In a previous post (Quality over Quantity), I mentioned my fondness for a book by George Leonard called Mastery. In that book he outlines that progress in any field can feel linear, but there will be a plateau. The plateau is unavoidable, but it does ultimately end if you stick with whatever you are trying to master. Then comes another period of linear growth (a burst), followed by a slight dip in skill, followed by another plateau. Onwards and upwards. It looks something like this:
Recently I turned 30, so I spent some time pondering on what that means. In some ways, it means very little. Age is just a number and being 29 years, 364 days is essentially the same thing as being 30.
I also know that at 30, I’m not that old yet. There are many happy, healthy, productive years ahead of me. Some might say my best years are ahead of me. On the flip side, I’m not that young anymore either. It occurred to me that at age 30, I now have a sense for how much time in my existence I have left. As a child, when school was out for the summer, the freedom of the season seemed like an eternity. Of course, it always came to an end (summer’s over already?), and then the new school year would seem so vast and overwhelmingly long that I wouldn’t even consider plans beyond it. Beyond the month even.
Not so anymore. Continue reading Quality over Quantity
The first post on energy briefly explained how the human use of energy is awesome, while the second post went over the basics of energy and introduced the relevant lingo and concepts required to get into a more detailed discussion. This time, I want to further explore why energy is so great, and how it enhances the human experience. Continue reading Energy and Human Lifestyles
In the short time that Sustainable Balance has been around, Graham has written extensively about our bodies and the physical world around us, about how the two interact with and influence one another.
While understanding our bodies and the physical world around us is undeniably of critical importance for our overall wellbeing, the same must be said about our minds. Indeed, the two are intimately connected; two parts of the same whole, both instrumental and complimentary to how we experience and interact with the world. Continue reading The Philosophy of Life – Part 1: Expectations
In a previous post, I presented strategies for sourcing produce in the modern food arena. This post was originally intended to demonstrate the best ways to ethically source the animals in your diet (and that will still come), but during the writing of that post, I kept thinking about and researching reasons why consuming animals properly and ethically is something positive. I consider myself very health-conscious and generally pro-environment, so often when I meet like-minded folks, they are surprised that I consume animals with such enthusiasm. Continue reading Should Humans Eat Animals?
Everything on Earth, and every other planet, is made up of the same matter. The fabric of life is the particles making up all matter in the universe, including the physical forms of living beings. These particles (simplified) are protons, neutrons, and electrons, with the energy coursing through these particles being massless photons (particles of energy or light). These three (or four, including photons) particles are responsible for chemistry as we know it. Continue reading The Essence of Life: Two Potential Models
