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A Mundane Comedy is Dom Kelleher's new book, which will be published in late 2024. The introduction is available here and further extracts will appear on this site and on social media in the coming months.

The 52:52:52 project, launching on this site and on social media later in 2024, will help you address 52 issues with 52 responses over 52 weeks.

This site addresses what's changing, at the personal, organisational and societal levels. You'll learn about key changes across more than 150 elements of life, from ageing and time, through nature and animals, to kindness and love...and much more besides, which will help you better prepare for related change in your own life.

Halcyon In Kaleidoscope features irregular and fragmentary writings - on ideas and values, places and people - which evolve over time into mini essais, paying humble homage to the peerless founder of the genre. The kaleidoscope is Halcyon's prime metaphor, viewing the world through ever-moving lenses.

Halcyon Inspired

On Legacy

Submitted by Halcyon Inspired on 2 September 2024
Christopher Hitchens

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Those who study the stories and myths we tell point out that they often share remarkable similarities. They very often involve a separation from home, a test of character, and then a return home with new wisdom or strength. One of these transformative trials comes when we lose someone we truly and deeply love. Those who have known grief understand something more about life. When we suffer the loss of someone we love, we know what it means to be left alone and behind.

On Awe Halcyon Inspired 28 February 2024

 

Award-winning social psychologist Dacher Keltner believes he’s found the answer to happiness: finding awe. In his book, Awe: The Transformative Power of Everyday Wonder, he shows how this elusive, but powerful, emotion can have physical and psychological effects, impacting our bodies and brains.

In a talk with the RSA in January 2023, Keltner identified opportunities such as introducing "awe design" into hospitals, in order to turn clinical, tiled, bright but sterile environments into contemplative spaces where people can peacefully live...and die.

What's Changing? - Meaning

Submitted by Halcyon Inspired on 16 February 2024
Meaning

 

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never. In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony - William Henry Channing

 

Please see below selected recent meaning-related change.

 

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Talking Change - Animals

Submitted by Halcyon Inspired on 1 January 2024
Animals

 

As long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other - Pythagoras

Animal rights will end up with votes for oysters - Bertrand Russell

As we talked of freedom and justice one day for all, we sat down to steaks. I am eating misery, I thought, as I took the first bite. And spit it out - Alice Walker

I am conscious that meat eating is not in accordance with the finer feelings, and I abstain from it whenever I can - Dr. Albert Schweitzer -1952 Nobel Peace Prize recipient

I don't eat anything with a face - Linda McCartney

I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals - Henry David Thoreau

What's Changing? - Reputation
Reputation
Halcyon Inspired 28 July 2023

 

Please see below selected recent reputation-related change.

 

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July 2023

  • China’s reputation as a leading economic power is reportedly fast eroding. Fewer people globally now call China the world’s top economic power compared with just a few years ago

 

July 2022

Talking Change - Activism
Activism
Halcyon Inspired 1 March 2023

 

A wrong decision isn't forever; it can be reversed. The losses from a delayed decision are forever; they can never be retrieved - JK Galbraith

Across the globe, people are formally and informally building alliances and partnerships to affect social change. The number of NGOs in the world has exploded by 40% in the last few years.  People with a passion for social and environmental good are finding each other, and are coming together in global and local network organisations that signal an important evolution in the way people work - Anon

Across the globe, people are uniting in a common struggle: to participate freely in the events and processes that shape their lives - Mahbub ul Haq,  Human Development Report 2013

Talking Change - Acceptance

Submitted by Halcyon Inspired on 1 March 2023
Acceptance

 

Accepting does not necessarily mean 'liking,' 'enjoying,' or 'condoning.' I can accept what is - and be determined to evolve from there. It is not acceptance but denial that leaves me stuck - Nathaniel Branden

All life is no more than a match struck in the dark and blown out again - Jeff Buckley  

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident - Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher (1788-1860) 

As I grow to understand life less and less I grow to love it more and more - Jules Renard