Reality Laughs

I didn’t have the Freedom filter protecting me from the internet. After reading a bit of Seneca (pedantic and dry, and I’m soldiering through because people speak so highly of him) my fingers turned to the usual uproar stuff on the internet.

Someday I will be unflappable. I’m not there now. So for the moment I must keep the filters strong: feed myself with what is good, by not allowing myself to search for and dwell on finding fault with others.

Now is the season to become strong. The Kingdom of God is within.

Ethics. Physical health. Wisdom.

Now is the time to speak of these things. Not as a promoter, a preacher, a politician. These people have no soul. No, now is the time to speak as a practitioner. Speak by example. Speak by living and doing. And by plainly calling bullshit on bullshit people.

For now, developing wisdom or the virtues (along Seneca’s lines, though I see scant difference in many ways between Seneca and The Carpenter) and radiating those values is my life.

And per Taleb, if you see a fraud and don’t say fraud, you are a fraud. But that, after all, is just a practical application of virtue.

Today’s readings from Seneca contained dissections of syllogisms and the like. Nothing jumped out at me.

Well, except the comment that the study of the liberal arts (which in his definition, I think, more or less maps to our modern definition) has as its objective the creation of a free man.

But there is only one really liberal study, – that which gives a man his liberty.

Letters, 88.2.

I imagined a college class taught with this aim. College-age me would not have reaped much from that class, as I imagined myself wise but unskilled. How wrong I was (about wisdom).

We all imagine we know virtue, until we come face-to-face with a test of character. We all imagine we know what is good and what is evil. Hitler? Evil. Trump? Evil.

Pick your bogeyman. It doesn’t matter. It is interesting that evil can be neatly encapsulated in pointing at The Other smugly. As if that makes you good! In fact, the fruitful and only place worth looking is within.

This is a task I could not and did not perform in my twenties. Only in my early thirties, confronted by the cumulative consequences of my decisions, did I become open to looking within.

I faced a stopping point that could not be excused by bullshit excuses to myself, a stopping point that I knew no one else had created. (This certainty took a great deal of time, even after hitting the wall, to accept).

So now I am at the point in life where there is no classroom, no teacher, yet I am engaged in a course of story of the liberal arts — the study of matters that make me a free man.

There is no other liberty.

And I study with fervor and intent that the student me never possessed.

What stops me is boredom.

I run without music, without podcasts, without audiobooks. I run with my head. Intentionally.

When my head is noisy and talking to itself, I am distracted and I put distance under my feet. Usually this means some imaginary argument about something that will never come up, with someone I will never meet. But in my head I showed them up.

The nice thing about running is that sooner or later in the run all that imaginary fiction evaporates. The ego is fed, or the ego is embarrassed. Either way, the chatter stops.

But when I am calm and quiet, I start talking to myself, and the talking is always about quitting. How much will I run today? What if I just do one loop instead of two? After all it’s late and my legs hurt.

There are always reasons. Explanations. The conversation is never about doing more, putting in extra effort. The conversation is always about less. And it is seductive.

Yesterday, I was in the conversation within the first 5 minutes, negotiating the run. What pace? What distance? What time? Should I adjust (shorter of course) the route?

It’s a standard route, starting from my house and just over 6 km (almost 4 miles). Two loops through the neighborhood. Uphill to home.

What I realized last night: everything got really quiet (in a good way) when I said to myself that I will do these two loops even if it takes me 90 minutes and I shuffle painfully all the way home.

My current mindset: I’m a beast, a savage, a monster. I run. Whether it is four or forty miles, I finish.

Last night I simply multiplied the distances by 10x. I’m at the 3/4 mark of my 4 mile run? This is what it feels like to see 10 miles ahead of you. It’s the last half-block to home? This is what it feels like to pace out that 40th mile.

I wear an Apple Watch. I don’t check the time or distance. Why should I? The only thing that matters is finishing. That’s liberating.

I don’t know how many times I have listened to the quitting voice and cut a run short. Frankly that was the old me in his default mode.

What I realized last night: I need to learn to live with boredom. Same streets. Same slight incline on the last long leg of the loop.

Same same same same same same. Go go go go go go.

Be bored. Run anyway. Work anyway.

I suspect it’s not really boredom. It’s something more basic. I’m going to run (literally and figuratively) at this mindset shitstorm to see what happens.

Last night I came home from work and immediately went out running: 3.88 miles, according to The Machines. No music, just my head.

I am intrinsically lazy. (I sat on my ass all day at work). I shy away from cold. (I ran in shorts, shirt, and hoodie and was hot). I give myself permission to stop after a modest effort. (I ran one loop and would usually have quit, but I kept going and ran a second).

It’s important to tell the truth about yourself. Then you have a place to start: a foundation of reality. If I acknowledge that I’m lazy I then know what I must do. If I know that I use weather as an excuse, I know what to do.

Tell the truth about yourself, to yourself. Hold nothing back. From that starting point, glory is possible.

During the run, I formulated my life’s aim. Who am I striving to be? There is no finish line in life, so everything — EVERYTHING — is necessarily incomplete. Live with it. Yet everything, by understanding this, is necessarily always complete.

My aim? To be able to look at myself, inwardly, and know that I am a monster, a beast, a savage. Not in the moral sense, but in the sense of determination and action, whether I win or lose, succeed or fail.

Running the loops last night, I knew I was that beast. I gave double the effort, ending my night with wobbly legs and dizzy head. I had to walk around for a few minutes before going inside.

I am that beast. Right now. Some day instead of 3.88 miles it might be 38.8 miles. Will I attack that run with the same determination that I attacked 3.88? Fuck, yes. Giving it all I have, always, shows that I am a beast.

Acknowledging the truth about myself gave me all of that.

Seneca, letter 83, paragraph 2:

For this is what makes us wicked: that no one of us looks back over his own life. Our thoughts are devoted only to what we are about to do.

This is something to consider: a daily review.

Know who you are and tell yourself the truth about that. How else will you be able to progress?

Let’s talk about the physical. Exercise. I am a starter but not a follow-througher. I am a quitter in other words. I am a person who stops at the first sign of serious effort. If it’s hard I quit. I am a person who gives himself a ticket to not take action. I am someone who fears cold.

I do not want to be that man. I do not want the mental payoff of being that man, because that payoff is a constant whisper of “you’re a loser” in my head.

Acknowledge the current truth. That is the way to build a different truth. I can’t build based on a lie. If I pretend, if I build on a faulty foundation, then my house will crumble.

I have seen this before. I had a good run for a while of steady exercise and gained the benefit. Then I quit. Why? Because the easy path disappeared. The gym where we went closed. I had discipline as long as the path was laid in front of me but when challenged to be self-propelled I faltered and quit.

So let’s tell the truth to ourselves, shall we?

I stay the course and keep going as long as it is easy to go to the gym, to run. I don’t push myself hard, I go for the “barely adequate” weights, the barely adequate distance. And as soon as externals pop up, I take them as an excuse to not run, to not go to the gym.

I don’t run because it is a little bit cold. Or it’s raining. Or I’m tired. Or it gets dark this time of year. I’m not talking about legit physical ailments. And even with physical ailments I’m way, way, way soft. I’m talking about slight discomfort. This is the equivalent of tripping on a pebble. That’s what stops me.

That’s who I am.

Truth.

The way to stop being that man is to stop being that man.

A week of travel (that kicked my ass emotionally and spiritually) and I’m home again.

There will be no immediate geographic cure for the malaise. We are going to fight our battles (meaning mental, spiritual, etc.) here. Moving to another place won’t fix the inside man.

Yes, there is much to not like about this place. But there is much to like, too.

Remember Marcus Aurelius: it is possible to live a good life, even in the palace of the emperor. Even here, in this place full of folly, it is possible for us to live good lives. The Kingdom of God is within.

Don’t default to stagnant behavior or thinking. But don’t imagine that pulling up your roots and moving to a brand new place is going to make magic happen. Magic comes from within, no matter where you are.

Still, I’m going to do the footwork to move. Create options. It’s good to have options, rather than be dug in. Money-wise we would probably be better off. But pulling the trigger? Not in the next 24 months.

Transcribed written notes that I did at the kitchen table this morning.

Aim: happiness/peace.

What am I aiming for? A feeling. That’s what we are all searching for, I think. It is a hard target to hit because it isn’t concrete like a money or fitness goal. It’s ephemeral. Here, then gone. Yet it’s repeatable, and you can increase its duration. But, it’s never permanent.

I have some concrete goals. Money. Fitness. But really what I want is a feeling. And the feeling of peace is it.

There is something about Quantic’s “Walking in the Rain” lyrics that touches on where I find myself right now. Maybe that’s why I like the song. (Guard the mind, though. Music can transmit feelings, beliefs. It can persuade in hidden ways.)

So. What shall I do? Because life is doing. Action.

Three things. Read every day. Write every day. And start by attacking the biggest source of misery first: work.

One of the guests on the JRE broke down weight loss elegantly. The same approach holds true for work.

• You need to be clear in your thinking. Words reflect thinking.
• You don’t want to lose weight. You want to lose fat.
• There are two ways to lose fat: have fewer fat cells, or have the same number of fat cells but they are smaller.
• To have fewer fat cells, use liposuction. But he says that’s not a permanent solution.
• To have smaller fat cells (but the same number) there is biochemistry involved. His metaphor was a room with two entrances and one exit. Hormones and exotic (to me) biochemistry control the entrances and exits. Your job is to let fewer people, metaphorically speaking, into the room.

That’s how I’m going to attack the work side. I’m letting too many people into the room. And they aren’t leaving fast enough. And that means making fewer commitments, and chunking the ones I make into smaller deliverables so they can be delivered faster.

Looking at this journal, I note a pattern: I write when I’m sad, confused, frustrated. When times are good, I’m not in here, writing stuff down (as much).

Yes, it’s a reference to the song.

That’s from Seneca, letter 79, paragraph 17.

I don’t care about “them” and their facades, their pretense, their lies to me.

I care about me, pretending to a different audience: me.

Rigorous self-honesty. That’s the phrase to live by. Taleb says “If you see a fraud and do not say ‘fraud’, you are a fraud”.

Call out your own bullshit on yourself. It’s hard because self will not reveal self to self. But it can be done. It’s hard, not impossible.

Rigorous self-honesty.

In my binge of Rogan/Willink/Goggins on the plane yesterday, Rogan said write down your goals. This morning, I was cleaning a cupboard of stuff that hadn’t moved in a decade. There, in a pile of old paper, is a notebook.

Write it down. Be honest with yourself.

God gave me a tool with which to weed this garden.