Spectacle of Circus

Beyond the wonder and magic of the circus, there is a lot we can learn from what happens under the big top. The circus, in many ways, is a metaphor for life it's crazy, unexpected, filled with a wild range of emotions. Under the big top, you can go from laughing your head off to holding your breath in fear in just a matter of moments.

Just like the walk across the wire is for a tightrope walker, our lives will be most successful if we find balance. Lean too far in one direction and you'll find yourself toppling over. Balance is not always easy to master when juggling relationships and jobs and passions, but it's essential for living a positive and present life. Imagine yourself on a tightrope and ask yourself, "Am I leaning too far in one direction?" Don't let one area of your life no matter how important it might seem distract you from achieving balance. 

 Let's pull back the curtain see what life lessons we can find …

Magic can be found in everyday objects by simply opening your senses. Who thought a pair of regular pant suspenders could be so entertaining?  Clowns teach us to look deeper into the ordinary stuff of life because every single thing contains magic. We may find something amazing in the sound a paperclip makes who knows what can happen from there.

Creative solutions can solve stressful situations. This is a good lesson for work & life both. We work at a job in life & no matter how great & interesting our job may be, there will be monotony to it.  We all have to “Grab a broom & sweep” to pay the bills. And it’s not just the monotony of our jobs that’s mind bending, we also have to face annoying and challenging moments at work. The circus clown shows us that just when these stressful work moments push us to do something drastic, We should with patience use our creative brains to find a novel solution. 

Teaching others what we know should be an exercise in fun. Teaching is the transfer of knowledge from one human to another. Clown argues that teaching is also an art should be a lot of fun. With some light hearted instruction and lots of laughter teaching someone what we know can be a meaningful exercise that also leaves everyone smiling.

Life is filled with the unexpected, the exciting, and the terrifying. It's a lot to take in, but if you look closely, beyond the curtain, beneath the glitter, you'll see the wisdom that lies behind the wonder & the whimsy...

Nature

The use by animals of plants as medicines is well documented, strongly suggesting that even the earliest humans used it as herbal remedies too. However, evidence is scarce for medical practices in prehistoric times. Ancient surgery leaves traces in bones, but medicines rarely survive in the archaeological record. Plants have been used in treating human diseases for thousands of years, the professions of doctor and botanist were closely linked.

Nature is certainly full of powerful, potential solutions to most of your health problems. However, once these natural plants are synthesized in a laboratory and highly processed away from their associated accessory factors they often lack many of their beneficial properties. It is frequently incorrect to believe that we are smarter than nature and can properly isolate the “active” compound & assume it is equivalent to whole, unprocessed and fresh raw material.

Nature has produced wonderfully complex molecules that no synthetic chemist could ever dream of. These molecules evolved over millions of years as chemical defenses of plants, animals, and microorganisms, enabling them to survive attack by fungi, viruses, and other threats. An estimated 50,000–70,000 plant species alone are thought to have medicinal qualities.

The destruction of plant species is occurring at a rate unmatched in geological history. … Current extinction rates are at least 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural background rates, in jeopardy, and as many as 15,000 medicinal plants threatened.

 While I marvel at the amazing healing properties of plants found in the earth’s rain-forests, deserts, and oceans, it’s not always necessary to seek out an exotic plant or herb to cure what ails you.

In fact, some of the best “cures” around are actually right in the food you eat!

Meddle Your Moves

Dance may be regarded as a form of nonverbal communication between humans, which is performed by animals too. Martial Arts, Gymnastics, figure skating and synchronized swimming are sports that incorporate dance. Motion in ordinarily inanimate objects may also be described as dance.

In Hindu mythology, dance is believed to have been conceived by Brahma. The best-known of Hindu deities-Shiva, Kali and Krishna-are typically represented dancing. Shiva's cosmic dance tandav, Kali's dance of creation and destruction and Krishna's dance Raslila-are popular motifs. In ancient India, dance was usually a functional activity dedicated to worship. Even in modern India, deities are invoked through religious folk dance forms from ancient times.

Dance therapy is the psycho therapeutic use of movement to support intellectual,emotional & motor functions of the body. As form of expressive therapy dance has been used therapeutically for thousands of years. It has been used as a healing ritual in the influence of fertility, birth, sickness, and death. The science came later to ensure that the observation is correct.

Fascinated with the strong link between music, movement and emotion was moved to see, a robust rugby player, wept while listening to a symphony. But this defence, it appeared, only worked against words not against music or movement. I was unable to suppress my tearful response to the final scene in a dance about dementia. Was it possible that music, movement and emotion were closely entwined in the neural network of our brains?

 The evolution of movement throughout the animal kingdom, the swarming of bees, the migrating flocks of swallows and the communication of whales as it moved though the oceans. Not only was group movement coordinated by sound but it was also governed by emotion and the drive to survive. To dance requires the same intertwining of the neural processes of perception, movement and emotion that a bird uses to migrate by the visual guidance of stars and the auditory calls of the flock.

Entrainment of rhythm is not new to us, it is what we experience when an audience is clapping randomly and eventually starts to clap in unison. We are not surprised when our body rhythms match themselves to day length and we suffer the penalty when we cross too many time zones. We know that soldiers have to break rhythm when crossing a bridge or the resonance set up in the bridge may destroy it. An acoustic system absorbs energy if it is forced or driven at a frequency that matches its own frequency of vibration, the opera singer hits top C and the wine glass shatters.

By exploring the neuron-scientific hypotheses of movement in the context of dance, the arts and the natural sciences can meet and support each other. 

Organic Happiness

The psychological and philosophical pursuit of happiness began 2,500 years ago with Confucius, Buddha, Socrates, and Aristotle. We can find remarkable similarities between the insights of these thinkers and the modern “Science of Happiness.”

Buddha believed that dukkha ultimately arose from ignorance and false knowledge. While dukkha is usually defined as suffering, “mental dysfunction”. In a similar vein, Huston Smith explains dukkha by using the metaphor of a shopping cart that we “try to steer from the wrong end” or bones that have gone “out of joint”. Because of such a mental misalignment, all movement, thoughts and creation that flow out can never be wholly satisfactory. In short, we can never be completely happy.

Aristotle draws on nature in order to explain human happiness. If we look at nature there are four different kinds of things that exist in the world, Mineral, Vegetative, Animal & Human each one defined by a different purpose.

What is it that makes human beings different from the rest?

Aristotle answers that our unique function is to reason by reasoning things out we attain our ends, solve our problems, and hence live a life that is qualitatively different.

Socrates believed all human beings naturally desire happiness. Which is obtainable and teachable through human effort. Happiness is directive rather than additive. Not governed by external goods, but how we use these external goods. Happiness depends on the “education of desire” whereby the soul learns how to harmonize its desires, redirecting its gaze away from physical pleasures to the love of knowledge and virtue. Virtue and Happiness are inextricably linked, such that it would be impossible to have one without the other.

Today, we seem to equate the pursuit of happiness with the pursuit of success. In reality we attract abundance through positive thinking. In order to seek “true and solid happiness,” we need to learn to distinguish real happiness from the imaginary kind. Getting everything you want in life will not necessarily do that—but slogging through the messy struggle of a life can yield moments of pure happiness, and those moments will add immeasurably to your world. That, in fact, almost any track, followed in the right spirit, could be the right one. Happiness comes in small moments while you’re pursuing the big stuff. After a while, the small moments become the point.

There is nothing like perfect happiness. Furthermore, we are mortal, so don’t have forever to perfect our life. We can still make pleasure by guide. Even a short life is a very long journey & we all need provisions for the trip. We need good food, good stories, and people to share them with. We need a sense of proportion and a sense of the absurd.

We need to have as good a time as we can, because, otherwise, what’s the point?