Time cannot be broken; that is our greatest burden. And our greatest challenge is to live in spite of that burden.- Nietzsche, as a fictional character, in Irvin Yalom’s “When Nietzsche Wept”

Of the things we think, say or do:
Is it the TRUTH?
Is it FAIR to all concerned?
Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?

– The Four-Way Test of Rotary International

Yesterday we quoted Plato. Today we mention a more detailed filter that might be useful for any of the hyperverbal or impulsive among us. The Four-Way Test was created in 1932 by Rotarian Herbert J. Taylor, who was in the midst of turning around a bankrupt company. See the whole story here.

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.

- Plato

When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.

- Nietzsche

Last year I asked my friend Barry about what lessons he learned from his highly-respected father, who lived several decades in a wheelchair after a motorcycle accident:

Bob wasn’t big on lectures or life lessons, but he taught me a couple of hugely important things by example:

(1) Persistence and focus will beat the living shit out of undisciplined genius 99 times out of 100 (not that Bob wasn’t plenty smart, understand, but he was one of the most determined people I ever met.) Even after a grievous injury, he bounced back and went about all the things that were important to him, hammer and tongs, like some kind of demented blacksmith – and God help you if you got between him and his anvil.

(2) A sense of humor, especially about yourself, is one of the most important survival skills in life. Humor will get you through bad times when nothing else will.

Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

– T.S. Eliot quoted in The Little Zen Companion

Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.

- Ovid (43 BCE – 17 CE)

We folk with ADHD sometimes plow quickly into action before taking the time to ask advice. With simple things this is often fine.  But with complicated things?

From the Accordion FAQ

Q: How likely am I to pick up bad habits by teaching myself?

A:  A friend of mine’s son taught himself to play concertina. One day he noticed that everyone else was playing theirs upside down relative to the way he was doing it. Needless to say, the rest of the world was not wrong. Please make sure that you at least know which side is for the right hand vs. the left hand.

– Accordion FAQ compiled by Alan Polivka (1993)

Order is not pressure which is imposed on society from without, but an equilibrium which is set up from within.

– Jose Ortega y Gasset  (1883-1955)

Order doesn’t always come naturally to ADDexecs.  Seeing that we’re out of step with the expected standard, we sometimes “justify” our disorder by saying that we’re marching to our own drummer.  But if so, are we protesting the wrong thing, to our own harm?

One day a man approached Ikkyu and asked: “Master, will you please write for me some maxims of the higheset wisdom?”

Ikkyu took his brush and wrote: “Attention.”

“Is that all?” asked the man.

Ikkyu then wrote: “Attention.  Attention.”

“Well,” said the man, “I don’t really see much depth in what you have written.”

Then Ikkyu wrote the same word three timets: “Attention.  Attention.  Attention.”

Half-angered, the man demanded: “What does that word ‘Attention’ mean, anyway?”

Ikkyu gently responded, “Attention means attention.”

– Zen Story quoted in The Little Zen Companion

David Schiller’s The Little Zen Companion is a fine little collection of Zen or Zen-related sayings and stories, nearly 400 in all.  At least a half-zen are directly related to attention, and I will quote a few of them here in later posts.