Reality Laughs

Everything has a price.

If you want something, you must pay for it.

Envy is a weird emotion in that way. Someone has something you want. He paid the price for it, and you didn’t.

What about luck? Sometimes what someone else has (and I don’t) is a matter of luck. He was lucky, I was unlucky.

True. There are a billion reasons why things happen, most of them outside our control. What we call luck is the cumulative effect of all of those forces that are invisible to us or visible but beyond our control.

Luck, in a way, is like Arthur Clark’s magic. Any sufficiently advanced technology looks like magic. So too with luck. Luck is just opaque causation.

And even though luck evens out in the long run, sometimes it is a every long run.

“Though the mills of God grind slowly; Yet they grind exceeding small;Though with patience He stands waiting, With exactness grinds He all.” Longfellow, who was only one of an unknown host of people who have used this analogy through all of recorded history.

Someone could have luck for his entire life, while I am unlucky for my entire life.

And so? What is in your control? It is there that the price is paid. By paying with attention. By paying with time. These are the only currencies I know that will be accepted.

Ignore luck. If someone has a big house and you don’t, that’s either luck or him paying in time and attention to achieve that big house. If he paid with attention to get a big house and you paid with attention to have a happy family (luck existing equally between the two of you) who got the better end of the deal?

Even then, maybe he got the big house and the family, and I just got the family. Not so bad a result, is it? And anyway, it’s not in my control whether someone gets the big house.

Ignore luck. Or better yet, manufacture luck in the pmarca or @naval sense. But after that, pay the price in time and attention for the things that matter.

Really, too, the things that matter are the ephemeral, incorporeal. Ideas, love, peace, freedom. These are what to buy with your time. Wealth will be a byproduct.

But that’s a topic for another day.

How is this for an idea? The path to mastery is to do something that has been done before.

Don’t seek to be novel. Seek to be good. And good is not an achievement, but an activity. It’s a verb in this context.

Be persistent and consistent in something other people have done before you.

Pianists do scales. From scales comes mastery.

Find a model, a secret mentor, and follow what he did. How do you know if you a good model? By trial and error, probably.

A series of improbable events led to me sitting right here living the life I live.

Don’t try to impose a narrative on top of that, a “just so” story. The narrative would be a lie to yourself and others, because who could, in advance, engineer these events to occur in sequence? And what result would be expected if you could? Life is not a replication experiment.

The best you can do is see some deep principles in action. Those seem to produce good results. Hold true to those principles.

Ask Lindy to reveal the principles. Or look for the obvious, the boring and slightly uncomfortable. “Tell the truth”. “Keep trying”. “Be loyal”. Stuff like that.

It’s simple, but it’s not easy.

A quick read of a website on my Freedom blocklist and I’m off to the races. My thoughts go straight into the ditch. “Them son of bitches”.

A man’s gotta know his limitations. I am learning mine: I am not so mentally strong.

But the brief detour to hell brought an interesting realization. The article that I read, taking my brain straight to hell? Glenn Greenwald’s resignation from The Intercept. He perceived Biden-friendly censorship from that publication.

The realization: that I am uncomfortable with inferences he draws from facts he sees. I simultaneously admire his work and feel deep discomfort because he doesn’t think the same thoughts that I think. He doesn’t see the same facts that I see, either.

This discomfort is in the “within my control” region. Why am I uncomfortable? And so what if I am?

There is no finish line. Let go of the discomfort. That’s within my control.

It is also within my control to be fearless and clear-eyed. Reality seems to reveal itself in the face of fearlessness.

The kingdom of God is within.

Even the Stone Roses knew that. Listen to Breaking Into Heaven.

A feeling of unsatisfied yearning is a sign you’re looking for answers in the wrong place.

Even Johnny Lee knew that. Listen to Lookin’ for Love.

You are already home. You never left.

Something I realized after accidentally falling on a long, ranting, blog post. Long paragraphs, complex sentences, multi-syllable word.

The realization? Lots of words are bad. Long words are bad.

Be honest, be brief, and be seated. That’s my motto.

If you understand, you can explain. Simple words will do. Short sentences will work.

If you don’t understand, strive to understand before you explain.

Sometimes I have to write a giant stream of thought vomit to exhaust my bullshit and reveal the simple idea that is struggling to reveal itself. There is one such stream of bullshit sitting in drafts right now. It will never see the light of day, but the idea will.

Maybe that’s something to consider about authors and people I admire. Don’t take what they wrote as Godwords. Maybe that book they wrote was just wordvomit on the way to uncovering an idea in their head.

The principle? Write simply, because it’s likely to lead to clearer thinking, which means better ideas. Reality is simple. Reality doesn’t need a PhD to be lived well. And it doesn’t need a PhD’s prose either.

It could be from religious indoctrination I absorbed as a child: we are all sinners, sinning all the time. We are never good enough to be OK when God judges us. Even if you ask for forgiveness and have the slate wiped clean (does this really happen or does God secretly remember?) we are sinners and so a moment after getting to “good enough” we are doomed because we fucked something up. We are sinners, after all. It’s what we do.

Sounds insane, doesn’t it?

I can’t blame the preachers or the books written by the True Believers. I cherry-picked sentences and my brain assembled corrosive perspective. Yes I was a kid then. I’m not now.

You can’t see yourself as a victim. Staying there is a guarantee that your perceived lack (as a victim) will only get worse. Victims blame things outside their control for the position they’re in.

As soon as you say “yeah, that happened” and then ask yourself “so what am I going to do now?” you are a free man.

You are free because by turning to the question “what am I going to do now?” you accept whatever happened as outside of your control. Past is no longer relevant. You are free because you are asking a question that focuses on things within your control. You are going to act now (you can do that) and have a different attitude. The non-victim attitude.

So let’s stop the “finger-painting with your own shit” exercise of examining the past and blaming today’s performance on the past behavior of others. Doesn’t matter who. The church, parents, friends, Hitler (not the real one, but whoever you currently demonize as literally Hitler).

Even stop blaming yourself. That’s really the source of the falling short of the mark feeling. I’m a victim because yesterday me didn’t do pull-ups, or made a rash decision at work, or Thought Bad Thoughts.

Feeling bad because I’m a victim of me.

Sounds insane, doesn’t it?

Yeah, so yesterday doesn’t exist anymore. What am I doing today, right now?

Simple really. I have an aim. (And if I am aimless I have a target that can never be hit. I am not aimless.) Whether I hit the bullseye with my last shot or not is of no importance. All that matters is the shot I am taking now.

So how to fight the feeling of being a loser, a person who doesn’t perform well and never has and never will?

“What am I doing right now?” “What’s my target?” “Do it.” The attitude (focus on what I can do) and the action (do what I can do) are their own payoff. Feel that payoff.

Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.

G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain (The New World #7)

Who cares about the times? Life has always sucked and “the youth of today” have always fallen short of yesterday’s heroes (who are usually the vocal critics of today’s conditions).

None of that matters.

What kind of man do I choose to be?

There is only one choice.