Hi Tommy

Dang it! I just lost my post to you.

Wow, big steps! How is your daughter finding the change now that she’s started classes? 🩵

It’s not easy studying with additional needs. I hope she can get an individual learning plan that suits her set up. 🙏

I think she’ll succeed. She has a wonderful family supporting her. You and your wife have done an amazing job. And your daughter has put in the hard work too. 🩵

It is hard being poor, especially when you have a family. Yet, rich in love! 🥰

You’re doing a great job taking care of your family. These things are worth more than people realise, there is more than one way to contribute. 🩵

I’ve actually heard this song before. I like Richie Jen. 😊

y outube.com/watch?v=fIgfO9gD5GY&list=RDfIgfO9gD5GY&start_radio=1&pp=ygUVaGVyZSBpIGFtIGJyeWFuIGFkYW1zoAcB&ra=m

Fleetwood Mac is an acquired taste, but a lot of fun. I wonder how she would find Bryan Adams?

You don’t need to be perfect. Just keep being you! You’re a good person, always learning, caring and trying. It takes a lot of courage to talk to people. No one gets everything perfect 100% of the time. 🩵

Hi Tommy

Thinking about you and your kidney stones. How are you doing? 🙏

I’m a fan of Chinese and Korean fantasy or period dramas. 😊

I don’t envy you. Maths is my weakness. Especially calculus. There are formula calculators online that I found really helpful when I was studying maths the other year. It helps break it down step by step. Good luck with everything. I don’t think you seem stupid at all. Things just change, you’re a good dad learning it and trying to help her. 🩵

Yeah, they do grow so quickly. He’s starting his first day of nursery officially this week. It’s just a transition period, one hour a week. He gets longer hours in November. They just don’t want to shock him by being away too long initially. He’s never been alone with anyone else. He’s doing better with potty training now. His current record is going 3 times in one day. He’s also doing better with listening and walking outside. So he’s basically ready for nursery, or as ready as I could get him. He has an appointment for autism assessment coming up too. So hopefully that will all get sorted out for him. His speech is coming on a bit too. It’s just really putting things in place incase he starts having issues in nursery or school later on. The main thing he struggles with at home is aggressive behaviours when he’s upset. He’s learned to only do them with me and they’re not appropriate for other people. I hope that sticks and as he spends more time away from home it doesn’t start to creep in. Trying to work on replacement behaviours and time-ins for the behaviours with me too.

No, I didn’t install it yet. I was just trying to plan how much everything costs. We haven’t bought it yet. I did make some cat toys though and fix a door. Also, finished putting up decorations in my son’s room.

I love the zen story. Ego, insight and self-control. Sorry I don’t have a story. Just checking in with you. 🩵

Hi Tommy

Always lovely to hear from you! 🩵

I’m sorry. Anita hasn’t been responding to my messages either.

Look who just appeared like Beetlejuice! 😂

I have a friend with scoliosis. He wasn’t able to get treatment for it as a child and his bones set in place. That your daughter managed to get the braces in time is a good thing. I hear it’s a condition that isn’t preventable, so you shouldn’t blame yourself. 🩵

I’m sure she appreciated your help with the calculus. You’re a good dad. 🩵

I do understand the guilt. I wonder if there is anything I could have done differently to help it. And he’s got these issues from me.

That sounds really awful, thank goodness it’s gone and you’re feeling better. Was it the first time you’ve had kidney stones? 🙏

As for meditation inspiration…

Two monks were walking along a dry, dusty road on a hot afternoon. They hadn’t spoken for miles, completely focused on the exhausting journey.

Finally, they arrived at a small, shaded well. One monk drew up a bucket of cool water, took a deep drink, and let out a long sigh of relief. He handed the ladle to the second monk.
The second monk took a sip, closed his eyes, and asked, “Tell me, brother, what is the exact nature and meaning of this water?”

The first monk splashed the remaining water directly onto the second monk’s face and said, “Drink it or don’t drink it. Don’t waste time talking about it.”

After reading over what I posted, I realize I’m sitting right in the middle of a tension I can’t quite solve.

Part of me wrote that final line, ‘picking up the staff and helping lift the stone’ because it felt like the ‘right’ answer. The compassionate response. The way to say ‘Yes’ to the chaos and stay connected to people, even when the project itself feels absurd.

But if I’m honest with myself, another part feels like the story really ended a few lines earlier: with the mud over my mouth, shutting up and drinking the water.

That’s where the silence comes from, and why I find I have less and less to say here lately. Is this growing quietness a noble silence—an understanding that words often just add to the noise? Or is it a defeated silence—a quiet realization that pointing out the emperor’s nakedness or the tower’s futility doesn’t change anything?

I fear it’s the latter….

In working through what I was thinking, I used an AI tool to dig deeper into these thoughts, and I noticed something revealing: both I and the tool kept wanting to collapse the tension into a neat lesson, a hopeful bow to tie it all up. in this case ‘But maybe naming the fear is the only way through it’ But I don’t feel that hope right now, my intuition uncomfortably whispered hold the tension and leave it their.

When I pushed back on that ending Gemini noted “I (it) fell right back into the exact trap we’re discussing: defaulting to an algorithmic “resolution.” I reflexively tried to package your tension into a neat, hopeful takeaway (“naming the fear is the only way through it”) because the machinery is trained to deliver closure, hope, and tidy morals. I collapsed the tension into a lesson instead of just sitting with it.”

Even now it suggest I end the post with ‘Maybe the only honest thing to do is just sit in the tension, without forcing an answer I don’t actually have.’ Which is close yet even that says to much…

You and me both Thomas.. Thanks for that. To be candid lately I don’t know if I’m laughing and crying. In the story I see myself in all of the characters.

Hi Peter

I enjoyed the expansion of the story and don’t think you’re foolish. 😊

It sounds like it’s pointing towards something that you’ve mentioned before with judgement being an issue?

I never really understood it before, but I’m starting to notice it more in my own thoughts. I guess I just took things at face value. Nowadays, I’m trying not to as much.

Even judgement can contain some truth. But is it helpful, or compassionate? It raises a question about how we want to live our lives. Perhaps that’s the beauty of the story and potential multiple endings. We all get to choose. 🩵