From & To Sathish #7 - Page 105

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a70857185/navy-sub-dead-crew/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=ten_tabs&utm_campaign=position=6&category=fascinating_stories&scheduled_corpus_item_id=779b5fb4-7c1b-47af-8156-727a5f536a1a&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.popularmechanics.com%2Fscience%2Fa70857185%2Fnavy-sub-dead-crew%2F

When the Navy Recovered This Sunken Submarine, the Crew Was Dead. Why Were They Just Sitting There?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/apr/06/flock-cameras-privacy-concerns?utm_medium=email&utm_source=ten_tabs&utm_campaign=&position=3&category=fascinating_stories&scheduled_corpus_item_id=bea3edb0-289b-4c5a-ac64-8bc28267ec86&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fus-news%2Fng-interactive%2F2026%2Fapr%2F06%2Fflock-cameras-privacy-concerns

Some cities are cutting ties with firm that provides license plate reader cameras, others are signing new contracts and many are still looking for their footing

https://www.today.com/health/mind-body/lessons-for-living-from-death-doula-rcna235910

7 Lessons for Living From End-of-Life Doula: What Matters Most and How to Avoid Regrets

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post in this thread, but that was a lovely article. A stark reminder to all of us to lead a meaningful life everyday. Most of us end up just going through the motions in our life after a certain point. Many of us are sometimes jolted out of that state due to certain events or circumstances but some of us just continue living that way till the very end.

I needed that article. Thanks for sharing.

https://aeon.co/essays/the-mysticism-of-nietzsches-doctrine-of-the-eternal-return

The mystical insight came to Nietzsche like a lightning flash: time eternally recurs – and life must be lived accordingly

The calling by Thomas Moore

The Lord whose oracle is in Delphi neither indicates clearly nor conceals but gives a sign. HERACLEITUS

Mahud was a simple man who lived in a small village and made his living by selling vegetables at a busy market. He was comfortable enough and liked his work. But one day the angel Khabir appeared to him and told him to jump in the river. Without thinking about it, Mahud leaped into the flowing water.

He was carried downstream until a man on shore threw him a rope and pulled him out. The man offered Mahud a job in his fishing business and a small room where he could live. Mahud appreciated the man’s kindness and took the job and worked at it, rather happily, for three years. Then Khabir appeared to him once more and told him to move on.

Mahud obeyed immediately and walked from village to village until in one place a man offered him a job in his fabric shop. This was new to Mahud, but he took the job and learned the trade and worked there relatively happily until the angel appeared again and sent him on. Mahud worked at odd jobs for years in this manner, always moving along when the angel instructed.

When Mahud was an old man, he had gained the reputation of a holy man. People began coming to him with their illnesses and worries begging him for cure and counsel. One day a visitor to his village asked him, “Mahud, how did you get to where you are now?”

Mahud thought for a moment and said, “It’s difficult to say.”

It’s difficult to say because Mahud’s only talent was his openness to the directives coming from the angel whose name means “The All Aware.” Mahud had the precious ability to recognize the call to move on and the openness of heart to follow it.

This is a story about calling and obedience to the call. But let’s remember that at root obedience means “listening.” To find your way you have to pay close attention to the signs about when to change your job, when to get unstuck and reenter the flow of life, and when to retire to a life of healing and teaching.

Unfortunately for us, perhaps, an angel isn’t going to physically appear and tell us what to do next. But the angel of the story does represent something that is real for all of us: a sense of destiny, vocation, and direction. The word vocation comes from the Latin word vox, voice. A vocation is a call.

Why would a sense of direction in life be called a “vocation”? Is the voice of the angel only supernatural or mystical? Or is there something natural about the capacity of life to “speak” to us and give us hints about where to go?

The question is not so much does the world give us a direction, but are we able to read the world for its information? We tend to look at the surface of events and deal with them practically. An alternative is to see events as symbols, images, and signs.

Let me offer an example from a key turning point in my life. I had been a Catholic seminarian as well as a brother in a religious order for thirteen years. I had studied spirituality, theology, philosophy, and the Bible. I was thoroughly prepared for the priesthood. But when I went to an ordinary parish church for the first time and gave a sermon, not as a priest but as a priest-to-be, I was shocked at the gap between my contemporary studies and ideas and the much more traditional views of the people I was speaking to. I was shaken by that experience and took it as a sign to reconsider my vocation. Was I called to fight the battle of liberal theology versus the church authorities and a conservative community? Or should I move on to something else? I read the signs carefully and with great intellectual and emotional difficulty decided to try something new.

The concrete, visible, material world speaks to us, if we would only listen. You don’t have to do exactly what the signs indicate, but it would help to consider them in evaluating the status of your work life. For example, if you are failing in a particular line of work, your difficulty may not mean that you are lacking or at fault, but that you are in the wrong profession.

You also have to attend to your interior life to a degree that you can also sense your calling from internal indications. It may be a strong interest, a feeling of magnetism, pleasure, or joy around a particular kind of work, or blissful daydreams. On the other hand, distaste and discomfort on a job may also be a sign to move on. Difficulty at work can stem from many different sources, one of them the mere fact that you are unsuited for the job. Or it may mean that you have lessons to learn and need to stay and be present for them. You have to read your dissatisfaction and your problems at work to find their meaning and take them as signs. One of the goals of this book is to show how you can attend to and interpret these signs.

I had a colleague once who, while teaching at a university, was denied tenure and fought it with every resource he could conjure up. He and I had very different temperaments, and perhaps it was only natural that he would fight, in that situation, while, when my turn came up, I read being denied tenure as a sign again to move on. Still, I think he would have been a happier person if he had been more flexible generally and willing to listen to the guidance of life around him. I had the feeling that he simply couldn’t imagine himself in another line of work, and he stayed, even though all signs pointed him in a different direction.

The signs that tell you to make a move, stay where you are, or change something about your situation come in many forms. It may be trouble at work, as in the case of my colleague at the university. It could be a strong desire to be in another occupation. Maybe you spend more time and energy at an activity outside of your work, indicating that you could find a way to make that activity your job.

I know a man who was quite successful in running businesses, but he spent more time in programs for children at a nearby park than he did at work. Eventually he saw what was happening, quit his job, and became a full-time teacher in a school athletic program. He is happy with his work and has no regrets about making less money.

Sometimes the signs are more difficult to read. You may get headaches, stomach upsets, or frequent colds that interfere with the work you’re doing. Obviously, physical symptoms such as these may have nothing to do with work, but sometimes they may reflect tension and stress that come from being in the wrong job or not doing it in a way that satisfies.

Tensions in the marriage or family may also be related to dissatisfaction at work, yet people often don’t read these signs in relation to the job. They assume that all family tensions have to do with family interactions, whereas unhappiness at work can function as a root emotional problem radiating into other apparently unrelated parts of life.

Psychoanalysis has taught us to read the events of daily life and our ordinary emotions with considerable subtlety and imagination. The most ordinary action or object can be a symbol for something truly significant and deep-rooted.

If you are making mistakes at work, you might well be sabotaging yourself or your employer. Your anger and aggression may be coming out so indirectly that you don’t recognize what you are doing. If you could read these mistakes as signs, you might be able to trace your anger and discover what is really bothering you. Then you can make a more intelligent decision about your career.

If you can read the signs in your work, you can adjust and perhaps avoid unnecessary failures. In my work in television and video production, I have met many creative people, but none as impressive as Robert, who, as far as I know, has never had a full-time job. He makes documentary films and he produces very imaginative large public programs. He told me that he is very good at coming up with fresh ideas and putting on a successful show. But whenever he tries to repeat a program and make a series out of it, he fails. So he has found a way to be a “starter.” He produces only first-time events and then turns his successful idea over to someone else to keep the project going.

This may not sound like a brilliant solution, but I can imagine many people believing that they should carry their projects through, even though they know they will fail. Robert has the imagination and emotional freedom to let go of the part of a project he knows he can’t do. He has read the signs and adjusted.

Called by Whom? By What?

A calling is the sense that you are on this earth for a reason, that you have a destiny, no matter how great or small. Those who look at life more soberly might question whether such an attitude is warranted. It may seem naive. But the sense of calling doesn’t necessarily require belief in the supernatural and it doesn’t have to be naive.

A calling is a sensation or intuition that life wants something from you. It can give meaning to the smallest acts and helps create a strong identity. If you have a reason for being, you don’t feel entirely aimless. You know who you are and what to do. In a culture where existential anxiety—the worry that nothing is of value and nothing makes sense—is still the order of the day, these are valuable realizations.

Those who believe in God or a higher power or in the intelligence of nature and life have little trouble recognizing the legitimacy of a sense of calling, but still they might feel it lacking in their own lives. Their problem may be that they put too much wishfulness into their belief, expecting life to serve them their destiny in clear and concrete terms. They may want specific direction without the quest and search and sorting out that is also part of the human condition.

In the 1980s I gave frequent workshops and lectures at the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. It was an exciting venture, working with James Hillman, Patricia Berry, Gail Thomas, Robert Sardello, and others developing “archetypal psychology” and exploring the soul of culture. A woman full of ambition and energy came to several of my workshops, and one day she told me she felt a strong calling to do the exciting work she saw teachers at the institute doing.

I was concerned right away because she didn’t have the educational background to join the rest of us, who had many years of study behind us. But she tried. She gave a workshop and then a lecture. Of course they didn’t go well and were an embarrassment to her and the institute. So she went back to the city she came from and tried to do the same thing there. Again, she failed. She was a dance instructor, and finally she got the idea of teaching dance in a special way informed by the ideas she had picked up at the institute. She was very effective at this work, and for many years afterward she fulfilled her calling.

The initial revelation of a life work may be highly emotional but unformed. A person may believe she is called to be just like someone she admires, but then she has to learn how to adapt that calling to her own abilities and temperament. It may take time for the calling to be fully revealed, if it ever is. It may also entail fumbling for a period of time, making mistakes, and failing.

As you will discover in the chapters ahead, chaos and calling go together. In your confusion and experimenting, you learn about the laws of life and you feel the burden of your existence. This is not a bad thing because it gives weight to your thoughts and gives character to your work. If you only toss around in chaos or latch onto a source of meaning without self-questioning and wonder, your convictions will lack the weight and bite of real life.

I never hear my friend Scottie talk about a calling or a need to serve or the desire to really do something with his life. He seems concerned about the details of whatever job he has at the moment. He never talks about his vision, except to say that he doesn’t know what to do with his life. Maybe he needs to step back, think about things, have a big conversation about life in general, and eventually find his calling.

Monks are forever talking about their vocation. They don’t talk about talents or wishes; they speak of being called. Work that requires complete dedication, like that of the monk, is so vast in scope that a mere aptitude isn’t sufficient to explain a person’s choice of profession. That could be true of a doctor or politician who feels called to be of service to humankind.

The story of Mahud suggests that any kind of job is a calling, no matter how ordinary. Maybe we elevate certain work, like that of doctors and politicians, and refer to it as a calling, overlooking the vocation to whatever work is our destiny. Most of us live within relatively narrow perimeters and enjoy a small life. There is beauty and satisfaction in that smallness, partly because the least significant of lives can still have cosmic proportions for the meaning and purpose they offer.

A person who shows special skill at a small craft, such as making wooden bowls or simple jewelry, is engaged in universal values of beauty and expressiveness. A bookkeeper or an accountant plays a role in the financial vitality of a community and even a nation. Honesty and care are as important in small things as they are in big things.

Samuel Beckett once wrote a quirky novel called Mercier and Camier about two men taking a walk around the block. Beckett tells the story as though these two were Dante and Virgil canvassing the whole of creation. He uses mythic language and large concepts to the point of comic absurdity. But our lives are like that: As we go about our small lives, constantly bumping into the great issues of love and death, meaning and ignorance, we, too, are comic. A sense of destiny can keep us in touch with that larger picture and gives profound significance to the insignificant things we do.

It’s tempting to inflate the notion of calling, to imagine it as a great revelation on a mountaintop, a once-and-for-all pronouncement of who we are and what we are to do. But Mahud has several “callings,” which together lead him to an unexpected ultimate life work: healing, counseling, and holiness.

At the end, Mahud’s openness to his many callings leads him to develop into a character of extraordinary depth and power, so much so that people come to him for help. He has gathered together no coherent set of skills from his work that would explain his effectiveness as a healer. Only his openness to destiny has given him his ultimate life work, and at that point it’s clear that the work he has done has been not just simple labor but internal development of character. The two are inseparable: the work that we do and the opus of the soul.

The Willingness to Change

People’s idea of a career can become monolithic. You spend years of education and apprenticeship to acquire the skills of a job, and you feel that investment as a heavy weight. You identify with your work, and the idea of changing it entails a personal reversal. If you change jobs, you change “who you are.”

The financial security developed over the years in a particular position may give you some flexibility to search out alternatives, but at the same time it may prevent you from detaching yourself from that career and starting over somewhere else. For many people security is a heavy weight around them that won’t let them consider a serious change in direction.

The idea of a calling can also be monolithic. You are called to be a doctor, and so you can’t imagine doing anything else. Or you are called to be a musician but you work for the post office and play in a band on weekends. You can’t picture yourself as a full-time musician because in your mind it isn’t who you are.

Thus the benefit of thinking of a multiplicity of callings rather than a single call to a profession. You may be called to be many things at once or one thing after another. You may be called to be a parent and a librarian, a husband and a mechanic, a fund-raiser and an artist. You may be called to be a nurse for a portion of your life and then discover a new calling to be a professional calligrapher. Many people have found their life work by making unexpected shifts in the work they do.

For some people the various callings penetrate one another and come together. I feel this about myself. I have been a monk, a teacher, a musician, a therapist, and a writer. I have been surprised how as a writer about the soul, I have been invited to speak in pulpits of many different religions and denominations. As I ascend the steps to the high perch of the pulpit, I often remember how as a teenager I wanted so desperately to be a priest speaking about the soul. Now here I am, a married person, making a living writing books, but still somehow fulfilling my dream of being a priest.

My work has led me into a friendship with the actor Martin Sheen. I remember watching him in films when he was a young man and being astonished at his talent. But he is also a social activist who supports a variety of causes and has been jailed for his actions. Now, is he called to be an actor, an activist, or both?

It seems important to nurture a strong sense of calling while not fixing on any particular form of work. This capacity to be flexible may be one of the most significant strengths in relation to a life work because it allows movement. Life is not usually monolithic, narrowly focused, or unchanging. Just the opposite; life is a flowing, shifting force that rushes over obstacles and seems bent on movement and transitions. If we don’t adjust to this torrent of vitality, we may have to become rigid in order to hold on to a job or career, and that rigidity causes many emotional problems.

When I was young I was sometimes criticized strongly for pursuing my many interests and for entering and then quitting careers. Then when I became an author, interviewers would look at that same life and say, “How interesting. Tell us about it. How did you do it?”

If flexibility is the primary virtue as you pursue your callings, then a philosophy of the polycentric life—the idea that you can be more than one thing—is a close second. This important lesson I learned in my early association with the psychologist James Hillman, who turns many common assumptions upside down to reveal the straitjackets we have willingly put on for years. In his view, a monocentric view in anything is bound to create rigidity and moralism.

Those who criticized me for going after too many dreams were speaking from a one-eyed place. They could only see one goal at a time, and they got judgmental whenever they suspected any deviation from that standard. I have applied Hillman’s principle of polycentricity as a therapist in many situations and have found it to be a philosopher’s stone, a discovery that becomes the source of insights and solutions. It works magic, just when the situation appears hopeless.

A woman tells me, “I’m a nurse. I’m interested in psychology. I want to be an artist. I’m fragmented. I can’t get my life together.” In that worry, instead of “fragmented,” a word of judgment, I hear “multitalented.” Instead of trying to get her life together, I think, “How can she do all of it comfortably?”

Many people believe that they should be whole, meaning that their life and work should look like one piece. They have never questioned this word whole, or imagined it in a way that doesn’t pressure them to give their life a single focus. An alternative would be to appreciate a multifaceted work life, to give attention to the many interests that claim your attention.

Often this pressure appears as a dilemma: “Should I quit my job as a nurse and become a psychologist? Which way should I go?” Maybe you should go both ways—and more. You will need a rich, flexible imagination guiding you toward a solution where you are not torn apart, where you at least give some of your energy to your various interests. People will judge you, of course, because the dominant value in society is unity and single-mindedness. But you don’t have to think that way. You can operate out of a personal philosophy of polycentricity—many centers of interest and attention.

“I want to be an artist but I love my work as head of a thriving business,” a man says. “Isn’t there some way to do both?” Remember Wallace Stevens, one of America’s greatest poets? He was an insurance executive and seemed to thrive at his job even as he wrote complex, brilliant poems. About his motive for becoming an insurance executive, he was quite clear: “I didn’t like the idea of being bedeviled all the time about money and I didn’t for a moment like the idea of poverty, so I went to work like anybody else and kept at it for a good many years.” He consistently appreciated ordinary labor, and yet he wrote to his wife that poetry is really what made his life worthwhile.

Barbara, a woman I have known for many years, who has never found her life work, says she wants to do family therapy, though she is very aware of her talent as an illustrator. Meanwhile, she suspects there is yet another calling waiting to be heard. She doesn’t know now what that might be. At this point at least, she might pursue many possibilities at once—take a class in psychology while working freelance as an illustrator, for example

A calling is a deep sense that your very being is implicated in what you do. You feel that you fit into the scheme of things when you do this particular work. You have a sense of purpose and completion in the work. It defines you and gives you an essential tranquillity.

The work that provides such a deep reward may change over time, and you may go through several periods in your life defined by a different work. Toward the end of your life you may see all the jobs you have done as fateful, composing your life work and answering your calling.

I once counseled a priest in his seventies who didn’t feel that he had a calling to the priesthood, even though he had spent over fifty years as a priest. He regretted giving his life to something he didn’t feel called to do, and he felt bitter and depressed in his old age. He would bring me paintings of his dreams, and we would sit there staring at the striking, colorful images on the floor between us, and we would look for a way out of the bitter regret. I had met him in a course I was teaching for art therapists, and he was discovering mild joy in self-expression and psychology. Though bitter to him, his regret and depression didn’t repel people; on the contrary, people were drawn to him and loved him. I had the impression that although he came late to the realization that he didn’t fully want the role he had lived all his life, he had done good work and was now following a new calling that gave him real satisfaction. He constantly talked about his depression, but at the same time he was finding new vitality.

I think this man did indeed have a calling to the priesthood, which he carried out very well. But he came to a point where he tasted the world he had given up for his vows and he badly wanted this new life. It was a sad situation, but it was bittersweet, because his sadness only made him more human and more connected to the people around him. His joy and sense of humor were muffled by the depression, but they were present. Here was a man on the cusp between two callings, one colored by regret and the other seemingly impossible for his age. At least, that is the way he felt. Eventually, his optimism came to the foreground, and without losing the depressive current in him, he was able to be what for him was a new kind of priest, now skilled in counseling and art therapy and more aware of the struggles people go through.

Loyalty to Your Calling

A strong call to a career or particular work is a precious thing. It gives a shape to your entire life and helps your relationships by quelling the search for an identity that is always implicated in the quest for a life work. But once you perceive your calling, you may still have problems because, as with this priest, circumstances might well work against it.

People feel called to work for which they have no background or education. It may take a great effort to get that education late in life or after having gone in a different direction previously. When I was a college professor I counseled many women returning to school after years of raising a family. It was difficult for these women to shift their orientation from home to school, and I was always impressed with the courage and loyalty most of them brought to the work they felt compelled to do. In some cases their husbands or children didn’t agree with their choice, and they had to move ahead toward their calling without the support they wanted. Many felt embarrassed being in classes with young men and women their children’s age. And yet, with their eyes focused on their goal of a life work, they persevered.

They didn’t see college as a complete break with their job of raising their children. Their calling involved both elements: family and a job. But they had to make the transition, and that was the most difficult task. One woman I remember in particular, Patsy, had always engaged in fund-raising for community causes while she was raising her family, and when the children left home and she got her degree in school, she became more focused and professional about her work. Her ability to help nonprofit organizations raise money now became a profession rather than a pastime. She set up an office, hired some help, and attracted clients. Her transition was not toward a new direction in life but toward a more formal and ultimately more satisfying leadership role as a professional.

We live in a pragmatic age when people often value the predictable standards of success. They may steer their friends toward practical goals. In this environment, you have to keep your sights on the vocation you feel within you, though it is not always easy to champion the interior life when the external world is pressing in.

There is something almost simpleminded about Mahud’s willingness to do whatever the angel says. He simply jumps into the river, an ancient image for the ongoing flow of life. He is willing without any hesitation to be part of life. That commitment to vitality is allied to the commitment to a calling. Both take you to a place you may never have known, but once there, you know it is what you have been looking for all the while.