Insights infect my mind with clarity. Suddenly, a difficult situation or circumstance makes sense. Even if all of the pieces of the puzzle were already known for decades, it is not until that moment that my mind can arrange them to a meaningful picture. The book Siddhartha by Herman Hesse is full of such insights. I marked dozens of them as I read it, but one of them fitted my recent blog posts in particular. Towards the end of the book, Siddhartha concludes that wisdom cannot be put into words because as soon as one tries to do so, it sounds foolish. I feel similar when I try to write about any sort of thought. Hence, I will not attempt to reflect what I learned from that book, but can only recommend it.

The book tells the life of Siddhartha and his journey of self-discovery

I see the shelf every day but it must have been years since I actually looked at it. It has blended with the background, becoming one with my room. My brain knows there is a shelf, and every time I see the shelf, it inserts an abstract placeholder for "shelf". But it does not process the shape, the colors, the dimensions. The brain skips all of the details. Meditation made me realise this. After a sitting, the details are back for a few seconds. The shelf is not abstract anymore, the sofa has a color, the pencil has a design printed on it. The world turns from blurred grey mud to a colourful place full of wonderful, well-defined entities. Ten minutes of meditation is sort of the opposite of ten minutes of infinite scrolling on Instagram.

Here is to a more aware 2022.

Though I have to admit that Rudolph's glowing nose is hard to miss on the shelf

She is unstoppable. Nothing can get in her way. She gets hit, she stumbles, she falls. But she rises, again and again. She fights back, she continues, she never gives up. She does the right thing, even if it takes her last breath. In the latest trilogy, Lara (Croft) is better than ever. While earlier games portrayed her as a flawless but also somewhat distant super adventurer, Lara becomes a fighter and survivor in this origin trilogy, making her much more relatable in every sense. One truly feels the defeats and victories as her adventures unfold and, rather than just a character to be admired, her fearless and relentless spirit become a true motivation. When I "grow up", I want to have that spirit!

Lara has substituted her dual pistols by really cool bows and arrows

Different from earlier games, Lara now actually uses climbing gear

Mud, sweat, blood. It all does not stop her.

While bruteforce action works with enemies, strategy typically works better

One thing stays the same: she explores lots of impressive tombs

And those tombs are typically full of deadly traps

While earlier games were rather cold, emotions now play a big role

Along with tombs, artifacts are a must as well

Don't mess with her. Really, don't :-)

It was broken. Really broken. Like an old, rusty cargo ship that may sink any moment, this website was full of patches and quick fixes. I was not proud of it. The database leaked, the engine was vulnerable, and support for the system had ran out years ago. While code does not get rusty, it becomes obsolete as the environment in which it runs evolves. And just like in real life, the best thing that can happen is a regular crisis that wakes us up from the dream that pretends that everything can remain the same forever. A few weeks ago, that (code) crisis finally came and the running system that never had been touched, stopped running. After this hiatus, welcome back to a shiny upgraded site with new blog smell :)

Rusty chains at Völklinger Hütte, a UNESCO world heritage site in Saarland

Things have changed. I never thought I would get this far when I started writing this blog fifteen years ago. Back then, I wrote it for others. I was shy and quiet. My hope was that the blog would show others that I was not entirely boring. That did not work out, of course. Later it became a place to deal with the nostalgia and loneliness that I felt during the PhD. Nowadays, I write the blog for myself. I found meaning in trying to write down thoughts, take pictures, and make objects that have some sort of beauty by themselves. I do not always succeed, but that shift of perspective made it much less relevant whether anyone reads, looks or uses those creations.

Step by step, year by year, I somehow got to 15 years

Love is selfless by definition. Yet we have degraded it to a selfish feeling. Do you love someone, or do you love being loved? From family to friends and partners, our culture makes us believe that the focus lies on ourselves. And the consequence of it is an enormous amount of unnecessary suffering. One of my favourite parts of The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a dictionary that Milan Kundera includes in his novel to show the radically opposite understanding of simple notions that the couple Franz and Sabina has, leading to fatal communication failures. Love is omnipresent in our culture yet causes devastating harm. The more I experience this, the less I feel I need it.

The book is a pleasure to read and a source of deep wisdom

Making gifts is hard. I have made many useless gifts in the past and I will definitely make many more in the future. The perfect gift is somewhere at the intersection of what one likes to give and what the recipient likes to receive. And the longer it takes to become junk for the recipient, the better. Figuring that out requires a great deal of empathy. Add minimalism to that, and it becomes hopeless. If we all kept public wishlists, the disappointment in the world would be less. Same for the waste. My wishlist would include (your) time, (your) art, and (your) care. But all of that is crazily expensive. As a simple alternative, some good food will do, too ;-)

And great food typically involves time and art anyway

It is always on Sunday evening. Just when the weekend is about to slip off, I finally feel rested to focus on my small projects. My hobbies. My creative ideas. But it is too late. The weekend is almost over. I guess two days is just enough to get some sleep, get all the non-work tasks done that build up during the week, get a brain reset consuming some pre-made content (a game, a book, a movie...), and get some much needed fresh air with some outdoor activity. And that is it, the weekend is gone. I plead for a third day. A day for creativity. That day where one paints, writes, makes, sews, programs, plants, or whatever. A day for mental health.

That day one spends a non-trivial amount of time taking "artistic" photos of toothbrushes xD

The concept of a lighthouse has some magic to it. A lighthouse shows the way to safety, standing strong even in the worst thunderstorm. At every age, we all believe that we have figured out the way, no lighthouse needed. As kids, as teenagers, as adults. We all think that we know what we are doing. And to some extent, that makes a lot of sense. It would be devastating to live without believing that one knows the way, even if that is inherently a lie. The key is to be aware that it is a lie. A necessary white lie. And when one inevitably gets lost, fortunately the lighthouse is still there, where lighthouse is just a synonym for any other lost human being.

The way to Lighthouse of Ponta de Sagres, located almost at the very edge of Europe

It is more expensive. No doubt about that. But how much is a better and cleaner environment worth? I feel incredibly lucky to have a zero waste shop within walking distance of my home. Once a month I buy there legumes, rice, spices, and even sweets. I bring my own glass jars and they fill them for me. After that, I often stop by a regular supermarket to buy whatever is missing. And then comes the shock. The plastic shock. It feels awkward to see everything wrapped up in plastic that is to be discarded right after use. It only happens on the days when I come from the zero waste shop. Otherwise, my mind is trained to accept the plastic as "normal".

Half a kilo of lentils in plastic costs 1.79 €, without plastic 2.55 €. That is 0.76 € for nature.