When I Think About...
Hello,
Often, when my phone reminds me to write this update, I immediately ignore it. But if I manage not to ignore the really annoying prompt, which I set up, for my own benefit(š), then I go straight to thinking about what I should write.
Thinking seems like the correct response after all. Our minds are our problem solvers, and so we should be using them.
But Iāve been reading āThe Power Of Nowā by Eckhart Tolle, and in the first chapter, heās been trying to persuade me that thinking is more like a disease or an addiction. So maybe my thinking about what to write is the wrong response?
It reminds me that for our ābeginningsā exercises, we often use the phrase, āwhen I think aboutā followed by some kind of noun or emotion. We used to use the phrase āthe thing about,ā but that often sparked opinions rather than stories.
Last week, we did āWhen I Think About Olives.ā Which, when we were doing our planning, and Lynn suggested āolivesā, I responded that I didnāt think everyone would have a story about olives, but that Iād like to find out if Iām wrong. So we tried it.
And I was wrong! Again! š¤£
We learned that people had taken trips to specific regions of Spain and Italy just to taste the olives that are not exported. And how working double shifts in bars can be so lucrative that itās worth enduring the only thing you get to eat are the awful olives meant for cocktails. And how one olive-eating contest when you are 8 years old can lead you to avoiding them for the rest of your life.
And I could be wrong here again, but I think that if weād used āthe thing about olives,ā weād only have discovered who liked olives and who didnāt.
Got any thoughts? Tell me on Tuesday.
Mark
xx





The best way to eat olives is off your fingertips.
āThe thing aboutā implies a negative, or a weird benefit/usage. āWhen I think aboutā invites people to plunge into the mist.