Just wait til you guys discover vipassana meditation
The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café
231–240 of 456 posts
Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café
#232Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
Child care now requires parents to be readily available, especially to pick up children who are sick. A century ago, child care providers were expected to care for sick children until the parent arrived. Failure to be responsive would be a violation of the child care agreement.
Is this really true? There are millions of parents who are unreachable while working. A surgeon isn’t going to be able to leave in the middle of surgery to pick up their kid from child care. My kid got sick at daycare one time when I was over an hour away. They just had to stay there while I worked my way back. It happens, and it is handled normally.
I don't think that's a counter example. Our day care requested sick kids to be picked up within an hour. A single late pickup of a sick kid due to traffic/distance would be handled normally. An unreachable parent who turns off their phone and is extremely delayed, especially on multiple occasions is a very different thing.
When we looked at in-home child care, one of the options was a nanny who would care for kids even when the kids were sick. So I'm sure the rapid-pickup-of-sick-kids policy isn't universal. However, our day care had that policy and we made sure we knew who was "on-call" to get kids when important meetings or work travel impacted our availability.
Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café
#234Go to a major city. There are tons of people doing things alone, including sitting in a cafe.
Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
Meditate for 30 minutes every morning. If you don't have time, meditate for 60 minutes.
I want to add that to my quotes database[1]. Would "Patrick May" be the right attribution? [1] https://q4td.blogspot.com/
I appreciated several of these quotes and added them to my own personal tracker. Thanks for linking this.
Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café
#236I didn’t quite understand why sitting alone in a café makes you a weirdo (is it an American thing?), but the piece was very well written. We all should learn how to be without electronics for every now and then, accompanied only our thoughts. It is good for the soul. I think the important part is leaving your phone and other devices home. Be alone, without even a possibility of connecting (apart from the old-fashione…
It's really just people in the suburbs and smaller cities. Doing things alone is completely normal in a city like Chicago or NY.
Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café
#237I didn’t quite understand why sitting alone in a café makes you a weirdo (is it an American thing?), but the piece was very well written. We all should learn how to be without electronics for every now and then, accompanied only our thoughts. It is good for the soul. I think the important part is leaving your phone and other devices home. Be alone, without even a possibility of connecting (apart from the old-fashione…
> I think the important part is leaving your phone and other devices home. The annoying part is that this becomes increasingly difficult to impossible. For example, I can't use public transport without my phone anymore, because my ticket is bound to my phone and the provider does not issue paper tickets or smartcards anymore. Less severe but equally frustrating, many restaurants choose to use QR codes for menus rathe…
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Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café
#238I didn’t quite understand why sitting alone in a café makes you a weirdo (is it an American thing?), but the piece was very well written. We all should learn how to be without electronics for every now and then, accompanied only our thoughts. It is good for the soul. I think the important part is leaving your phone and other devices home. Be alone, without even a possibility of connecting (apart from the old-fashione…
> I think the important part is leaving your phone and other devices home. The annoying part is that this becomes increasingly difficult to impossible. For example, I can't use public transport without my phone anymore, because my ticket is bound to my phone and the provider does not issue paper tickets or smartcards anymore. Less severe but equally frustrating, many restaurants choose to use QR codes for menus rathe…
Right, the real test is knowing your device is tucked in the pocket and completely ignoring it. At first it might be hard, but completely doable. Before I start my drive I put my non-peered-to-vehicle phone in my pocket, and it ceases to exist while I drive. Similarly it can be done in any other situation; in this case, a coffee shop.
There is no need to leave it behind, just having the right usage control over it would suffice.
Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café
#239I come from India. Many years ago I remember I was having a tough day and very less money on me and sitting by a busy road side tea stall along and sipping my Rupee 2 tea , looking at passers by and traffic. I don't remember anything more but that thought often comes to me randomly and makes me happy even after about 20 years. Life brings joy at unexpected corners.
Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café
#240The unbearable anti-sociality of modern people