that includes a guided meditation practice at the end.  I was advised to practice the proposed meditation for at least 21 days in a row. I actually did not pay much attention to the teachings in the recording, but I did start practicing the meditation in the hope that it would help me quieten my always restless mind.

I had never practiced meditation before, in any of its different ways. Now, I do not think I am stopping. And I feel deep inside that this is just the beginning. My mind continues to be restless - no miraculous change -, but in a way I cannot explain, I just feel relieved.

To get me started with the "Energy" world I've spent some time reading three books this summer: Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian L. Weiss; The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Ekhart Tolle and The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra. I'm still trying to digest these books, I admit it.

I'll talk about them in future posts. I feel my mind is resisting these teachings, but my heart is asking for more. Which one will win? Soon to find out

All the Light we Cannot See

So many books have been written about World War II. I'm not particularly fond of books around war themes and yet, only in the last couple of years, I've probably read more than five novels that use WWII as the scenario for their plot (The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak  The Storyteller, by Jody Picoult; Winter of the World, by Ken Follett; Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand, just to name a few).

All the Light we Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr, is the title of the last novel I've read and its plot is also set during WWII. I agree with many people that has written reviews about this book that it is a beautiful novel. It is also terrible, and sad as all war books usually are.

In today's extremely interconnected world, in which data communications are ever present, for business and entertainment alike, it almost strikes odd to read a book in which the radio plays a central role in communicating people, for good as well as for bad.

If you are in the mood for a book set on WWII German occupied France this is an original story that you'll likely enjoy.

Thinking Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman’s book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, summarizes the research that he has done over the past forty years; beginning with his work with Amos Tversky.

What Kahneman, through numerous experiments, comes to demonstrate, is that human beings are intuitive thinkers and that human intuition is imperfect. There’s a large part of the book dedicated to explain the many ways our thinking is biased and how humans make irrational choices.

I studied Economics in the early 80s. Although much of what I studied is buried is some rather inaccessible part of my brain, I still remember a couple of assumptions often at the core of much of what we were taught:  one was that “consumers are rational and make rational choices”, the other was the idea that ”consumers are risk averse”. I never felt quite comfortable with the first (this book proves that my intuition was at least correct that time)

Daniel Kahneman won a Nobel prize in Economics in 2002. Over the last recent decades his research has had a major influence in the area of Behavioral Economics. One key contribution is the demonstration that human beings do make choices that are not rational and this leads to real world results that significantly differ from theoretical predictions based on economics models.

Our “fast thinking” (system 1) is effortless, is an intuitive thinking and is actually the one that takes control most of the time. Our “slow thinking” (system 2) is the one we use to resolve complicated problems; it is effortful, requires attention and, interestingly,  happens to be slept most of the time and is “lazy”, often endorsing what comes from our intuitive selves (without realizing it). Our system 1 is, as Kahneman puts it “a machine for jumping to conclusions” even if there is very little evidence to sustain them and, consequently, our conclusions are sometimes wrong; especially when having to make choices in situations where there is a high degree of uncertainty.

Three interesting features of fast thinking are largely discussed in the book:

• People make decisions in a rather “narrow way”, focusing a lot on the immediate emotional reaction to an outcome rather than to long term consequences
• People are much more sensitive to potential losses than to potential gains, this tends to makes people unreasonably risk averse
• People tend to be optimistic and overconfident, and this leads people to take unreasonable risks

Thinking Fast and Slow is a long book, to read it takes time and patience. It is, I promise, a healthy exercise for our System 2. I found the time invested in it both enjoyable and instructive. 

If you’d rather read some serious review before trying the book itself there’s plenty available in the internet. Lastly, if you do not have much time but are ready to spend an hour having the author walking you through some of the main themes of the book here’s a video for you. Enjoy!

Modern work key characteristics and their impact on people's values and feelings

For most of my professional life I've been working for a large global organization that, in my opinion, is an excellent example of today’s modern way of work. Themes like team work, collaboration, change, the upsides of taking risks, re-engineering, network-based organization, flexibility, short-term results, etc. are all very familiar to me. I in fact live surrounded by constant positive messages about them and about how important they are for all of us to succeed in our jobs.

A few weeks ago I came across a book that, like so many others in my house, has been sitting idle on a shelf for years: TheCorrosion of Character by Richard Sennet. This book was published in 1998 and when I started reading it I though “maybe after all these years whatever I find here is going to be outdated”. Well, I was wrong.

What I’ve liked most about the book is that it gives context and structure to these themes of modern work I’m so familiar with. He is however not so optimistic about them…through numerous examples or real life situations and personal interviews he explains the downside of modern work characteristics and their negative effects on people’s values, people’s sense of achievement (or, even more, failure) or people’s commitment.

Sennet’s book is not overly optimistic. I really want to think that many organizations, like the one I work for, do make a genuine effort to avoid or minimize some of the risks he points out. After reading the book, though, I can more clearly see organizations and individuals alike have a great challenge ahead to balance mutual needs and overcome the issues and the risks of today’s ever changing work’s demands.

Summer Reads

Summer vacation is a wonderful time to spend discovering new places, doing a little exercise and resting from it with some entertaining book in my hands. And this is pretty much how I spent it this year.

I began this year with a few novels written in my mother tongue, usually this means I can read more, faster and effortlessly. Not this time though. After the third book, that - ironically - I had found somewhat violent, I decided to switch gears and try something different: a crime fiction novel.

“The Bat” is the first of Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole series. I picked the book on impulse, without knowing anything about it or its author. Harry Hole is a somewhat unorthodox and alcoholic police officer that, of course, resolves the crime and makes the murderer pay for it.

Jo Nesbo is an Scandinavian author. One reason I picked his book is that I made a mental association between him and another Scandinavian that became extremely popular around 2005 with his Millennium Trilogy (Stieg Larsson). Strangely enough, I enjoyed Lisbeth Salander’s stories very much (so much for non-violence!). A pity Mr. Larsson did not live to enjoy his success.

Mr. Nesbo has lived to enjoy his success though and has continued to work to extend it further. "The Bat" is an entertaining story, plenty of very troubled characters that have to live with themselves every day and do so with different degrees of success. I guess this is definitely an ingredient that helps readers to connect with the book and the characters. Yet, I’m still not sure why the Harry Hole’s series (more than ten novels, I believe) have become as popular as it seems they have: maybe I should pick up another one soon and see what other cases await for Harry to resolve.

 

Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" and a nice example of data visualization

My first - well, second, to be precise - reading of Orwell's work has been "Nineteen Eighty-Four", one of his two most famous novels. He wrote it between 1947 and 1948, towards the end of his rather short life -Orwell died of Tuberculosis in 1950; a sickness that, thankfully, very few years later became curable in many cases. Sick and all, it seems to me that Mr. Orwell possessed a brilliant brain and an enviable gift for putting complex thoughts into simple, clear words with a clear meaning. He had rather strong opinions about the subject of language: read his essay "Politics and the English Language" to see what I mean.   

Orwell imagined a terrifying future for humanity in his "Nineteen Eighty-Four" novel. In 1984 the world is divided in three big nations that are constantly, endlessly at war; where governments are totally authoritarian and untruthful, most of the population barely struggles to survive, there's no freedom even to think and, most terrible, where there is absolutely no hope for a brighter future.

I suppose Orwell, shall he had lived a longer life, would have been glad to see that his imaginary "Nineteen Eighty-Four" did actually not became a reality, at least the scale he envisioned it in his novel.

Unfortunately in today's world there's still war, poverty, ignorance, lack of freedom, hidden agendas, greed for power, brutality...and a long etc. of terrible in-human behaviours and situations that are present in Orwell's novel. In this sense Orwell's message is as actual as ever.

I do not want to finish this post without sharing a video that I happened to visualize while reading "Nineteen Eighty-Four" . Typically, I keep IT-related topics separate from my "out of work" readings, but this time I'll make an exception. The short video embedded below is a powerful and beautiful example of data visualization techniques. It gives us a glimpse into economic and health growth in the last 200 years. Look at the second part of the 20th century: thankfully, the real political and economical situation at the end of the century looked much brighter than that in Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four"! Enjoy the still one-way "telescreen"!

 

Khaled Hosseini's stories about Afghanistan

Sad stories make good books? If you think so you might love Khaled Hosseini's novels, they are all sad. Afghanistan recent history is another common denominator in all his three books to date.

Hosseini published his first book, "The Kite Runner", in 2003. Later, in 2007, a movie inspired in the book became very popular and it was then that I learned about the book. I did not see the movie and I did not read the book. I had the notion that the story was about children, and that it was not exactly fun. My own kids were little at the time and I did not feel like it was the right moment for this book.

A few years later, while searching for a new read in a bookstore (that was before I got my kindle), I came across "A Thousand Splendid Suns" (first published in 2008). I bought it and then I devoured it in just a few days. I loved the story and how it was told.

After such pleasant experience, when I saw Hosseini's new book "And The Mountains Echoed" (first published in 2013), I also read it and enjoyed it.

And then, a couple of weeks ago, I decided the time for "The Kite Runner" had come. Tears have been shed, as I was fearing they would. Having read the other two novels though, I knew that despite the very sad and terrible events described in the book, I would still find in it a strong set of characters that would speak of courage, conscience, compassion and hope.

All novels from Hosseini have some common themes: Afghanistan tragic history in the last 40 years, a certain yearn for how Afghanistan was prior to the Russian invasion in the seventies, Muslim traditions and cultural aspects, the loss of youth only too early, the Taliban.

Khaled Hosseini is himself an Afghan, although he moved away from his home country when he was still very young. The stories he writes are all hard but, at the same time, they are warm and so very human that you just keep on wanting some more.

The Secret History

"To live without thinking" is what one of the main characters of this novel says he has always wanted most. How very appealing and yet how devastating to live by these words can be!

In my regular searches for new books in Amazon I've come across this novel, The Secret History, a fair number of times. Despite its numerous very positive reviews I did not pick it up, the reason being that this is a story about a few young people in their college years and I somehow did not think I would have a mind for it. Then one day a friend of mine happened to recommend it and offered me to borrow his own hard copy version; and this just tipped the balance.

This novel by Donna Tartt is definitely not the typical light read about a bunch privileged, happy, unconcerned youths in their University years, far from that. The characters are quite unusual, each of them deeply troubled in a different way. They all have in common a fair share of "living without thinking" though, or at least without thinking straight. Their lack of morality is also stunning. I'm still wondering if the unbelievably high amount of drinking, smoking and drugs they do somehow explains their behaviour or is just a consequence of it or both.

If you are interested in the plot you can easily find it in the net, I will not touch on it here. Personally, I've very much enjoyed the first and last thirds of the book, while I could have lived without some of the middle chapters in which little action takes place. I've definitely enjoyed Tartt's elegant writing style and the way she hints at things and then fully reveals them at just her own pace.

Donna Tartt's third and latest book is now on sale and enjoying great success, "The Goldfinch". Here's a short video of the writer and her work:

Now, at the risk of exposing my dumbness only too much, can anybody explain me what the title of this book really mean?

American Gods

My night time reading in the last few weeks has been spent on "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman. I must admit I have mixed feelings about this book.

Soon after the book was first published in 2001 it received several awards. I chose to read "American Gods" encouraged by its many readers' positive comments and pretty high score in Amazon's website. Before I purchased it I noticed a comment that stated this was a book readers either loved or hated, but I disregarded the warning thinking the probability of liking it was higher than not.

Well, to be honest, after reading it all the way through I can say I started to like the book only after I had covered about 80% of it. I guess it was only then that I started to understand the plot, somehow, to see its meaning, some of its purpose. "American Gods" is a book that kept me wandering "what's Shadow - the main character - doing?", "why him?", "what's the purpose of the many characters he finds through his journey?". I was on the brink of putting the book down for many a good days, but my curiosity - or my stubbornness - made me keep on reading.

Readers well versed in mythology surely appreciated Gaiman's choice of god characters, role and even their names. Surely this is part of the fun I missed.

The book is plagued with unusual characters and situations, it certainly seems to me an original story (but that is maybe because I have not read enough fantasy novels to compare with) and I think it is well written (but since English is not my first language this is not a qualified opinion). All in all, I struggle to understand what makes people call this book a "master piece", "best book ever" or "impossible to put down". Let's see what those enthusiastic fans say when the  announced TV Series sees the light

Lessons learned? Sure, but those I keep for me.

Another great read: "I Know This Much Is True"

I've just finished reading the book "I Know This Much Is True". The book is big, you need to take your time to go all the way through it. I wonder how long it took its author Wally Lamb to actually write such a lengthy story!

"I Know This Much Is True'' is a moving story. Dominick Birdsay's and Dominick's family's existence has not been easy, not at all. There are plenty of hardships and frustrations plaguing Dominick's mind and robbing him his sleep: a twin brother with schizophrenia, an abusive stepfather, a dead child, a broken marriage, to name just a few. And he is a bitter man

There is a lot of emotional conflict in this book, but although the specific situations seem sometimes a bit exaggerated they are all illustrative of our human soul’s biggest questions and needs.

Throughout the book Dominick learns a few things that would be good for all of us to learn: we can be wronged in many ways, but it is ultimately our decision how to live our lives. Put the blame on the others and hold grudges is certainly an option, one that will hardly lead to happiness. Take responsibility for one’s actions and decisions and forgive those who do us harm is another. You choose.

Lecturas recientes: "The Help"

Como comenté en el primer post de este blog, me gusta leer. Hoy quisiera compartir una lectura reciente: "The Help".  Muchas de las novelas que leo son meros pasatiempos que, aunque suelo disfrutar en el momento, apenas quedan registradas en mi memoria.

Otras, sin embargo, tratan temas que dejan más huella. Es el caso de "The Help". Se trata de la primera novela escrita por Kathryn Stocket y, por la información que la propia autora comparte en su web, de alguna forma está inspirada en situaciones que ella misma vivió siendo más joven.

"The Help" se publicó por primera vez en el año 2009, y en castellano se tradujo con el título de "Criadas y Señoras". El éxito de público debió llegarle pronto, ya que en el año 2011 se estrenó una película inspirada en la novela.

No he visto la película, pero sí confieso que el recuerdo de haberla vista anunciada en cines influyó en mi decisión de adquirir el libro. Otro elemento que me decidió fue el hecho de contar con varios miles de comentarios en Amazon y tener una puntuación de 4.6 sobre 5.

Mi primer pensamiento tras leer las primeras páginas del libro fue: "me he equivocado, este libro ha debido tener éxito en Estados Unidos porque habla sobre problemas raciales en su país, pero a mí, que soy española, no me va a aportar mucho". Y lo dejé aparcado por un tiempo. Pero tras una pausa me dije a mi misma que debía darle otra oportunidad, y así lo hice. Y no me arrepiento.

La historia se desarrolla en una población de Missisipi en los años iniciales de la década de los 60. Yo nací en esa misma década y quizá por ello el tema del conflicto entre los derechos sociales de la población blanca y de color que se mencionan en la novela me llamó especialmente la atención: ¡estamos hablando de una época muy reciente, no de hace 100 o 200 años! Quiero pensar que realmente han quedado atrás situaciones de desigualdad tan horribles como las que se cuentan en "The Help".

Son sin embargo los aspectos más cotidianos y universales del libro los que más me gustaron y los que quiero mencionar:

1. La importancia de tratar a nuestros hijos con cariño y de ayudarles a tener una imagen positiva de sí mismos, a respetar y a respetarse y el daño que podemos causar cuando no lo hacemos
2. Para los que tenemos ayuda en casa, ¿cómo tratamos a las personas que nos la prestan? ¿seguro que nunca tenemos comportamientos poco considerados como los de algunas de las protagonistas de "The Help"?
3. El libro nos da un poderoso mensaje: está en nuestro poder cambiar las cosas que no nos gustan o que simplemente no están bien.

No puedo evitar pensar que, lamentablemente, una historia como ésta no se hubiera podido escribir con éxito en los años 60. Es desde luego una señal de avance que ahora sí se pueda. El libro está escrito con humor y en un tono positivo. ¡De verdad, muy recomendable!