Leonard Ng

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Don’t Force Things, Flow with Them (Part 3)

09.11.2016 by leonard ng // Leave a Comment

Surfer at Sunrise
Image by Frank McKenna.
A Rhythmic World

Life on our planet is all about rhythm.

Everything oscillates: inbreath and outbreath, high tide and low tide, day and night, waking and sleeping.

Our hearts beat in rhythm. That’s what keeps us alive.

Rhythm is made up of rise and fall, activity and rest. Often we think only in terms of activity, measuring our days by what we’ve done; but rest is what shapes our actions and makes them meaningful, just as the pauses between notes allow us to make sense of music.

The same applies to our own energy.

Four Kinds of Energy

Energy is about much more than physical tiredness. Generally speaking we have four kinds of energy: physical energy, emotional energy, mental energy, and willpower.

[Read more…]

Categories // Music, Peak performance, Productivity, The art of living well Tags // clarity, concentration, energy, fitness, focus, growth, holistic living, music, priorities, productivity, rhythm, sleep, work

American Melancholia

16.02.2016 by leonard ng // Leave a Comment

Sinuous
Image by Nicholas A. Tonelli.

I’ve been listening to country music lately, in the middle of the night when all else around is sleeping. Songs from the ’70s mostly: Kenny Rogers, Anne Murray, Johnny Cash, Reba McEntire, Willie Nelson, Crystal Gayle, Kris Kristofferson. There seems a certain fatalism that rings through mostly clearly in the sad songs, always a sense that the affair must come to an end: the cowboy has to move on, and the dreamer too, and the hobo, and the gambler, and the salesman, and the soldier, and the cheatin’ wives and husbands. The music of a people always on the move, the music of lives moulded by distance.

I’ll be back in America in a couple of months, beginning in the northeast and heading back down south. North Carolina, Florida, quite possibly Texas. Haven’t been in ages. Looking forward to it.

Categories // Journal, Music Tags // change, country music, love, melancholia, music, partings

Leonard Ng

Leonard Ng is fascinated with the practice of both the active and contemplative modes of life.

He is the founder of the copywriting agency Text/ure Collective, and is the author of two collections of poetry: This Mortal World and Changes and Chances.

Find out more about Leonard, or get in touch.

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