Your Mind is Your Matrix

This is your last chance... You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed, and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.
– Morpheus, from the film The Matrix

In the movie Matrix was a virtual reality in which sleeping people were immersed — they were dreaming away their lives supplying the electric power to a mechanical super system. Neo was given a choice of a red/blue pill to get out of the dream world to the real world. Matrix was in a virtual reality that most of the people took for granted and lived by its rules. They accepted them without a hint of reflection. In his journey to awareness Neo realized that the rules are as flexible as he dared stretch them and — later on — make them.

Coming back to reality — we are also dealing with sort of Matrix — Matrix of our minds. Our mind is shaped by what we experience: our education, culture, mass media, family life etc. We live within the world that we accept as natural. Our behavior is the result of the way our minds process reality and react to it. It is not a problem if this is what you accept as good and are comfortable with. Often, however, we behave in a certain way because we feel we cannot do it another way, because it is expected from us or it is plainly done so. These are our matrices. These traditional, compulsive, addictive behaviors that have been programmed for various reasons in our minds.

Are you brave enough to take the red pill? To realize that the compulsions, phobias, wants are real only in... your minds — in your privately nourished matrix?

Ostrów Wlkp. in the early morning...

I had been planning to go to Ostrów for almost a month, but I was waiting for sunny morning weather. I checked the weather forecast on Saturday May 31 and it seemed that I would finally get what I wanted.

I woke at 4.30 am and the sunrise was already in progress. It took a moment to get my children who volunteered for the photo trip out of beds.

On our way to the Marketplace we could see the fiery reflections of the sun in the windows of a building on ul. Wrocławska.

The early Sunday morning Marketplace is so unusual without people and with pervading smooth, ephemeral light...

Check it out below:

June Sunday morning in Ostrów

Motocross race in Ostrów

I was surprised by a motocross race when I visited Ostrów Wlkp. (my home town) on June 1. Although my main reason was shooting Ostrów's Townhall in the early morning, I had a chance to try my hand at "sports" :)

Click the link below for some more photos.

Cross country race in Ostrów Wlkp.

Happiness according to Daniel Gilbert

I decided to go back to Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness.

Shortly, we think about what will make us happy in the future basing on the situation now. When future happens, we (or situation etc.) have changed so much that we no longer can be happy with what we expected would make us happy.

Literary magazines dumped

I dumped several dozens of literary magazines in the street paper recycling bin yesterday. I  had bought them over 20 years ago and I had meant to read them later. They survived a couple of moves to  my new places and one major house redecoration. In the meantime, I settled and started a family, changed profession three times, got through 5 or 6 major interest changes.

When I began a major spring basement cleaning a couple of days ago I decided that they needed to go. Time to move on uncluttered.

Black Swans

From The Black Swan blurb:

"A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random and more predictable, that it was."

Nassim Taleb's Fooled by Randomnes, The Black Swan and Antifragile have been on my permanent list of reading since the first of them was published.

These are books that I read and reread — because bewitched by everlasting biases I keep falling for the illusion of order and preplanned reality.

Basically, we do not  realize how important are accidental and unexpected events and actions. We tend to assume that reality is a result of logical progress. We ignore all blind alleys that are long forgotten. Fooled by narrative bias and history and post factum explanations we think that everything is accounted for.

It seems that Nassim Taleb made pursuing the role of unexpected/random the goal of his life, I am sitting in a large auditorium of his staunch fans...

Bhutan-Polish meeting on Berlin-Gdynia train

When getting aboard the Berlin Gdynia express train I did not expect meeting someone from Bhutan... The second passanger who entered the compartment was a man in red checkered flannel shirt who was apparently of Asian origin. A bit later a high school girl sat on the seat next to the door, who busied herself working on her homework and a lady with a little dog which settled for cosiness of its travelling bag.

As the conversation with sitting next to me cotraveller unwinded, I was handed his business card and a leaflet about his travelling office in Bhutan. A moment later I learnt that Bhutan is the only place in the world, where the wealth of the country is measured with Gross National Happiness instead of Gross National Product. The population of Bhutan is about 643,000 people. The country is located between India and China and its symbol is "Thunder Dragon". Bhutanese are mainly Buddhists and sacred shrines dominate the country landscape.

Bhutan economy is based on hydro- and solar energy which is exported to power starved India. The forest covered area (70%) offers the toursts glimpses of undisturbed wilderness. However, you cannot just dive into the wood on your own as happiness oriented Bhutanese won't let you risk your life blazing a new trail. But you may satiate your hunger for sight seeing with the assistance of local guides.

My curiosity has definitely been awakened. I hope to meet Sonam Peljore in Bhutan -- hopefully sooner than later :) 

More details:
Sonam Tshoey Travel