Welcome to “In the Sandbox,” our Friday community huddle around each aspect of Daytalking, Nightwalking, and Stargazing. Our main goal is to jumpstart thinking and feelings around these aspects and to share ideas with each other.
Another goal of these Friday posts is to move beyond passivity. By actively writing and reflecting on your personal history, you’re better able to grapple with your present and more confidently approach your future. Furthermore, interacting with the rest of our Substack community brings in possibly new and untried ideas and encourages further reflection, support, and action.
It’s a win-win for everyone.
So for today, let’s roll out our internal telescopes and peer more deeply into Stargazing and how it can be a positive tool for personal change.
As mentioned in this previous post:
“Stargazing is supported by other underlying Stargazing. The habit of Stargazing builds on itself. Once you start doing it, you can’t help but get ancillary Stargazing moments.”
And that’s where this prompt comes in.
Reflect on the following questions and post your answers in the comments. I’ll chime in later.
Have fun!
What is a question from your early life that has persisted to this day? Why do you think it has stayed with you?
What is a currently burning question for you that you hope to answer soon, maybe this year?
How have you dealt with a lack of curiosity in yourself or other people? How did it make you feel?
Mike, here are my thoughts on your compelling questions that nobody’s ever asked me before.
1. I have lots of persistent questions from my early life that persist. Being the youngest in my extended family made me feel like I arrived too late and the party was over! One thought that is embedded in my dna: how did my nuclear family become the outliers? Especially with the folks on my dad’s side. There was no feud or a defining moment in my lifetime. I emailed one of my cousins who’s in his late 60’s and he wrote me a very kind letter - with no answers. He says he doesn’t know why things were that way. To paraphrase, sometimes families do weird things. I believe he must know but won’t say. All branches of our family are a very, very private bunch. It’s complicated and leaves me with a lot of sadness especially since my folks are gone. But I’m glad I established contact with my one cousin who seems like a decent person.
2. I have a lot of burning questions that I’d like resolved in the next year or so. The most important one is how in the hell are we going to downsize?! So far all of our desirable options will cost more than staying put which is still very costly. We live in house built in 1922. Our maintenance expenses are often unpredictable and it seems that every year there’s a whopper. We do the best we can to keep up with what needs to be done.
3. I can’t do anything about a lack of curiosity in someone else. So I meet them wherever they are along the curiosity spectrum. When I find myself shutting down it means I am upset, or preoccupied with worry or anxiety or depressed or overwhelmed. Sometimes shutting down is self preservation and not always a terrible thing if it doesn’t go on too long.
Thanks for posing these compelling questions, Mike, they’ve given me a lot to think about!
I’m curious. Why do days sometimes seem so long, yet life seems to fly by? As a child I remember summer days that seemed to last forever: breakfast at sunrise, off to the creek with my best friend Brad, biking in the afternoon, and kick the can at night. But before I knew it: back to school.
Now as an adult, I catch myself glancing at the clock while teaching. “What? Only four and half minutes have passed since I last looked at it!” A class, a day can grind on and on, but wait. Before I know it, it’s January 1, and then June 4. Another year, another year. How can a day seem longer than a year? How can a year seem shorter than a day?
Curious, isn’t it?