How to read plants

In another blog post , I described how we all carry the information from our past with us.   What is true is true for everything, and this same principle applies to plants in a very interesting and useful manner.   Like everything else I know this information was adapted from others; in this case my friend and primary bonsai teacher, Peter Tea. 

Most of us are aware that you can determine the age of a trunk (or branch for that matter), by counting growth rings.   Each year (technically each growth season) the tree will expand and a new “layer” is created.    These rings contain far more information such as the width and color, encoding the growing conditions such as rainfall, fires, etc.   The downside of counting growth rings used to be the need to cut down the tree or the branch in order to read the rings.   This has been largely mitigated by the use of coring devices but the basic strategy remains.

As a budding bonsai artist (pun very intended), I am not planning to take core samples or cut off branches to determine how my tree is doing.  However, what happens in the trunk gets reflected in the branches, and what happens in the branches gets reflected in the twigs.   Trees don’t just grow thicker; they also grow proportionally longer.   When a branch extends each leaf bud will be a certain distance apart.   The distance between each leaf on a branch is called the internode.   On most species of trees, faster growing branches will have larger internodes (or more space) between each leaf.   This actually encodes much of the same information as the core of a tree.   Longer internodes reflect excellent growing conditions, whereas short internodes indicate the lack of this.  

The branch on the left has long internodes reflecting a great growing season. The branch on the right has very short internodes, indicating less strength.

Similarly as a branch matures it will show other signs of age.   For example, most new shoots emerge green and become brown over time, then possibly other colors such as white or gray depending upon the species.    Some species will bark up, twist, or droop.   All of this information is data that can be useful in reconstructing the history of a branch.  By combining these two techniques we can already begin to see how to evaluate a branch.

In the lower area, the internodes are long . After the cut end at the top, the branches are smaller and tighter. This indicates the branch grew with less vigor as would be expected after a cut.

Another piece of information is the splitting or change in direction of a tree.   Plants will generally extend until some condition (such as the branch snapping, a pruning shears, the limit of water transport, etc.) impedes this.   This means that if you see a split or change in direction, you can be sure that something happened.   For a bonsai artist, this is generally the result of pruning.   This allows even greater information to be gleaned as follows :

In the bottom dark area in the first growing season, the internodes were long and the growing conditions were good. After the cut, the second growing season produced two small brown branches. This reflects less vigor in the tree, perhaps due to the cut, or the tree being re-potted, etc. However, the newest shoots are in green and longer again. This means that the tree has seemingly recovered from whatever slowed it before.

Specifically in terms of intentionally shaping plants like bonsai, this actually gives you a pretty good idea of what has happened with a tree.  Keep in mind that it is not necessarily “right” or “wrong” to be growing quickly or slowly. If you are trying to thicken a tree you want it to be growing quickly. If you are trying to refine a tree, coarse growth will ruin your plans.  If a tree was growing strongly before but has very short internodes this year, that is something to investigate.   It might have been intentional but it could also indicate an issue.   Similarly, if you try pruning a tree in the wrong season and it has very short extensions for two years, that is indication it really didn’t appreciate the gesture.   This information has been very invaluable when buying trees at auctions as I generally cannot ask the owner questions.

In summary, plants (and trees in particular) carry a LOT of information if you know how to look for it.  Each plant bears the story of its history.   I think that we all carry our stories as well, but this is far less obvious.  It is very interesting to observe nature and can occasionally prove useful.  For the bonsai artist, this allows us to evaluate our techniques.   When observing plants in nature, it can be interesting to see exactly how and why some species thrive and others flounder.  The world is constantly changing and this moment will never return.  Learning how to be fully engaged makes life much richer and rewarding.

Thank you to my wife, Leia Barton, for the illustrations 🙂

How to lose fifty pounds

About two years ago I started on a long journey that will probably continue for the rest of my life.   My weight loss journey was both surprisingly easy while also difficult.   I have learned many lessons which I feel may be useful to others.   Our health may be something that we take for granted, but without it life can be difficult in every other aspect.

The first realization I had was that I did not become overweight in a short period of time.  Your weight is a lagging measure of your dietary and exercise habits, in the same way that your bank account is a lagging measure of your financial habits.  Just as I did not gain the weight overnight, I wouldn’t lose it as quickly either.   My excess weight was built one bad habit at a time; fast food for breakfast a few times a week, then maybe a nice dinner with appetizer two or three times a week.   There was a period when I didn’t drink, but once I had discovered craft beer there was a period I would have three or four drinks a night, with the occasional party.   I didn’t suddenly wake up obese; it took many small changes to cement themselves.

The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones – Confucius

Each action is a vote for the person you want to become. – James Clear

The wakeup call was discovering I was pre-diabetic.   I was working out and lifting fairly heavy weights, and doing some running.   I was very surprised by this but decided I wasn’t going to just give up.   I also was aware of the abysmal failure rates of dieting.   So I was going to lose weight without ever going on a “diet”.   This had to be sustainable.   I know that I like the flavor of alcohol too much to go completely sober, and in moderation I think it can fit.  So instead I created a scheme of not allowing myself any drinks while I am one pound above where I was the previous week, one drink if I am less than a pound below, and a two beer treat when I have lost a pound.   I similarly identified my worst habit as soda (especially with fast food in the morning), and discovered a small variety of breakfasts I liked.    This strategy of identifying my current worst habit and gradually replacing them with sustainable alternatives worked wonders.

I don’t believe that anyone should make changes that they cannot sustain for the long run.  This is how people relapse after their diet is complete.  This process has actually been somewhat enjoyable.  I still enjoy drinks and fine dining (when I can), and rarely count calories.  This sounds simple but I think it should be.   Anything where you have to measure or eliminate foods is not really sustainable.   It doesn’t matter how you got to where you are; what matters is your trajectory.   It is never too late to change your life, but each action you take is a vote for who you will become.

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. – Chinese Proverb

Various tips and tricks :

1. Calories are important, but they aren’t the end-all.   50 calories of blueberries is better than half a twix bar.
2. Calorie counting is useful to determine where you have blind spots or bad habits.
3. Find your “secret weapons”.  I learned how to create a PBJ breakfast wrap that is only 300 calories, and that trick alone went a long way towards not hankering breakfast sandwiches.
4. Make your default the healthy choice.  If it is easier to eat healthy, you will do it.
5. Building muscle won’t shed your belly, but it helps save you on days you overshoot your calories.
6. Find the smallest increment that you can do regularly.  Start running only five minutes, but do it every time.  Once you build a healthy habit, it is far easier to extend the time.
7. Don’t underestimate the power of sleep.   Sleeping well alone can shed pounds.
8. Make sure your “reward” for being good isn’t unsustainable.  A single pizza night reward can undo a whole week of dieting.
9. The flip side of it is that nobody is perfect every day, but if you are good 80% of the time that is usually enough.
10. Experiment with two meals a day.  On the weekend I generally only eat two meals and don’t snack, and if I am hungry I will make a green smoothie.  For example, I may eat a light breakfast then a green smoothie, then for dinner go to Red Cow for an appetizer, burger and flight of beer.   And I will still be within my calorie budget and lose weight.
11. Be mindful of why you are eating.  Are you actually hungry, or just bored?  If you are truly hungry, a carrot will be just as good as a candy bar.   If it isn’t, you aren’t really hungry yet.
12. Think of food as medicine.   The rich do not eat more than the poor, except to their detriment.

Who I am Part 3 – Clouds

In the first two parts I have attempted to define the what and why of my life.  While this defines the journey of life fairly well, it doesn’t really address why we should bother going on the journey itself.   After all, evolution describes the change over time but it does not address any concepts of “why bother”.   I can think of at least two main containers that address this; one religious, and the other more pragmatic.

 From a pragmatic perspective, I think there is a very scientific basis for an afterlife of sorts.   I am a pre-determinist in the sense that I think with perfect information about the present, there is a set of causes and effects that can determine the future.   In this sense, the present contains all information from the past and the future.   A physics concept sometimes called the “no-hiding theorem” indicates that information cannot be created or destroyed.   In layman’s terms, each action or decision we make is permanently preserved even beyond physical death.  I think this also means we inherit much more than genes from our ancestors.   We are enjoying the accumulated fruits (and follies honestly) of all who have gone before us.

Many different color threads are woven into a cohesive whole

In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German Author

If this sounds like a religious concept, I believe it is.    One stipulation of truth is that for something to be true it must be true everywhere.   Buddhism often refers to this accumulation of cause and affect as karma.  I think this is what is really meant by the divine judgment in Christianity, or reaping what you sow.  I don’t believe in a punitive God, waiting to convict us when we slip up.   I aspire to enter the kingdom of heaven; but if that is only a place after life then there isn’t much purpose in living this life.   I don’t think that is what Jesus intended either.  

Jesus came to earth not to teach us how to get to heaven, but what it means to be human. – Richard Rohr, Franciscan Monk

In fact, Jesus bluntly stated “He who wishes to save his life will lose it.  And he who loses his life for my sake will find it”.   I think he is pointing to the fact that while every action we do in this life does matter, we must ultimately lose it all.   We cannot stay alive in this world forever, but our actions still bring forth the kingdom of God.   Faith without works is still a dead faith, so we are called to action.  While my body will not last forever, I will continue in other ways through the effects of my actions.   I am still not sure exactly what heaven will be like; I know that we cannot hold onto this life.   We are here to do our part to love our neighbor and create a better future for the next generation to improve upon.   If we can do that, our actions will carry long beyond our physical bodies, which will become compost for a flower to bloom again and restart the cycle.

When the cloud is no longer in the sky, it doesn’t  mean the cloud has died. The cloud is continued in  other forms like rain or snow or ice. So you can  recognize your cloud in her new forms. If you are very fond of a beautiful cloud and if your cloud is no longer there, you should not be sad. Your beloved cloud might have become the rain, calling on you, ‘darling, darling, don’t you see me in my new form?’ And then you will not be stuck with grief and despair.  Your beloved one continues always. Meditation helps you recognize her continued presence in new forms.  A cloud can never die. A cloud can become snow, or hail …or rain. But it is impossible for a cloud to pass from being into non-being. And that is true with your beloved one. She has not died. She is continued in many new  forms. And you can look deeply and recognize herself in you and around you. – Thich Nhat Hanh.

Who I am – Part 2 (Purpose)

In the last post I wrote down what I am.   But merely describing the function of something is at best a start.   Money is valuable not due to being green paper, but rather that it represents a capability to barter for more important items.   Similarly, I think there is a difference between being alive and actually living.   If we are no more than the sum of a bunch of conditions and non-human elements, can any purpose be found?

Despite being a religious person, I actually find that raw physics provides me a good starting point for purpose.   This may seem an odd place to begin, but that is where we all began.   The scientific research points out a starting point where the big bang provided the raw material for gas clouds to form, leading to stars.   These stars arose from conditions, and when the conditions ceased, they often exploded forming new elements that did not previously exist in the universe.   These new elements were the prerequisites for other types of stars that begat other new elements.   This cycle actually repeated many times before our star could even be formed, much less the planet we call home.   Similarly, algae gave rise to more advanced plants, and eventually the multi-cellular life.   It is estimated that over 99% of species that have ever existed are extinct.   They lived, evolved, and created the conditions for something “better” to appear. 

All creatures make their contribution, why not make the human contribution? – Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor and Stoic Philosopher

Humans have evolved to the point where have actually created new elements that, as far as we can tell, have never existed in the known universe.   Some of the trace elements within our own bodies took billions of years to manifest.   On a smaller (yet still large) level, I am the product of countless generations of survivors who succeeded in passing on their genes.  This is my inheritance, the product of exploding stores, millions of plants and animals living and dying, humans struggling to survive and create a better life.

This is where I come in.   Each generation has cultivated better conditions for successive generations.  I don’t think this applies in a strictly familial fashion, but also to all of the impacts you have.  Every day I enjoy the labor of countless farmers, utility workers and others.   Their efforts create the conditions for my own happiness.   My own career improves the efficiency and reliability of the electric industry, which has many downstream impacts.

Every living thing is, from the cosmic perspective, incredibly lucky simply to be alive. Most, 90 percent and more, of all the organisms that have ever lived have died without viable offspring, but not a single one of your ancestors, going back to the dawn of life on Earth, suffered that normal misfortune. You spring from an unbroken line of winners going back millions of generations, and those winners were, in every generation, the luckiest of the lucky, one out of a thousand or even a million. – Daniel Dennett, American Philosopher

Each species has made a unique contribution to the still-unfolding narrative.   As a human being we have more ability to create conditions than any other species.   Unfortunately we have created much suffering as well as joy in the world.   I believe that my purpose in life is to reduce suffering in humanity, and create the conditions for further evolution and flourishing.   This purpose permeates every part of my daily life.  As a team leader at work, I do my best to mentor and help my coworkers flourish.   Self-reflection and daily meditation can hopefully illuminate the areas where anger or ego cause me to fall short.   This is a purpose that will never be accomplished, and I fall short every day.   But having this clear purpose provides me a litmus test to determine which goals are worth pursuing, and which are self-serving.

You might notice that this purpose still does not address purpose beyond this life directly.   The purpose above is still directed towards this life.   In the third part of this series I will be addressing my views beyond this life. 

Who I am – Part 1

I think that it is important to have personal and meaningful guideposts in our lives.   Without knowing ourselves on a deeper level, how can we ever really set any meaningful goal or direction?   And I don’t mean that we should all have the same goals or directions, but I don’t intend to simply live my years sleeping, going to work and watching TV.  Sometimes I feel quite strongly about a specific task or goal such as losing weight or managing finances.   Other times I go about the standard goals of advancing my career or saving money with no real conviction as to why they are important.  This is the first of multiple posts regarding my own identification.

Burn your incense and ring your bells and pray to the Gods, but be careful, because they will put you on their anvil and beat and hammer until they turn bronze into gold – Sant Keshavadas, Eastern Indian Mystic

An interesting first thought experiment is trying to find the “I” even in the literal sense.   My initial hypothesis is that the I is contained within the physical body.   Interestingly enough, this leads to some interesting paradoxes.   If I were to lose my arm in a car accident, I would say that I have lost my arm.  This implies that a separate I exists apart from the arm, so the I cannot be located there.   Similarly, if my heart is replaced in a transplant, my wife would still be comfortable with me coming home.    So my heart does not define me either.   This pretty much leaves our mind, which we all most readily identify with.  However, if I develop dementia or a traumatic brain injury, is it still me?   Or how can I “lose my mind”,  as if there is some extra me watching me go away.   If this mind were truly mine, I could say “stop being angry” or “stop being upset” and it would obey.   After many experiments I can firmly report that it does not, and is not “mine”.

So if I am none of these, what am I?   What has made the most sense to me at this point in my life is the Buddhist concept of “dependent arising”.   There is a definite thing that is called “I”, but it only exists as a convention as a sum of other “things”.   For example, if we see four upright sturdy pieces, and a rectangular sturdy top, we might call it a table.   Separately we wouldn’t call a leg a table, or a flat slab of wood without legs a table.   We must have a concept of a table and something either meets that definition or not (and can sometimes spark debate).   Each of us contains uncountable numbers of microorganisms in our gut, coursing through our blood.  We are a collection of rare earth metals and exploded stars.   We are not a singularity; in fact we are a vast metropolis of life.   Just as we are a single citizen of this earth, there are millions of bacteria being born, reproducing and dying each moment within us.   In one sense this is humbling because we are just as insignificant on a universal scale.  But we are also the only universe that these organisms will ever know in their lifecycle.  I am the summation of the entire history of their universe, and also nothing at all.

“You are definitely real.   Your problem is that you think you REALLY real” – Robert Thurman, Buddhist Scholar (yes, the father of Uma Thurman funnily enough)

When the conditions are met, the plant emerges

I believe this is all fairly straightforward on a physical level.   But if that description is all we are, how can I be any more important than a dandelion?  After all, we both arise according to conditions and have the same basic existence.   However, we have different capacities, and with this a different purpose.   I will explore this purpose and how I interpret this in my next post.

“There is only one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide… Should I kill myself or have a cup of coffee?” – Albert Camus, existentialist philosopher

How to never fear again

Like everyone else that has ever lived, sometimes my life can be a constant struggle with fear.   Fear of rejection, losing my job, chronic illness, having enough to eat or a roof over my head, death, being alone, etc.  All of these have been on my mind at some point.   After much research, I have discovered that there is actually a way to end all of these fears permanently.    And like most important things in life, it is simple but not easy.  The way is this:

• Let go of all attachment

 

If you think about it, fear is an expression of attachment, usually to some future desire or preference.  A fear of death is a preference or attachment to life.    A fear of being alone is a preference for social interactions, and rejection stings because we are evolutionarily wired to be sensitive to social status.   If you were banished from your primitive tribe in the caveman days, that is basically a capital punishment.  What does it look like if you are not afraid to lose such things?

 

Because we are still vulnerable to fear and desire, we flatter and creep before anyone with the power to hurt us where any of those things are concerned. – Epictetus, 1st Century Greek Stoic Philosopher

 

There have been many people who have exhibited a lack of fear concerning death.    The early Christian martyrs were aggressively persecuted during various periods of time.  However, even their detractors noted how indifferent many of them were facing this.  Death ceased to have its sting, and with it their ability to threaten.

 

If you let go a little you a will have a little peace; if you let go a lot you will have a lot of peace; if you let go completely you will have complete peace. – Ajahn Chah, Revered Theravada Buddhist Monk

 

So how do you go about letting go of all attachments?  I will get back to you on that one.  I haven’t accomplished this but I have made progress.   One trick I have learned is identifying what changes and what does not change (hint: almost everything changes, but some much more than others).   For example, if I learn to become really attached to how I look, the gray hairs that are popping up would really bother me.   However, if I enjoy learning and reading, this is less likely to change over time.   In general you are likely to be disappointed if you focus on externals such as wealth, number of friends, appearances, etc.  But if you value things such as character, integrity, faith, and contentment then you are on more stable ground.

 

In summary, life is a long journey that is full of struggles.   Many of our attachments are wired into our evolutionary heritage.   But if you can make efforts to reduce attachment, then the fear resulting from them will be less prominent.   I personally still struggle with various aspects of anxiety on a daily basis.   The current global pandemic has certainly exposed some of these attachments and laid them bare.   But I have also found this awareness to be the best medicine against these same anxieties.   While we cannot stop things from changing, we are in control of how we are thrown about by them.

 

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. – Victor Frankl, Holocaust Survivor and Founder of Logotherapy (“Therapy through meaning”)

On God and Evolution

There is a lot of discussion about evolution (and science more generally), and what it means in terms of proving or disproving the existence of God.  I think it is a valid conversation to have, but I do have issues with how it often unfolds.   Most of the time I hear about it as a binary either/or choice.   There is a decent amount to unpack here.  However it is definitely worth doing.

Even people unfamiliar with Christianity are generally aware of the story of the world being created in six days (God rested on the seventh).  The first four days are spent creating the general environment, the fifth is spent populating the world with fish and birds, and finally on the sixth land-based creatures are created.  Interestingly enough, this is fairly similar to the theory of evolution in terms of path.  However, we have evidence of life that was present at least three and a half billion years ago, whereas modern humans only showed up in the last 250,000 years or so.  Is this a nail in the coffin?  Not necessarily, and for more than one reason.

For starters some Christians simply take the biblical account as metaphorical.   There are creation stories in many completely independent cultures which often include a great flood.  From this perspective the account contained within the bible may simply be the most useful metaphor for the authors at the time.   One clue as to this was the repetition of the number seven throughout the bible, including the number of days.

The sacred geometry currently known as the seed of life.  This series of seven overlapping circles first appeared in the second millenium BC.

Seven was a number that was widely used throughout the ancient world.  For example, the Babylonians divided weeks into seven days as this corresponded to the lunar cycle nicely.  Each of these additionally corresponded to one of the seven visible celestial bodies (sun, moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn).  In Egyptian numerology, seven is a number that has been used throughout history to imply completion or perfection.   It wouldn’t be totally out of place for somebody in ancient times to understand the world being created in a seven days as a metaphorical completion.

Even taking the seven days literally, I see an approach of argumentation.  This part I like to joke around is my “video game/Matrix” theory of God.  This is kind of hard to explain but I will give it a shot.   Imagine you are walking through the woods, and you see this:

If you are an experienced tracker, you could determine a lot from this simple set of tracks.   You would be able to tell that a rabbit was here, which direction it was going, its relative size and thus probable age. You might be able to determine how fast it was moving by stride length.   Depending upon weather conditions, you may be able to fairly accurately determine within a matter of hours when the rabbit was here, and possibly even what it was doing (running from something, for instance).     At this point you would have a fairly good understanding of the rabbit which is probably correct.   According to how we know the world works, there is a 99% chance that a rabbit made those tracks.

But because we were not there, how could we really know?  All we can do is make a best guess based on what we know about how the world works.   But if somebody were to very carefully plant those tracks using some kind of imprint with a flying drone (ridiculous, but it makes my point).   You would have a history that would almost always be accurate, but in this case the entire scene was carefully constructed and you have no way of knowing.  We also cannot even be sure of our own sensing and perception, but that is a big topic that I will have to unpack later.

This entire way of conjecture based upon our understanding of how the world works is essentially how anthropologists make educated guesses about history.  With our highly advanced understanding of genetics and DNA, we can even carry this further.   However, we have no way of observing what time frame this took place over.   According to our laws of nature, there is no way all of these genetic variations could have happened in seven days.

While we can ponder and conjecture, ultimately we are left in the dark

However, the very definition of a miracle is “a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency.”  Saying that there is no way that God could design and create all of these complex genetic trails and variations is basically saying that God is not God.  In my opinion, the very fact that God can violate natural laws is a big part of what makes God.  Even if we cannot conceive of how something can be accomplished, that doesn’t mean that some divine being cannot do it.

That sounds like a copout, but that is kind of my point.   If you say that God needs to follow our understanding of natural and physical laws, then there would be no possible God allowed so that is a tautology.  However, saying that the world was miraculously created also cannot be proven or disproven either in any satisfying manner.

I think this means that the only real stance I can personally take is as a strong agnostic in regards to evolution.  I am agnostic in the sense that I do not believe that the truth of evolution can be completely known.  I am strong in this in that I believe that such knowledge is literally not knowable due to our own limits in perception.  However, I do believe that evolution probably occurred according to the general scientific understanding.  As a Christian this also means that I believe the creation story to be more myth than historical accounting in the way that we understand it.   A lot more can be said about the Bible itself but this is already long enough.   Ultimately I think that the theory of evolution is not mutually exclusive to being Christian.   And we should not bash each other over the head with dogmatic understandings.

My own opinion is that practicing bonsai is our ultimate realization of our human potential.   Probably 🙂