Transitions: Thinking And Doing

Transitions: Spring Planting Action¹

Start Early: Parker Planting In Dexter, 1953, age 11

Principles are good and worth the effort only when they develop into deeds… The great doesn’t happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together.
Vincent van Gogh

Your mission for this next year, if you decide to accept it… grow. Essential for all of us: fresh, more informed action – driven by natural change. Review these several brief remarks here from Brain Pickings [strongly recommended] on improved actions for your personal transition to the realities of 2015.

Consider: transitions, changes in perspective, drive the evolution of your self management, of your personal reality. Transitions result in either transformation or denial. Reality does change, and we either grow in that new reality or wither in concrete preconceptions.

van Gogh On Principles – by Maria Popova

My view on this is as follows: the result must be an action, not an abstract idea. I think principles are good and worth the effort only when they develop into deeds, and I think it’s good to reflect and to try to be conscientious, because that makes a person’s will to work more resolute and turns the various actions into a whole.

van Gogh On Relationships – by Maria Popova

Does what goes on inside show on the outside? Someone has a great fire in his soul and nobody ever comes to warm themselves at it, and passers-by see nothing but a little smoke at the top of the chimney.

It’s better that we feel something for each other rather than behave like corpses toward one another, the more so because as long as one has no real right to be called a corpse by being legally dead, it smacks of hypocrisy or at least childishness to pose as such… The hours we spent together in this way have at least assured us that we’re both still in the land of the living. When I saw you again and took a walk with you, I had the same feeling I used to have more than I do now, as though life were something good and precious that one should cherish, and I felt more cheerful and alive than I had been for a long time, cause in spite of myself life has gradually become or has seemed much less precious to me, much more unimportant and indifferent. When one lives with others and is bound by a feeling of affection one is aware that one has a reason for being, that one might not be entirely worthless and superfluous but perhaps good for one thing or another, considering that we need one another and are making the same journey as traveling companions. Proper self-respect, however, is also very dependent on relations with others.

Find Your Purpose – Do What You Love – by Maria Popova

In this excellent article Popova condenses seven thoughtful perspectives that will help you with your choices and transitions for this next year. In a word she addresses the essential life element of intentionality.

Improve your perspective of your life's mission, transcend the considerations of others, and drive forward with your best contribution. You only get these next moments to learn, grow and contribute. Transitions teach, if we let them.

What you should not do, I think, is worry about the opinion of anyone beyond your friends. You shouldn’t worry about prestige. Prestige is the opinion of the rest of the world.
Paul Graham

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On Transitions And Careers – Alain de Botton – Video 16:51 min

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Best Science Books from '14 From Brain Pickings

Best Articles from '14 From Brain Pickings

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Best wishes to you and yours for the coming years.

I appreciate the opportunity to share these evolving perspectives with you, out here on the road together.

Travel matters. Relationships matter. Thank you.

cp
Dr Charles Parker
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¹ Four years in Dexter MO ages 11-14, See this map.

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