Where is offense?

JimBioPic

Like most of us I have been following the tempest succeeding the Charlie Hebdo killings in Paris, the wave of anti-terrorist rhetoric, the rendering of Mohammed as a kind of ‘we’ll-show-you’ counter-punch, the counter-counter punch of Muslims being offended by the rendering, and on it goes. Everyone seems offended by something.

I spend a lot of time thinking about and trying to observe the phenomena that are being referred to in ordinary conversation — when we are speaking and listening.

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Between Trapezes

1119 Selman

By Jim Selman | Bio

I love the metaphor of being ‘between Trapezes’. In one image it connotes the comfort and familiar arc of my current life, the emerging possibility of moving from where I am onto an entirely new trajectory, and most compelling — the excitement and terror of letting go and confronting that existential moment where annihilation seems to be a genuine possibility.

Charles Dubois once said that the most important thing in life is the willingness to let go of

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Why do we procrastinate?

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It’s a bit more than a week into the new year and I am already behind on all the things I was going to get done during the post-holiday lull. I am procrastinating. As with many of my less agreeable habits, I decided to do a workshop on the subject for a European client late last year. The overarching question of why we procrastinate was framed a bit more specifically as “Why don’t we do the things we KNOW we need to do to accomplish what we SAY we want to accomplish?” The correlation

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Compassion

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For some reason I have been feeling acutely connected to people I am encountering these days. In addition to my friends, family and others I know, I am observing all sorts of people – on the street, providing services, working in stores. It is as though I am more ‘present’ to them individually, and more conscious of who people are and the uniqueness of each one’s lives. We all are in pretty much the same soup — working, raising families, dealing with problems, dreaming, and dealing

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The Next 10 Years

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Another year. This year’s resolutions looked pretty much the same as last year and the year before that so I’ve resolved to stop making New Year’s resolutions. Nonetheless the year-end (or beginning) is a time that calls for taking stock and reflecting on the past and the future. This year the big questions for me have to do with the next 10 years.

I have laughed a lot about how easily I can fall into making just about anything significant. I even made

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