“You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
Christopher Columbus
Just before I set up my philosophy blog, I was enlightened by a fantastic bit of philosophy. I thought it was so good that I posted it out of place on my technology blog, you can find it by going to my A Bit of Philosophy article.
Now that I have a philosophy blog, I thought that it was only appropriate to re-post the article here. The article went a bit like this…
“A professor stood before his philosophy class with some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up an empty jar and started to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed it was.
So the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly and the pebbles rolled into the open areas between golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.
The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked yet again if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous “yes”.
The professor then produced a cup of tea from under the table and poured it into the jar, filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.
“Now,” said the professor, as the laughter subsided, “I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the things most important to you – your family, your children, your health, your friends, your favourite passions – things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, your car. The sand is everything else – the small stuff.”
“If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued, “there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out. Have fun with friends etc. There will always be time to clean the house, and fix the car.
Take care of the golf balls first, the things that really matter. Set your priorities right. The rest is just sand.”
One of the students raised there hand and inquired what the tea represented.
The professor smiled. “I’m glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always time for a cup of tea!”
So there you have it, prioritise for your golf balls, they are the most important, also dedicate some time to your pebbles, and finally look after your sand, but if you loose some sand you are still full, and can easily gain it back – unlike golf balls which are much harder to attain!
Thanks for reading, I hope I have given you some food for thought.
Good luck looking after your golf balls!”
So, as I am sure you can see, it really was a very worthwhile bit of philosophy!
After a recent request by a reader (Lillie) you will now be able to view entire posts in the RSS Feed, rather than just excerpts of them.
This will make it easier to keep up to date with my blog, and will let you see more new content, without having to navigate around lots of pages.
I had some slight issues with getting the entire post to show in the feed, because of the way WordPress coded the RSS feed file some browsers would never show the full post only a short excerpt.
Please click here to see the RSS Feed.
This is now fixed though, so happy reading!
On the evening of the Sunday before last, (5th September) I turned on my computer, and there was no Internet. My router physically would not talk to the world wide web. After a lot of fiddling with wires it still didn’t work, so I had to do something else.
The next morning it was working again, now most people would probably just accept that, but it got me thinking… I felt rather let down by the world wide web, and in a weird sort of way alone.
I know its silly, but do you think that part of our lives now depends, or is even on the Internet? If you were never able to access the Internet again via computer, phone, games console or any other device, would you feel like a small part of you (i.e. your online reputation) had died?
That’s what I sort of felt like on Sunday night. I was 99% confident that the Internet would return with my online self within a short space of time, but it did sort of feel like a part of my profile (not just my Internet one) was sort of inaccessible.
Branding is everything in business is it not? Well in the physical world branding is to people as well. Say a celebrities name and many people will be able to tell you what they do for a living, what they look like etc. This is sort of like human branding. When X sleeps with Y and then the media finds out their reputation hits the floor and their ‘brand’ is weakened.
This is very similar on the Internet, you build yourself your own online brand which is associated with you. I have the Christopher Roberts brand, meaning wherever you find my name you can be assured that you will get quality and unbiased content. That brand stays with you when commenting on other sites and when social networking.
So what happens when the online you is still there, but not doing anything, and the offline you is there, but can’t access the online you? Okay, it sounds a little complicated, but have you ever really given it some real thought?
I can conclude with one thing that I know for sure, the Internet is big, massive, impossible big. Its beautiful, evil and a little bit strange. The picture seems to sum this up.
A map of the Internet
For good or for worse, the Internet effects out lives in a massive way.
Ask yourself this, are you better off because of it?
If you are in a car which is traveling at the speed of light, (theoretically obviously) what would happen if you turned the headlights on?
Would they still work?
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