Monday, February 15, 2010

Day Forty One

Today is another blustery, snowy, icy day. My Mother and her husband John are here for a visit and I've had a grand time getting lost in Memphis while showing them around. Its great to discover this city, even if its freakishly cold and a little too much like Michigan right now. We toured the east side of Memphis, admiring the houses of the wealthy. This afternoon we've been enjoying the warmth and comfort of the duplex on the Museum grounds, cooking, cleaning and watching movies. An altogether un-newsworthy but wonderful day.

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Rilke said...

Do continue to believe that with your feeling and your work you are taking part in the greatest; the more strongly you cultivate in yourself this belief, the more will reality and the world go forth from it.

Works of Art are of an infinite loneliness.

Fame is the sum of the misunderstanding that gathers about a new name.

Nothing in the world can one imagine beforehand, not the least thing. Everything is made up of so many unique particulars that cannot be foreseen.

Everyone once, once only. Just once and no more. And we also once. Never again.

Were it possible for us to see further than our knowledge reaches, perhaps we would endure our sadnesses with greater confidence than our joys. For they are moments when something new has entered into us, something unknown.

That is the principal thing: not to remain with the dream, with the intention, with the being in the mood, but always forcibly to convert it into all things.

Flow (psychology)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the positive psychology concept has been widely referenced across a variety of fields.^[1]

According to Csíkszentmihályi, flow is completely focused motivation. It is a single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service of performing and learning. In flow the emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand. To be caught in the ennui of depression or the agitation of anxiety is to be barred from flow. The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task.^[2]

Colloquial terms for this or similar mental states include: to be on the ball, in the zone, in the groove, or keeping your head in the game.