Category Archives: Philosophy
Procrastinate like your life depends on it
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Doc Searls –who happens to be the same age as I– draws some insight from the movie No Country for Old Men:
“The central figure, Anton Chigurh, played by Javier Bardem, is a psychopathic killer who personifies death and chance in unequal measure.
His motives? His quarry is money, but that’s just a point on a path. There is no doubt that he will get the money, and that people will die along the way. But death itself has no motive. It is merely inevitable. Like Anton Chigurh. The Terminator, the Alien, the guy DiNiro played in Cape Fear… all the relentless bad guys we’ve known… don’t compare easily with Chigurh. Because all the others could be, and were, defeated.
Death can’t be defeated. In Chigurh, it could only be wounded, because he is death in human form. But he is still death.
Which is on my mind more as I get older. The old men in the movie — Tommy Lee Jones and cohorts of his generation — are barely older than me, if they’re older at all.
Being older, if not yet “old”, requires increased acquaintance with the certainty that Your Time Will Come.
I plan to procrastinate. For some things that’s a helpful skill.”
I’ll be 60 years old next Saturday and, like Doc Searls, mortality has been more on my mind. In coming days I might post a thought or two on birthdays that end in zero and what –if anything– I’ve learned in the last 6 decades (I like the sound of that better than “sixty”). But once the day has come and gone, I’m going to try not to think/write about it.
Einstein: “A horse for single harness”
“My passionate interest in social justice and social responsibility has always stood in curious contrast to a marked lack of desire for direct association with men and women. I am a horse for single harness, not cut out for tandem or team work. I have never belonged wholeheartedly to country or state, to my circle of friends, or even to my own family. These ties have always been accompanied by a vague aloofness, and the wish to withdraw into myself increases with the years.
Such isolation is sometimes bitter, but I do not regret being cut off from the understanding and sympathy of other men. I lose something by it, to be sure, but I am compensated for it in being rendered independent of the customs, opinions, and prejudices of others, and am not tempted to rest my peace of mind upon such shifting foundations.”
Excerpt from an essay by Albert Einstein (Living Philosophies):
Terry Heaton: Gratitude
“…we are most vulnerable at the moment of success. It’s when we choose to shine a light on US and all our greatness. This is why it’s so important that we maintain a heart full of thanks, one of gratitude that will survive the roller coaster ride of life. For in the end, we have no power over anything — only in how we react. And I can tell you from experience, my friends, that a heart full of gratitude will survive where others will not.”
— Terry Heaton
Happiness
I guess intelligent people could argue about whether happiness is something that happens to you or something you can make happen. Gary van Warmerdam believes and, more importantly, makes me believe, we can achieve happiness. We can make it happen. This is a topic I don’t post on too often. The idea of “changing your life” can sound weird if you’re not “ready.” When you are, Mr. van Warmerdam might be just the guy to help you get there.
Note: Gary was probably the one person most responsible for introducing me to meditation practice.
The Loser Decision
“It’s an objective fact that life often presents us with choices where the comfortable decision leads nowhere and one that threatens your ego has all the potential in the world. You need a healthy ego to endure the abuse that comes with any sort of success. The trick is to think of your ego as your goofy best friend who lends moral support but doesn’t know shit.”
Rounders vs. Accumulators
“Most people have at least a few big problems in their life. But the vast majority of life’s problems are the little kind. There are two ways to deal with the little problems.
ROUNDERS: This group rounds things off. A problem that’s a two on a scale of one to ten gets rounded to zero. If a rounder has five problems that are all about a two on a scale of one to ten, he’ll tell you he has no problems.
ACCUMULATORS: Accumulators add up all the little problems until they equal one big problem. If an accumulator has five problems that are each a two on a scale of one to ten, that feels like having one problem that’s a ten.
At the end of this thought-provoking post, Mr. Adams gives his readers an assignment: Describe your own job in one sentence. For example: “I help people hate each other.” (Divorce Lawyer)
That “in one sentence” part makes it very difficult. The best I could come up with is: “I drive one of the Sunday School buses for the Church of the Web.”
Now I’m worried about Scott Adams
Is it even remotely possible that Scott Adams is reading this blog? In October I offered some thoughts on worry:
We know –looking back– that most of the things we worried about did NOT happen. The really bad shit that happens in life is almost always totally unexpected. Out of the blue (or black, if you prefer). Didn’t see it coming at all.
Today, Dilbert’s dad took the idea up a notch or two:
First, I’m not worried about any problem that we can see coming. If you look at the history of the world, almost any time we thought we knew something bad was going to happen AND we had years of warning, things turned out okay.
I’m just saying…
From Hugh McLeod’s Work Manifesto
Work is your real life. It is the way you translate your feelings, your thoughts, your hopes and your desires into something valuable, tangible and useful every day. You can choose to make work into a dreaded, necessary evil that you can’t wait to finish so that you can get busy with your “real life.” Why not just do work you love?
Your secret desire holds the clue to your best work. You say that you would love to do meaningful work, but don’t know how to find it. What is your secret desire? What idea are you a little embarrassed to share with someone because it is so delicate or bold or crazy or exciting? You often claim to not know what you want to do, but in fact censor yourself from what you know you want for fear of appearing ridiculous.
You can’t fool your kids. Many of you claim passionless, dull and frustrating careers with the excuse that you must provide for your family. Providing for your family is noble; using it as an excuse to hide from your own greatness is a bad example for your kids. If you want them to grow up motivated, creative, free and enterprising, be that yourself. They are watching and emulating your every move.
The five things that matter
I’ve been feeling a little ancient lately, but Halley Suitt reminds me that’s not one of the five things that matter. Five for five.
Some days, I feel so so so so old. I feel a bit like Methuselah, who, if you recall, lived 900 years. Being old, you forget sometimes what it’s like to be young. You just don’t get it.
I feel old when I talk to people who are something like 18 or 23 or 36 and they are all caught up in stupid stuff that doesn’t matter and once you’re a little aged like me, you want to tell them … “but, that thing, … that thing you’re worrying about, … see, you don’t get it yet, … but that doesn’t matter. Just doesn’t matter at all.”
Of course it would be rude and annoying to say that kind of comment, so you keep it to yourself.
So the good part of being old is knowing what really doesn’t matter. And that what does matter, you can count on the fingers of one hand. You know they would have given us hands with 17 fingers if all that stupid stuff counted.
There really are only about five things that matter:
Thumb: You love someone.
Pointer: Someone loves you.
Middle Finger: Your work: you have the bravery to do what you love and really become yourself and screw what anyone else thinks about it.
Ring Finger: Connection to people, family, friends
Pinky: Eat, drink, be merry.