Reality Laughs

I’m putting this here to remind my future self:

i. Anywhere you can lead your life, you can lead a good one.

Lives are led at court.… Then good ones can be.

Meditations 5:16.

I can live a good life even in this place: a city and state festooned with politicians hell-bent on short-sighted, self-enriching adventures.

Will I vote with my feet? Perhaps. We have already made scouting trips for that purpose.

All of that is fine. Move to a different place to seek something finer. But do not leave this place and live elsewhere in the vain belief that you can escape self-aggrandizing buffoons and corruption amongst the politicians. These characteristics are some of the defining elements of what causes a person to seek political office.

Not all, but enough of them. And the higher the office, it seems, the more likely you are to find a bullshit person. There is a reason why we praise a Ghandi, a Mandela, a Lincoln. They are exceedingly rare. And flawed, as are we all. Even Marcus Aurelius.

Clearly there is some problem in my soul that needs to be worked out. So much bile! This is why I write: to reveal self to self. Something to work on.

And one more thing. When you move to a different town, a different state? You take yourself with you.

Ran another 10k today. My body was telling me I was out of juice at mile 2, and my mind told me to finish it out. I did.

What’s interesting is that last night I ran and my body had all the energy in the world but my head wanted to quit because this whole running thing is stupid. My body kept going to the end and let the mind chatter.

Do whatever it takes to get it done.

Just a thought that’s trying to grow in my head.

The idea is that life doesn’t end until you’re dead. Some things are extremely difficult to accomplish, but on the far side of those things you will find knowledge and understanding that would be impossible without having experienced the difficulties.

Especially use this idea with voluntary difficulty. Running. What’s on the far side of getting up and running 10K every day? That’s difficult for me at the moment, though I’m doing it.

One view from Marcus Aurelius:

For there is a single harmony. Just as the world forms a single body comprising all bodies, so fate forms a single purpose, comprising all purposes.

Meditations 5:8.

The randomness of life drives to a single purpose. What is that? A singularity of purpose for Nature?

Or is it the inevitable dispersal of atoms—entropy?

Marcus Aurelius talks of Nature and the Gods on one side, and randomness and atoms on the other. There are many places in Meditations where he basically says, “Either way, why worry?”

Me, I’m kind of interested in the question. I need to read up on what physics means by entropy. In my head I use it as a shorthand for the end state of a particular process. Government inevitably devolves to dictatorship and tyranny. Competition devolves to duopoly. Etc.

That’s probably wrong, both in my understanding of the word entropy and in my understanding of end states for things, ideas, and organizations.

I want to know more.

Makes me feel like he is a regular guy. There is hope for me.

No one could ever accuse you of being quick-witted.

All right, but there are plenty of other things you can’t claim you “haven’t got in you.” Practice the virtues you can show: honesty, gravity, endurance, austerity, resignation, abstinence, patience, sincerity, moderation, seriousness, high-mindedness. Don’t you see how much you have to offer—beyond excuses like “can’t”? And yet you still settle for less.

Or is it some inborn condition that makes you whiny and grasping and obsequious, makes you complain about your body and curry favor and show off and leaves you so turbulent inside?

No. You could have broken free a long way back. And then you would have been only a little slow. “Not so quick on the uptake.”

And you need to work on that as well—that slowness. Not something to be ignored, let alone to prize.

Meditations 5:5.

One of us! One of us!

Seriously, though. It is reassuring to see that even a man like Marcus Aurelius had a noisy, self-critical brain.

Practice the virtues you can show.

Let’s do that today.

You can accept comfort and slouch toward mediocrity, or you can embrace challenge and stretch forward to excellence.

I need to find people who will challenge me. It’s the “you are the average of the five people you hang around most” idea. I fill my head with Jocko and Goggins at the moment, so they are virtual friends who challenge me. But I need IRL people who have that kind of attitude, because I’m striving for it myself.

Mediocre is repulsive.

It’s like Sebastian’s idea. Someone says “wow you’re good”. His reply is “good on a normal scale or good on an elite scale?”

I don’t want to be good on a normal scale. Within the limits of physics, I want to be good on an elite scale.

Right now I’m training myself to be default “on” (I can’t express the thought clearly) through running. I decide to run and I execute. Stomach full or empty. Tired or rested. Sore legs or not. The temperature is cold or hot.

That reminds me. Contingencies. someday it will be raining and it will be time to run. I need gear to be ready so there is no excuse. Though if necessary I will just go, and be wet.

Prepare for known contingencies and sources of failure. Eliminate SPOFs. That’s one way to transcend mediocrity.

Assumptions lead to actions. If I believe something, I will act based on that belief.

Assumptions are frequently wrong, and almost always incomplete.

The reason that my assumptions are incomplete is because they are based on old information, not on what is in front of me. Conditions and circumstances change.

My assumptions are wrong for obvious reasons. I ain’t that smart that I know everything, and I have the human capacity for knowledge: selective memory, bias, laziness, etc.

The marker to look for is certainty. It’s even beyond that: watch for smugness, arrogance. I’m not capturing the emotional components well, but I hope you get the idea. It’s one thing to be right and know it. It’s another thing to be right (you think) and feel a superiority that dismisses alternative views.

The other marker to look for is inattention. If I’m so right, I don’t have to think about this and I can pay attention to something else.

Examples in the last 12 hours. Comical/sad/instructive.

• In the current competition we are scored based on completing tasks daily. One is planning your day the night before. 12 hours after raving in the midpoint review that I’m killing it and getting perfect scores every day, I forget to plan my next day the night before. I was blinded by the perception that I am Mr. Perfect and didn’t check at end of day to see if the plan was in place.
• Last night, running, I’m almost home: I’m about to turn the corner onto my street. In the dark I tripped on the uneven sidewalk and bang down I go. My head was elsewhere, and I wasn’t paying attention. I know the sidewalks in my city are shit (the fucking City Council wants to save the fucking whales, metaphorically speaking, instead of doing it’s fucking job), I’m paying attention usually, except now. So my assumption about reality is correct, I’m in familiar territory, and I make another assumption failure: to forget known truths. Actually I usually run in the street for precisely this reason: the streets are better-maintained than the sidewalks. Assumption that took me down: I’m already done with my run in my head.

How do I keep assumptions aligned with current reality?

This rumination kicked off with this excerpt from Meditations:

Because most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more tranquillity. Ask yourself at every moment, “Is this necessary?”

But we need to eliminate unnecessary assumptions as well. To eliminate the unnecessary actions that follow.

Meditations 4:24.

That’s a start. Prune away unnecessary assumptions: about myself, about everything around me.

Nota bene: I might have a damaging assumption in the above: the incompetence and malevolence of City governance. 😀 Maybe I should email the person who represents my district and ask for sidewalk repairs. Maybe the crews are just unaware of dangerously cracked and uplifted sidewalk locations. I can do that, or I can have rage in my heart. Hmmm. Hard choice. 😜

Postscript. And that notation above is exactly why I need to keep reading and writing. It’s a process that sometimes help self reveal self to self. After all, the persistent utter disdain in my head for politicians is only poisoning me.

I have run 10k every day for six days in a row. This was my goal: “10k, every day”. It intuitively feels right for cardio, and now I can layer on other stuff.

And here comes the quitting conversation in my head. You need an off day. Maybe just run a short run, because your legs are sore. All sorts of noise. What if you’re sick or there is some reason that makes it impossible to run someday (in the future)? Inference: if you have an excuse then, you can have an excuse now.

Shut up and run. I’m going out again today. 10k, every day.

I’m not doing it for exercise. I’m not doing it to lose weight. I’m not doing it for cardio health or my heart or blood pressure or anything else.

I’m doing it to shut down the quitter in my head. The guy with an angle, a reasonable point of view for why running (or any activity) is really too much and let’s ease up shall we?

That guy in my head never says “let’s go harder”. It’s always a variation of quitting.

I do need a plan for unavoidable inability to run. But that’s a simple plan. It is simply Ed’s advice from 30 years ago. “I am sick and feel awful” I told him. “Should I go to work?” His response was clear and simple: “When you’re sick, your job is to get well.”

If I get the flu and can’t run, my job is to get well and run again when I can. And in the meantime. Be truthful: I don’t have a serious problem that actually, physically prevents me from running. I just have my little whiny brain telling me to quit. STFU, brain. You’re going running with me.

Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.

Meditations 4:7

Words to aspire to.

I’m judgmental and angry and political things. That’s not good for me and for those around me.

That sort of person is bound to do that. You might as well resent a fig tree for secreting juice. (Anyway, before very long you’ll both be dead—dead and soon forgotten.)

Meditations 4:6.

Remember that and live life appropriately. What’s in my control? What is not? Avoid propaganda of all types: the kind I agree with and the kind I do not.

And it’s all propaganda all the time.

I don’t know what is required of me, if anything, for overt political action. So I will in the meantime prepare myself and develop my character to a man of honor and principles.

Though I do agree with the Taleb admonition: if you see fraud, yell fraud.