News and life and the Current River
I don’t write much in the way of app reviews or comments. One of the things I’ve just settled on is some method of reading RSS which seemed it never would change. It was always lists and numbers. So many total. So many unread. Perhaps the incipient goal with all these apps was like when I had goals in steps or the time spent doing yoga or meditation. I always felt measured. Like if I did not measure up somehow I was lacking. This left me always wanting somehow more. Somehow less. Reading RSS seemed destined to be the same. There was no flow. No sense that I could find my no goals, no measure. No sense I did a thing for its own merit. Not to cross something off a list. I’ve written and felt this is a failure in our lives. We are obsessed with measuring. Counting. Achieving. What would happen if I found more apps and ways to do things that did not depend on counts, repetitions, achievement?
Well lately a new newsreader called Current delivers on this stateless life I reached in other things. Instead of excel spreadsheets or lists and totals, there is a river. Voices. News comes and goes. I can join the river whenever and both feel immersed and apart when I want. Or need.
When we get past the obsession with numbers of whatever we find the nature of things always there. The quiet waiting and doing a thing when we decide it’s time. Not when the goal or milestone or task says.
So instead of advancing because I read all the unread items how about my river instead. A slowly evolving sense of stories and people.
It’s another app that lets me set my own way of things. Not require some other well meaning app or voice to tell me I must read so much. Or take so many steps. Retirement is about not counting. The difference between then and now is not hours and days. It’s moments. Moving beyond counting and goals and the obsessions of them gives us back our life.
The Current newsreader does this in yet another part of my meaningless little life. And I’m grateful to have a place to lean into with a developer giving us new looks to our rivers. Each bend of the river reveals a new sight.
Take care all. Give yourself a break from the insistent measurement and goals. It’s not all life is. In fact it’s just a clumsy way you’re controlled. This morning the sky in Battambang Cambodia glowed a red. I was immersed and felt this was the start to a day of nothing. Love that feeling.
