Reality Laughs

From an actual event today.

A. got a full-time job at Amazon. She is counting down the days until she quits. Six weeks. It doesn’t matter that she is banking money. She has set a quitting deadline.

This morning as she was leaving to go to work she burst into tears. “What’s wrong with the job?” I asked.

“It’s OK. Nothing’s wrong. It’s fine.”

That’s not right, of course. “Nothing” doesn’t cause tears.

My only response was “Let’s find you another minimum wage job. It is possible to find a minimum wage job that doesn’t make you cry.“

She started to cry-laugh.

And off to work she went.

I hope she looks for another job.

How the mind conducts itself. It all depends on that. All the rest is within its power, or beyond its control—corpses and smoke.

Meditations, 12:33.

All.

Stay with God. Stay in the now. However you’re going to describe it.

That’s within my control.

See the out-of-my-control boundary. Remember it and observe without judgment. It’s all out of my control.

This is an exhortation to self. I like that word (exhortation), which I used to mean impassioned encouragement to action.

Whatever you think is causing the situation, is not.

There is a deeper cause at work. It’s simple when you see it. But it’s hard to see, mostly because it’s prosaic and obvious and therefore invisible.

Once seen, it cannot be unseen.

Example: a mix of Kevin Kelly and Nassim Taleb. Technology gets marginally better all the time. That’s the Kevin Kelly input. It’s an exponential function. That’s the Nassim Taleb input. Looking backwards is misleading because it does not reveal the exponential future.

The implications of this are at odds with business as usual.

Gravity always wins.

I have specific beliefs about where this leads in the society, economy, etc.

That’s all well and good. Things will happen the way they will happen. How am I going to position myself and my family to live well?

By seeing the obvious. By seeing the stuff in plain sight. By not being distracted by the chaff, by not being attracted by the chum.

I did what I do best: patiently take confusion and create a simple, clear path to the objective. For this project it took two days to figure out. Now I have shared my plan with the others. Let’s see whether it survives.

I’m home, feeling ok.

Now it’s time for the second shift. That first shift at work was all about them and their lives. Now it’s about building mine.

Let’s do this.

It’s where I am right now, at work. it doesn’t help that I’m not sleeping particularly well. That makes the hard slog sloggier.

And yet. Let’s imagine what Marcus Aurelius would say.

First, remember the part where he tells you to get out of bed. I can’t remember how many times recently I have awakened, wishing for more rest, and then that passage has come to mind.

At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work—as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for—the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”

Meditations, 5:1.

That gets me up and headed to the kitchen to make coffee.

Then, it’s time to not take myself or my circumstances too seriously.

that if you were suddenly lifted up and could see life and its variety from a vast height, and at the same time all the things around you, in the sky and beyond it, you’d see how pointless it is. And no matter how often you saw it, it would be the same: the same life forms, the same life span.

Arrogance … about this?

Meditations, 12:24

It’s harsh but accurate. Is it pity party? Is it arrogance? No, it’s the same old stuff for you and everyone else.

You can do what you can do. Let’s go do it.

Finish your coffee, have a shower, get dressed. There are things to do.

If I must live with the paradox, bring it on.

There is a nice courtyard at work. I will sit outside with a cup of coffee. Invite the longing. I will sit with the feeling rather than attempt to solve it like an equation.

Once you recognize the feeling of longing, you begin the journey of allowing yourself to reveal the truth to yourself.

Sitting here quietly before anyone is awake, an answer comes back: friendship, companionship, not feeling alone, loving and being loved.

It still astonishes me that my family wants to be with me. I still, today, do not believe this is totally true. Wife of 25+ years. Grown children. They’ve had plenty of time to judge me and they still say and behave as if they love me.

Why do I not accept this? Why do I still feel empty and alone? Why do I doubt what I see and experience?

This is something that doesn’t yield to Industrious Personal Development, I fear. And buckling down to a deliberate course of self-improvement is the only tool I have in my toolbox.

Study and hard work has been my lifelong solution to everything. It won’t work here.

Ah well. If this is the paradox I must live with, so be it.

In the meantime I’m going to pull out the only tool I carry, and try to live the words of the St. Francis Prayer. Seek to understand rather than be understood. Seek to comfort rather than be comforted. Etc.

I don’t know what else to do. Except maybe just sit with the yearning.

What do I yearn for?

I don’t know exactly, except that the feeling of longing pops up again and again.

When we meet, I don’t want to ask you what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for when that door of longing swings open and if you have the courage to feel your own desire.

The Invitation, page 16 (if I can believe Kindle)

The times it has been strongest lately has been on the recent Colorado trips, out in the middle of nowhere. I can’t say what I long for in those moments, except to stay, quietly, doing nothing. Just small me in a big, empty land. Sitting.

I wish I had slept well last night. Trudge onward.