Reality Laughs

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.

The fuel that drives me . . . is insecurity.

It’s an infinite source of energy.

Don’t cap the well. That just lets pressure build up.

Discard the idea that I will somehow magically decide to not be insecure, and the burr under the saddle goes away.

Acknowledge the feeling of insecurity. Look at it. Live with it.

Then, with certainty, use that feeling as fuel to act. “Yeah, I’m alone, afraid, frustrated. Let’s do this anyway.”

A week traveling.

The routines I have embarked upon? Discarded. The self-imposed ban on distracting social media? Gone.

Hours of scrolling through Tik Tok, sleep patterns disrupted, no exercise, no reading and meditation. No writing here, to tease a thread of clarity from the confusion.

State of mind: depressed.

It’s time to reset. It’s to get simple.

New fuel, because I need to mix it up. Same message, different messengers.

They are not obscure, in fact they are pop stars: Rogan, Willink, Goggins. They say nothing new: focus, discipline.

Reading Seneca this morning about virtuous men who are mostly unknown during their lifetimes, I think: YouTube and Spotify bring me these messengers. In another time they might languish as local heroes, their wisdom available to only a few. Yet they are my friends, my guides, exhorting me to greatness.

Seneca reference: Letter 79, starting around paragraph 13.

It wasn’t one of them (I think) but somewhere on my searches I found a combat vet who was asked “what do you miss about combat?” He said “the simplicity.”

It’s time to reset. It’s time to get simple. Life is hand-to-hand combat with self.

Road trip.

Objective: relocate?

Conclusion: plausible.

Insomnia: confirmed.

Greetings from Dallas.

Seneca reminds me to not grab for the freebies:

The most sensible man, therefore, as soon as he sees the dole being brought in, runs from the theatre; for he knows that one pays a high price for small favours.

Letters, 74:7.

That lines up with Nassim Taleb’s comments about pitches: if you are being pitched on the benefits, look out for the hidden detriments, for surely the payoff from the benefits is less than the damage to you, hidden from sight by the salesman.

The Emperor bought servitude from the masses by passing out coins and food at the games, at festivals, etc. The average man had a meal, a trivial amount of spending money. Then nothing.

The Emperor had a supine population ready to serve his will.

Compare today. The $600 checks handed out in Covid times. The PPP checks handed out to businesses.

Has my sullen servitude been purchased?

One more thing. I was told (correctly) to search for the quiet men, smiling and calm, in the back of the room. Avoid the loud and flashy men proclaiming their virtue and wisdom.

Seneca continues:

No one will grapple with him on the way out, or strike him as he departs; the quarrelling takes place where the prizes are.

All of the bullshit and turmoil exists where the freebies are handed out. Stay away from the chum.

I’m going to start noting down the principles that matter to me. This is the first one.

“It worked for you, so it will work for me.”

That exact sentence, which went through my head so often 30+ years ago, is true.

The principle is that results come from actions. I can look at someone else’s actions and results and mimic them.

Mimicry works.

That other person experiences collateral effects as well. My collateral effects might be different. But the 80/20 rule lets me cheerfully ignore the collateral effects and focus on garnering the main object.

These fragments are parked here for later, because there is an idea here I want to remember and explore.

Seneca talking about virtue in Letter 71:22.

At this moment the man who measures the souls of all men by his own is shaking his fist in my face because I hold that there is a parity between the goods . . . .

And . . .

[C]ritics think that whatever they themselves cannot do, is not done; they pass judgment on virtue in the light of their own weaknesses.

The idea that I want to explore is how people (meaning me in particular) use their opinions as the metric for saying someone or something is virtuous.

The reason that Wittgenstein’s Ruler came to mind is that a judgment expressed is more informational on the person making the judgment than on the judgment itself.

Seneca is saying that virtue is the supreme thing. It’s as straight as it can be. There is nothing straighter. Virtue should be self-evident, then. All actions prompted by virtue will have that linear quality.

Seneca continues:

To a luxurious man, a simple life is a penalty; to a lazy man, work is punishment; the dandy pities the diligent man; to the slothful, studies are torture. Similarly, we regard those things with respect to which we are all infirm of disposition, as hard and beyond endurance, forgetting what a torment it is to many men to abstain from wine or to be routed from their beds at break of day. These actions are not essentially difficult; it is we ourselves that are soft and flabby.

And then, at 71:24, we find Wittgenstein’s Ruler:

We must pass judgment concerning great matters with greatness of soul; otherwise, that which is really our fault will seem to be their fault.

“That which is really our fault will seem to be their fault.”

Boom.