Last time I was eating out in London with some friends, one of them refused to eat fish on the grounds that current fishing practices are unsustainable. It's unusual for me to find someone whose environmental conscience is even more tender than mine, and at the time I thought he was being overly finicky.
Sorry, Julian, you were right. This story popped up on my Google desktop today.
Now this is a problem. I tend to choose fish rather than chicken or meat when I eat out, as it is less likely to have been pumped full of antibiotics, hormones, etc, during its lifetime. If I can no longer eat fish with a clear conscience, then my options are narrowing down to free-range/organic meat or game instead. Or becoming a veggie.
Having an environmental conscience can be a right pain.
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'I try to do at least three sports in a day.' So says Moe Dixon, one of my new friends in the Gorge. I may not be up to as many as three a day, but I've debuted in two new sports this week, so I'm working on it. The other day I went mountain biking for the first time, and today I had my first experience in a kayak.
We went down the same stretch of river that was in full flood earlier in the week. The waters have subsided somewhat, but the run was still a Class 3, which I believe means moderate difficulty. (Class 5 is tough but you'd be unlucky to die. Class 6 is extremely tough and you'd be lucky to live.)
It was a lot harder than it looks. Just trying to get the inflatable kayak to go in a straight line, and forwards rather than backwards, was quite a challenge. I zig-zagged inelegantly around the river like a drunken duck.
But everyone has to start somewhere. It was fun, and with a few decades more practice I might even manage to steer straight...
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On Thursday night I went to see the latest Warren Miller movie in Hood River. I'm not a ski bum, so I'd never even heard of Warren Miller before, and wondered how on earth it could be possible to produce a full length feature film purely about skiing.
I was blown away. I had no idea you could take a human being and two skis and come up with so many variations and permutations - the aerobatic stunts were just breathtaking. But even more amazing were the shots of people skiing in pristine wildernesses, down impossibly steep slopes and over sharp drops. They were really pushing the boundaries.
The problem here, of course, is that there's only one way to know when you've pushed the boundary too far. And that tends to be the last mistake you ever make.
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The Secret' is a movie that claims to reveal the key to health, wealth, and happiness. 'By applying the knowledge of The Secret, modern day teachers bring to light compelling stories of eradicating disease, acquiring massive wealth, overcoming obstacles, and achieving what many would regard as impossible.'
The movie starts with all kinds of impressive dynamic video and audio effects, images of great historical leaders and thinkers, and dramatic shots of scrolls being hidden and buried and fought over. After all the hype, the rest of the movie was almost bound to be a disappointment. And it was. It's a shame that an important concept was drowned out in rather silly special effects.
And the secret is not so secret - it can be found in almost any New Age/spiritual/meditation kind of book: we attract whatever it is we focus on.
This can be used to great benefit if we focus on the right things. If you want your business to succeed, it obviously makes sense to focus on the business.
The tricky downside is that a lot of people focus on what they are trying to avoid - being a victim of crime, bad relationships, failure. The law of attraction still applies, even though the focus is a negative one, and so they end up attracting the very thing they most want to avoid.
Some people use this concept very consciously, putting out questions and requests to the universe through meditation and visualisation. Me, I just muddle along, knowing where I'm going but not always how I'll get there, and through a combination of positive thinking and plain old-fashioned hard work I tend to succeed - not always in the way that I expected but it always seems to turn out for the best.
It can get quite spooky, when I realise that I've received exactly what I needed, almost before I knew I needed it. I constantly remind myself to be careful what I wish for.
[Photo: wishing to get my fitness back, but working hard on it too. Mountain-biking along the De Schutes River yesterday]
The greatest mistake you can make is to be continually fearing you will make one. (Elbert Hubbard)
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