Copenhagen-The Little Mermaid and H2OMG
Copenhagen Field Notes · The Elixir
Counting Blessings in Copenhagen
The Little Mermaid, the arithmetic of gratitude, and the way travel rewires attention before memory turns the voyage into a permanent possession.
The hardest arithmetic I have had to master is the one that enables me to count my blessings. It requires a long apprenticeship. Think Gladwell’s 10,000 Hours of Practice Rule, or ten years.
Cruising around the world provides a legitimate shortcut for taking things with gratitude instead of for granted. June 2015 is a British Isles and Norwegian Fjords combination cruise. Lots of H2OMG.
Travel can alter perceptions and may even rewire your brain. Novelty and unique, one-of-a-kind experiences raise dopamine levels, the chemical in your head that gives you optimism, curiosity and creativity.
This gift of pure attention is harder to achieve when your brain is on French fries, the default American mode, when your chi or energy is Velcro for negative experiences but Teflon for positive ones.
Signal 01
State It, Then Create It
Travel becomes a private religion of attention: no interference, no borrowed judgment, no second-hand map.
My Private Religion
Religion is other people’s experience. My thoughts are my own private religion, and they make me travel and create archives of memories and expectation where I incinerate negativity and cultivate a mindfulness of pure attention, without advice and without judgments.
The Non-Interference Rule
When I am traveling, I am what I am right there. Like some Starfleet commander, I endorse Captain Kirk’s recommended policy of non-interference with alien civilizations.
Signal 02
Wired Versus Tired
Grey matter changes when thoughts become repeated routes instead of temporary weather.
Neurons that wire together fire together, and the best way to predict the future is to invent it.
There is no absolute grid I live in where things occur independent of my own thinking about them. In the 1970s, the Me Generation was old-school selfishness: I am the center of the world. That is tired.
My New Wor(l)d Order says I create the world, and more importantly, my thoughts do too. Change your thoughts, change your world. That is wired thinking.
Signal 03
The Three Ps
Practice. Practice. Practice.
Count the Blessings
The hardest arithmetic I have had to master is the one that enables me to count my blessings. Cruising around the world provides a legitimate shortcut for taking things with gratitude instead of for granted.
Use Your Marbles
Each time you repeat a particular thought or action, you strengthen the connection between a set of brain cells or neurons. Neurons that wire apart fire apart. Different thoughts create different pathways. Use it or lose it.
Archive
Images From the Route
Companion Route
Continue the Journey
Geirangerfjord
Read the StoryThe Persistence of Norway
Open the Archive10,000 Hours
Watch the ReferenceThe Elixir
The cruise may last four days or a week. Anticipation lasts for months. Memory can last forever.The joy is not only in doing the voyage. It is in expecting it, living it, and carrying the archive home.