And for me this is the Single best thing I’ve ever done in my life for my mental health.

Florence Nightingale spoke these words in 1890 and we today can listen to this old lady speak of her youth.

Until in 1543 Copernicus came along and asked a question no one had thought to ask.

Is there something in your life you have yet to ask the correct question about?

Many years ago I read Sam Harris’s book about lying. And it got me thinking…

There are times like everyone, where I would avoid telling the truth and tell a ‘little lie’, for convenience. Why? Because, I didn’t want to deal with the consequences of telling the truth and it’s outcomes. And as I backtracked through my thought processes, I realised the motivation to lie was because my ethics weren’t in alignment with my actions.

Maybe I was claiming to be of some character trait but I wasn’t holding up to those ideals and if I was caught out I had to fudge my way around the reality by telling some porkies.

As the years have gone by I’ve had to look deeper into my ethics and what I really stand for and consider if I really feel some way. Am I living the reality of that ethic in my day to day? If I was to be asked about it, would I need to lie and if I did maybe my ethics and reality aren’t in alignment.

Over the years I’ve stopped lying. I won’t necessarily offer to tell the truth but if someone asks, I won’t lie and then we all will have to deal with how I see truth being told. In that I also am prepared in an instant to recount my statement if new information comes to light. I’m not attached at all to my opinions and can quickly change my mind.

I’ve thought through many of my ethics and know where I stand and when I’m asked about an issue not yet fully considered I will defer my response until I’ve given it due consideration.

And it makes sense when you come to think of it. As we evolved the one thing, the most important thing to get hold of, was calories and then using as few of them as possible when we did get them.

This inevitably leads us to gravitate to the lifestyle to maximise this reality. Eat as much calorie dense food as possible when available, lay down fat stores when there’s an excess and avoid any calorie burning activities if possible.

Welcome to the modern lifestyle.

But it’s not just physical activity. It’s also cognitive.

The greatest use of calories is the mental gymnastics we perform throughout the day. So it’s only sensible to be as lazy in our thinking as possible and avoid any taxing processes to drain our reserves of calories. So we have our biases. Our default methods of decisionmaking requiring as little effort as possible. Things like confirmation bias, correlation and causation, stereotyping and racism. There are literially hundreds of these huristics to help us skip the thinking and make a quick and dirty decision. Which was fine when hunter gathering on the savanna. Things are a little more complicated now so maybe a little more complicated thinking is in order rather than defaulting to our earlier programming.

Here’s my start with no promises of what’s to come.

I also thought I’d mention a young lad, Xavier, who I met recently. Someone who could slip through the gaps as happened to me but maybe just maybe the good with his parents are doing will save him.

So if in 15 years you hear of a 27 year old Xavier who is doing a amazing things this is the wunderkind.

As I write this I’m afraid things haven’t gone too well but I’ll continue to try to work out an effecient method to post on the go.

It’s taken 60 years to get here so I decided to unplug from society for 10 days and take time for myself. I got far more than I expected and not all was comfortable and some of the good I can expect to come in the future.

It’s all been fascinating but as I write this, staying for a few additional days on the Sunshine Coast after the course has completed, I’m aware we are all parts of much bigger systems. The slow rotation of our planet, facing the coast of Queensland yet again to our local star, showed me a wonderful dawn this morning, something small but repeated now 1.3 Trillion times in the history of our home planet.

Built of Brisbane Tuff, the local stone used in many of the early buildings and infrastructure it has the classic mottled look of the stone still in the cliffs today

It’s a little quiet amongst the hustle of the city.

As a complete space nut and someone who remembers watching it live as a nine year old boy I thought I’d make a comment.

Here goes…