Language: English

“There is freedom waiting for you,
On the breezes of the sky,
And you ask “What if I fall?”
Oh but my darling,
What if you fly?” ― Erin Hanson

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– Îmi pare rău, vecine, de nenorocirea care ți s-a întâmplat: din cauza focului, ți-a murit și nevasta, și vaca.
– Da, sunt amărât. Toți îmi spun: lasă, îți găsești tu altă femeie, ia-o pe văduva cutare, uite, cunosc eu pe una tare gospodină. Unul n-ar veni să-mi zică: na, mă, și ție altă vacă…

(via »)

As a personal observation, people tend to ask others to do things but rarely offer their work.

It’s rather easy to tell someone “do this and that”, but it’s not that easy to be proactive and do things yourself.

For example, I received a lot of feedback on how to improve my videos on YouTube (sound, for example, or moving the camera, or rotating the camera).

I don’t remember receiving any offer “Hey, I want to help you with your videos”.

Thanks? OK. Help? Not so much.

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“This is true happiness: to have no ambition and to work like a horse as if you had every ambition. To live far from men, not to need them and yet to love them. To have the stars above, the land to your left and the sea to your right and to realize of a sudden that in your heart, life has accomplished its final miracle: it has become a fairy tale.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek(via »)

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I see this occurring from time to time:

• “Let’s wait for 5 minutes, until everybody arrives”. An event where 90% of the people are present, but we wait for the remaining 10%.
• Or, if it is a conference with a clear deadline for paper submissions, why not wait until the last moment to announce the participants who successfully followed the rules?
• Or an event organizer announcing a conference a few days (sometimes a few hours, even) before the start.

Problems:

• If you say you start at 17, and you start at 17:05, you punish those who are on time. What’s the likely behavior of those people? They will arrive at 17:05 next time, because they will know 17:05 is the actual starting time.
• You don’t follow the rules you set for yourself for the conference.
• You satisfy those who make plans at the last moment, at the expense of those who plan long ahead.

A better solution?

• If you can’t keep a promise to start at 17, instead of 17:05, start at 17:05 right from the announcement. Or announce the event to start not at 18:00 or 19:00, but at 18:23. And keep your promise.
• Follow the deadline for the conference. And announce the list of successful paper submissions as early as possible, not one day prior to the event, and of course, not in the evening prior to the event, also.
• Announce the event long before the actual start. Follow up a few days prior to the event.

In my opinion, it helps people to have plans. Can’t plan two weeks again? Perhaps you are not busy enough with the important things.

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“Bert: Let’s sit down. You know, begging your pardon, but the one my heart goes out to is your father. There he is, in that cold heartless bank day after day, hammed in by mounds of cold heartless money. I don’t like to see any living thing caged up.

Jane: Father in a cage?

Bert: They makes cages of all sizes and shapes, you know. Bank-shaped, some of them, carpets and all.”

Mary Poppins (1964)

There are different types of cages.

You can be a prisoner in a physical realm. But also inside you.

You can be surrounded by things and people and be in a cage. And you can be all alone in a small space and be free.

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If someone asks you to vote for a friend.

What should you do?

My first instinct – ignore it.

When they ask for a vote, the request is not “vote for the best, according to your opinion”, but “manipulate your vote”.

If I would vote based on my actual opinion, my friend would be upset.

The solution? Ignore the request.

Don’t tell them you won’t vote, but also don’t vote for anyone.

Voting for the best option would like them do them wrong.

I think this is the best option.

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