That’s the marketing advice I received in a Starbucks a couple of days ago. He didn’t say it that way. At least not in those precise words.
But the idea is there: be who you are in your business affairs and it will all work out just fine.
Not only who I am now . . . but future me, aspirational me. I’m am in the process of letting that genie out of the bottle.
And for that aspirational me? I have a target, an avatar (or two). Let loose.
I think I’ve changed a bit.
In Ye Good Olde Days I was driven by . . . not so much what I wanted, but by getting away from what I didn’t want. Driven by anger, resentment, envy. Driven by “I will show them!” energy.
It didn’t much matter the direction. I just wanted away from here.
Now I need a bit (not much) of direction. I am aiming toward things I want. Not away from things I hate.
This is reflected in the Three Node Theory I posted on Twitter a while ago. I just realized that is what is happening. All I need is the directional guidance for each node, and I will improvise from there.
The three nodes relate to what I’m doing in the internet. One of the questions in my head has been “what is the purpose of this website?” and I’m starting to find answers.
This website is number 2.
Remember that.
Credit where credit is due: https://twitter.com/briandavidhall/status/1530696007515873280?s=21&t=IM2OPyglcPe1I4q553XqFQ
We are all playing our own game, so anytime you (I’m speaking to me right now) feel small (like now, after that meetup that just finished) remember that his life and your life (I’m talking to me) are in different leagues.
Temporarily, the Gods have created a little venn diagram and we both sit in the intersection of those circles. Soon enough, the “for a reason, for a season, or for a lifetime” poem will kick in and the circles will move. The circles are moving now, in fact. I cannot predict where, or how fast.
I’m playing my own game. I am in a league with only one team: Team Me. My team plays and endless string of friendlies with other teams in other leagues.
But, true confession. My brain’s Envy Module and the Less Than Module . . . well, they are the burr under the saddle that keep me on the spiritual path. And they are prickly right now.
(Example from today: “I haven’t been on a plane in 2.5 years,” my friend said proudly. This has made his life better, in his eyes. I want to be on a plane all the time. That would make my life better. His league has many dimensions, only a few of which I would care to experience. So why am I rattled?)
Unrelated. You want to know what I’m proud of right now? That janky URL. No fucks given. Go, me.
The machine has slept well and will soon be fed. It surveys all around it.
Calm. Confidence. Contentment. Optimism.
It is a good day to be moving fast.
Is the middle of the night.
That’s the real curse of jet-lag. Wide awake in the middle of the night with nothing to do except think.
I keep writing about the same topics over and over.
There must be something more to say that I haven’t said yet. Or I need to hear it again and again because Eraserman made me forget.
Things will be gone from me. I have watched my father discard and discard and discard again—a lifetime of accumulation. Some of these are items of aesthetic value, of economic value, of sentimental value.
That table, hand-carved from a single massive log and purchased for £5 in Rhodesia, of prodigious artistic quality and sentimental value: I remember it on the long drive home, squeezed in the back seat of our VW bug between my sister and me on the long drive home from up north. This will be gone.
The table—and all of the things around me—will be gone, sooner or later. I will give them away. I will sell them. I will throw them away. Or I will die and they will remain and I will gone.
I like being surrounded by beautiful things. The plein air paintings at home make me happy. So I don’t want to go all hair shirt about things. I think things are a neutral. As long as you don’t take them seriously, they are not evil or good. They just are.
What do I really have? Experiences evoked by actions. Memories of actions. All of these are “now” and are inside me. Memories are not “then.” My dim memory of a hot bumpy ride on strip roads with a table in the back seat beside me is a thought I am toying with now, in a Singapore hotel restaurant, almost 60 years after the event.
The experience of meeting people and talking to them is now. The manager of the hotel repeatedly scolding me for not giving a fuck about masks and my calm indifference and kind acknowledgment of his admonition. (And playing his mask game when I get up to go back to the buffet). That’s now. And my feelings are now.
These memories and these real time experiences cannot be removed from me. These are what cannot be removed from me. I don’t fear losing the inner experiences. And I know that the memories of the past are malleable by me, now.
So that’s all I have. The inner state, the opinions and ideas that I choose to keep, or alter, or ignore. These too will be gone when I die. A universe blinks off. So be it.
All of which helps explain my father’s eagerness to give things away. “You like that painting? Please take it.” No thought of sentiment, of economic value. These things mean nothing. The sentiment remains inside him, even if the painting is no longer on his wall. The idea of converting the painting to money is pointless, just a shape-shifting exercise. No, he is freeing himself of being possessed by things around him. What remains is the inside man, a universe within itself.
We live. We die.
The things, the money. These are just interesting toys. Then they become tedious.
Live.
And don’t take yourself too damned seriously.
I am not required to do something just because the opportunity presents itself to me.
This thought is brought to you courtesy of a breakfast buffet at my hotel. I could sit here for an hour gorging myself: infinite everything is here to eat.
Nope. Have a final cup of coffee and relax. There is enough.
I’m in Singapore, having breakfast. My son sent me a photo of the back of his car—he successfully navigated the DMVs of two states and moved his car registration to where he lives now. New plates!
This made me all teary-eyed. It’s the connection across the world to someone I love. It’s watching a child successful as an adult.
And don’t take that wrong. “New license plates, what’s the big deal?” Nah. He’s extremely capable. This is a no big deal for him.
But! It’s the 10,000 little things that matter.
For him, dealing with the DMV and insurance and not having a screwdriver handy and all of the impediments between him and a goal. These are adult life skills, as essential as remembering to eat.
For me, the utter joy of watching the bird leave the nest and start to soar, higher and higher.
The little things matter. I’m writing this to remind myself—just as I write all this stuff here to remember them. Funny, though. I haven’t gone back to read my old stuff. 😀 That’s the point, innit? Write to remember. Read what I wrote to re-remember.
Do the little things. Make the bed. Eat incrementally healthier than yesterday, if you can. Exercise a bit today. Always create negative entropy. The compounding effect of decades of incrementally directional actions is astonishing. In a good direction and a bad, self-destructive direction. I’m living proof of it.
World without end. Amen.
The Bed of Procrustes was a silly old story until about three minutes ago.
Now I see it differently. It describes mental filters. Biases.
When we wander around with preconceived ideas, we only see what we are looking for. Reality is much, much larger than our pea-sized brains.
So when we approach the world with our own conceptions about The Way Things Are, we fit the world into our own mental Procrustean Bed.