Author: Reality Laughs

I walk past my dog on the way to the kitchen. She rolls on her back, legs in the air. I scratch her belly. She is happy. Me too.

When I start something I have a vision in my head of what an expert result looks like. My beginner’s efforts are embarrassing.

In little ways what is happening now is that I’m willing to start. Period. I’m willing to look at my first efforts and realize that they’re bad but they will evolve to better, quickly. And I look forward to seeing that evolution unfold.

It happens when I write something. It starts off bad and I know it’s bad, but as it goes along it gets better. Magically. It’s almost as if I didn’t know how to think or express myself, but the effort of trying to think and express myself actually brings about that result.

In a roundabout way I’m saying that I like experiencing the journey from noob to competent. I like feeling the progression of building skills and knowledge. Something was not there. Then it was.

From competent to mastery? That’s a chasm that I have only bridged a couple of times. Put down your head for 25 years and work. That’s the only thing I can say about mastery. Shut up with your 10,000 hours. And even mastery is only a bare beginning.

I have more mastery to discover within me. Let’s trudge fearlessly to the next one — the most interesting journey of all so far, because it involves hand-to-hand combat with self. Not a body of knowledge, not a technical skill, not a profession. Self.

With luck, a specific course of action I have embarked on this week will lead me to a peaceful co-existence with self.

But in the meantime, reaching journeyman status is fine. We are all Privates in this Army.

I’m going to be knocked around. Stuff will happen, people will say things and my feelings will be hurt. This is inevitable.

Equally true is the fact that I’m going to make shit up in my head, and I’m going to take it seriously and wallow in it. This is guaranteed. You can take it to the bank.

So, what to do?

When jarred, unavoidably, by circumstances, revert at once to yourself, and don’t lose the rhythm more than you can help. You’ll have a better grasp of the harmony if you keep on going back to it.

Meditations 6:11.

Let’s just take for granted, from now on, that all quotes from Marcus Aurelius come from the Gregory Hays translation of Meditations. I don’t read the other translations I have.

What I’m doing right now, by reading in the morning and writing these little thoughts, is building the counterweight, building the keel. When knocked off top dead center by some external event, my habits bring me back.

It happened while reading and drinking coffee this morning. I was talking to myself about something. In rehearsal, I was. As usual, it was some imaginary future event where in my imagination I was impressing an unknown audience of strangers who I would never see again because they exist only in my head with my stunning wisdom. I caught myself. Returned to Meditations.

That’s the spiritual keel bringing me upright after a self-inflicted gust of mental wind.

I did not take the episode seriously. It’s like the famous bemused Reagan quote, “There you go again!” There my brain goes again, talking to itself to puff up the ego. Remember. And back to top dead center.

As Marcus Aurelius says, “unavoidably”.

Even if I could become immune to outside events and how they affect my thinking (hint: not in this lifetime), I can never become immune to the brain generating its own thoughts.

I can’t stop or control my dreams at night, and I am going to experience random rehearsals and talking to self during my waking hours. The best I can do is develop a center of gravity that brings the pendulum back to rest.

Random memory of B saying that.

Paradoxically by being there for his own benefit he helped countless others.

And that was his point. He was there for himself, to help his own predicament, and the only way to help himself escape his own predicament was to be helpful to the community around him.

It’s like D telling me one day that he did this thing (birthday cards for people) because he realized he was so self-centered and selfish and didn’t care what happened to people around him. And it hurt; he did not want to be that kind of man. So he just started sending people birthday cards. Then, one day he discovered that he genuinely cared about the people around him.

Wow. The people I have known who helped me in small ways and great. Both D and B have been dead for a long time. Yet they did small things and said small things that are still alive in me, making my life better (when I remember them and what they said). I’m a bit weepy right now.

If the second-most important thing distracts you from the most important thing, delete it.

Edit (later): I don’t know what my most important thing is. At work, I mean. In life I do.

This is interesting.

When I am ok then I write less here.

And right now I’m ok.

So I want to be sure to write this down to remind myself that I’m ok. I’m always ok. I just don’t always believe it.

Why am I ok? Reading. Marcus Aurelius at the moment. I can’t read Seneca in the morning for some reason. But Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius are easy.

Relentless, by the way, has fallen dead on its second read-through. I have no appetite for it. It’s sort of like a one-note song, though I know that there can be subtle nuances in monotony. I’ll get back to it. Or not.

In the meantime, Gary Vaynerchuk videos are passing the message along. No expectations. Just give. Work really hard for a long time. All good stuff.

I can only hope that my kids have a great relationship with me in the same way he seems to have a great relationship with his parents. If he has what he appears to have, Gary Vaynerchuk has wealth beyond measure.

So the outside reminders come, but from another path.

That’s a good thing.

I just started working on a new skill via a paid course of instruction. It is evident that the information provided is valuable and delivered by someone who is smarter than me. Intellectual prowess, knowledge, and experience. All of it.

It’s not hard to tell that this is the case. Non-BS reveals itself fairly quickly. BS can hide for a while.

That’s an interesting barometer. The longer I am uncertain as to whether I’m dealing with a bullshit operator or the real deal, the more likely I am to be dealing with a bullshit operator. Bearing in mind of course that I may be so stupid that I can’t tell the difference between bullshit and non-bullshit. But even then, I will get smart enough eventually to discard bullshit.

Back to how I react to smart, non-bullshit people.

The reality laughs lesson here for me is that I am grateful to this man for having learned so many hard concepts, learning so many hard real-life lessons, then distilling the knowledge so I can use it. It is really the first time in my life where I have not wanted to immediately be as smart as him. That’s my MO. You know quantum physics? Let me study independently and rival you even though you spent 20 years of your life doing it. I will catch up in three days. Not this time.

I’m finally becoming a grownup. I’m learning humility. I’ve finally started to really see what I was told a long time ago. You can’t subtract from my life. You can only add to it.