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Nothing is quite so instructive as seeing someone perform a task that is easy for you.

You are skilled. You know what is happening, and why, and what lurks behind the physical manifestations of the task, seen to the expert but unseen to the noob.

Watching the noob, it is easy to get frustrated. “It’s so obvious!” That’s what my head screams, at least. My head screams other things, too.

Patience. You, too, were a noob. You still are, in fact. Other people are looking at you right now, with a screaming voice in their heads.

Empathy. Calm down. You know the XCKD comic strip? Be excited for them and yourself. Today is a day to learn a new cool thing.

Be one of the lucky 10,000 today.

What if they don’t want to learn, don’t want to put out the effort? Let them be. That’s not your problem.

But realistically most people are just hindered by fear and not wanting to look stupid. You’re are overestimating the probability that the person you’re dealing with is malicious or lazy, and even those sources of resistance can be weathered away with kindness and generosity.

This was written while contemplating a few routine tasks facing M. Logging into her G Suite admin panel to check on which credit card was attached. Dealing with the usual blizzard of bullshit paperwork that afflicts all business owners. Don’t underestimate how hard these things are for people who haven’t spent decades doing them.

I read this passage from Meditations and went “ouch”:

For how could we do what justice requires if we are distracted by things that don’t matter, if we are naive, gullible, inconstant?

Meditations, 11:10.

Ignore what he is talking about when he talks about justice (Nature’s highest aim, from which all other virtues flow).

What struck me is the bigger point. How can I do anything of value if I am gullible and naive?

And in real life, I am. I praise myself heavily (inside my head) for being willing to take people as they present themselves to me. That’s honorable in one way: don’t discard a person because of an opinion formed in your head before you even meet that person for the first time.

But it’s naive in another. People live in facades. They wear disguises. Sometimes the facades are deliberately intended to hide a truth from you, for good reasons (“Love me!”) or bad (“Trust me and let your guard down, so I can steal from you”).

Let’s acknowledge a truth here. I am not a shrewd judge of character. In fact, I’m terrible at it.

How can I be not naive, not gullible?

Time solves many of these problems. In time, a person’s true nature reveals itself.

Maybe learn to be cautious, wary. Wait for the reveal. And don’t dismiss the signals when they are given. Because that is something I do all the time. Second, third chances.

For myself, I want to live without a facade. I want to present myself to the world as I am, like a boxer in the ring, standing with his arms at his side.

Extremely busy life over the last few days: a very long road trip.

Interesting things to note:

• The reading falls away.
• The difference between the first day, which was a day of energy and deep peace (the promises have come true) compared to the last, which was a day of deep fatigue and stupor.
• How deep sadness correlates with fatigue and poor food choices.
• How inspiring it is to get out of the city and into the wilds, the empty spaces.
• How close that living in those open spaces is for me, and yet so far away.
• How good fortune has favored me.
• How I arrived here, from 100,000 tiny choices made with clear intention over the last 30+ years. What is my primary purpose? It has been consistent from the beginning.
• Such a clear beginning, evident in my life. A single decision, followed through with consistent actions, and look at what happened.

Yes, I know that the outcomes could have been wildly different. You’ve seen people make the same decision and seen the wildly varied lives that resulted.

Just remember the power of a single decision. Make a decision and cling to it the way you did to that first decision decades ago.

Only by action do I figure out what I think. Only by action do my ideas improve. Only by action do I find peace.

You can’t think your way into right actions, but you can act your way into right thinking.

Someone, long ago, somewhere

I am overwhelmed by the road before me. Too much work. Looking up, I cannot see the pinnacle I seek to climb. Am I up for the journey?

I read Meditations and find an answer.

He deposits his sperm and leaves. And then a force not his takes it and goes to work, and creates a child. This … from that?

Or: He pours food down his throat. And then a force not his takes it and creates sensations, desires, daily life, physical strength and so much else besides.

To look at these things going on silently and see the force that drives them. As we see the force that pushes things and pulls them. Not with our eyes, but just as clearly.

Meditations, 10:26

The task before me is work-related. I am building in an entirely new direction. It seems overwhelming, and it is so much easier to revert to old ways. I am afraid.

Remember what I do and what I don’t do. Apply the small pressure, relentlessly, like a wedge in a log. How the log splits? Not my decision.

Those memories of wedges and a sledgehammer, as a teenager. It is hard work, splitting logs into firewood, but satisfying. Bring down the hammer, again and again. That’s all you do.

Let gravity take its course. My job is to show up every day and do the new work behind the hard boundaries I have set.

“The Father in me doeth the work.” Isn’t that how the phrase goes? Marcus Aurelius would say nature, but it’s all the same.

This new path, if it works, promises a freedom that I don’t have right now. I yearn for that freedom. Will I achieve freedom? I don’t know. All I know is that I am not free now.

Just do today’s work today. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Except it isn’t evil. It’s just action, chosen by me, directed by my choice. And the consequences? Nature (or, in this case, The Market) controls whether it will be successful or not.

And anyway, that word “success” is misplaced. Success is a word to describe things within my control. Success is me doing what I intend to do.

Outcomes? That’s not a matter of success or not. Desired outcomes happening or not? That doesn’t mean success or failure. That’s hope.

If I accomplish an intended action, that’s success. If a desired outcome does not result from those actions, I am still successful. Now my choice, within my control, is to see the outcome and adjust my actions, trying again to hit my intended target.

Remember. Scale and relativity.

Good. Now you know, again, who and where you are. You forgot again, didn’t you?

Now, take action and do not measure your happiness by the outcomes. If the outcomes are pleasurable, take pleasure in them of course.

But do not take credit for the outcomes, just as you don’t take credit for the fine young adults that your children have become. You provided the start. The rest? Not so much up to you.

I’m attempting to be bored right now. On purpose, because I’m always doing.

It’s not working. I keep playing with my phone.

Headed back to my hotel. Deep sadness . . . from what?

All is well. I just left someone who I love deeply and will see again tomorrow morning.

I turned again to the usual solution: ice cream and takeout food. Aware and debating in my head as I turn into the parking lot for ice cream. I know what’s happening and I know the superficial why. I get an ice cream cone anyway.

Now I’m in my hotel room, and it’s far to early to go to bed.

Television is . . . it was worse than I expected.

The next usual distraction: work. No, leave email and all that alone. I think that’s a root cause of the sadness.

Growth via instructive video on my iPad? Maybe.

Sit on the couch in my room and do nothing, deliberately, except sit and listen to my tinnitus? Whoa. That’s a scary thought.

Let’s clean up the Taco Bell trash and try doing nothing.

A winter dawn. My journey home begins.

There isn’t much more to say than that.

Why is that true?

I’m not sure but I think the clue is in the fact that this reveals itself with time.

What is the defense?

I’m not sure, but it isn’t a self-inflicted tall poppy strategy. Don’t deliberately deny yourself the gift you have.

I think the answer is first: don’t expect the vulnerability to come from the same place where your gift operates. If you write well, your life won’t blow up because of something you write. Lebron James will not risk his life blowing up because of his basketball talents.

It’s like the sink cost fallacy in a way. If you are losing money in a business remember that you don’t necessarily turn it around by staying the course and spending more money on the same strategies. You don’t make it back the same way you lost it.

The gift you have creates your biggest opportunities for vulnerability because it creates a void elsewhere in your life. And that void, which exists because of the disproportionate reliance on the gift, is your vulnerability.

The gift makes you choose one thing over another, favoring the gift. And that choice is what dooms you. Not the gift itself.

This is not to say that “emphasize your strengths and ignore your weaknesses” is a flawed aphorism. Rather it is to say that you should have the humility to see that you are creating more weaknesses.

The only antidote I can think of is humility. Constant awareness of humility.

The only way I know to keep awareness is to keep reminding myself (I’m doing that now, and the reading daily helps too) and through helping others. Quietly, anonymously, one-on-on.

An awareness of balance will help too. The universe is in balance. If I see x, then -x must also be true somewhere, somehow. If I see benefits, then what risks and I not seeing. Have the humility to know that you can’t see and understand it all.

I’m not sure how money fits into the equation. That’s still a piece I haven’t figured out. I can be like Mother Teresa, sure. But that’s not me. The polar opposite is a mono-focus on making money to the exclusion of all other concerns.

Hah. A paradox. Let’s leave it there. Good insights come when I find a paradox and live with it instead of trying to eliminate it. Plant a paradox seed and let it grow.

Thoughts bubbling up from watching a few Gary Vaynerchuk videos. I’m never going to find the specific ones at this point.

First, the phone in my pocket isn’t evil. It’s an empty vessel connecting me with something I want. So to say iPhone addiction or similar phrases is wrong, and it misleads. I’m not addicted to the phone. I’m addicted to the things I find there. The responsibility, the accountability is with me, not Apple.

Social media is the same. It’s not good or bad. It just is. Facebook isn’t evil. It’s my use of Facebook that is the important fact. After staying away for years (because I thought Facebook was evil) I have an account now, for one specific private group. That’s all I use it for, despite the enticements thrown at me. I took responsibility. The tool is fine.

As soon as a thing is tagged as bad in some way, maybe we give away agency, ownership of our own lives. The language we use to describe things matters.

Even accepting that Facebook people do bad things to others in their quest for profit, the correct first response is “All that may be true, but what am I going to do about my life?” And I can’t control Facebook, I am wasting my time if I whine about Congress not doing something about it, and I am arrogant if I mock “them” (whoever “they” are) because that’s implicit arrogance on my part.

The only productive thought is “Ok, maybe that’s true. Maybe Mark Zuckerberg is the spawn of Satan. What am I going to do right now, actions, to improve my life?”

That’s a Dan Sullivan philosophy too. He has no time for victims. Your parents were bad parents. You suffered a setback from random events, caused by whatever. Ok. What are you going to do now?

Never a victim. Always accountable.