Pete Wiley, Author at Blocks of Life

December 12, 2015July 27, 2015 by Pete Wiley

Truth

The truth can be elusive.

Some believe that there are many factors that influence how we interpret what is or isn’t true, including our values, experiences, culture, and condition.

Our truth may not be the same as someone else’s truth. Each of us has our own reality based on what brought us to where we are in our lives and how we see the world.

When the truth of two different people is revealed as different, it can seem as if one or the other person is intentionally obscuring the truth (aka lying). Of course, some people do tend to give truth (even their own truth) a wide berth. So how can we tell if people are misrepresenting what they believe to be true, or if their reality just differs from our reality?

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November 28, 2015November 28, 2015 by Pete Wiley

Clutter

“Why do we have all this junk?!”

It’s a question I ask myself quite often.

We have a small house, and it doesn’t take much to make it look and feel cluttered.

Don’t get me wrong, I love our small house. It’s cozy. It has plenty of space to work and live. It promotes “togetherness” as a family. But, as I tell my overly generous mother-in-law, our house is “full.” It has “exceeded capacity.” It is, in a word, cluttered.

It’s not that we’re disorganized. It’s not that we have a bunch of stuff lying around that needs to be put away. Everything is away, there’s just too much of it.

November 14, 2015September 5, 2018 by Pete Wiley

Affectation

It’s very interesting to see how the lingo changes through the years and how phrases that are firmly associated with a certain subset of society (e.g. surfers, bikers, environmental scientists) explode into common usage.

For example, I started thinking about this entry and have since noticed that I use the word “dude” a lot.

It’s not intentional. I have no idea where it came from.

I’m not proud of it.

But is it in affectation? I can honestly say that I do not say the word “dude” to elicit any specific response or present myself in any particular light. But it begs the question, when is a figure of speech (or action or fashion statement) an affectation?

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October 31, 2015July 19, 2015 by Pete Wiley

Nothing

Every once in a while, a voice inside me says, “I’m done.” I’ve used up all my energy and concentration, and I need some downtime. I need to spend some quality time doing nothing.

All of us need downtime—some need less than others and some seem to need way more than others. Why is this? One of the reasons might be what people do when they’re doing nothing. Some people waste their time when they’re wasting their time; and end up needing more time to waste (stay with me here).

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October 17, 2015September 7, 2015 by Pete Wiley

Opportunity

How do you find the path that will make a real difference—in your life or the lives of others?

When in your life do you find the time to do the important things?

We all have things we must do—the practical and the necessary—making a living, taking care of our stuff; but a lot of what drives us is more fundamental.

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