KEEPING TALLY

October 8th, 2018

In a game of soccer or hockey, keeping tally is very important.  Relative to other sports, very few points are scored, so each point means a whole lot, whereas basketball games have the potential to finish with a difference of points in the dozens.

In sports, the matter of keeping tally is the end-all purpose of the game.  It is a means for ratcheting up the type of games we will see.  Keeping tally ensures – in theory – that we will see games of increasing skill on each side, and the hope and thinking behind this is that the game played will be of a higher caliber, a more rare variety, something special and unique.

The habit of keeping tally with numerical items often bleeds into places where it does damage.  The bill between friends at a restaurant, for instance.  This situation goes one of three ways.

Two friends might pay only for what each precisely had.

Or they might split the whole bill 50/50.

Or one of these friends will grab the bill and say, I got it this time.  With the tacit implication that the next time time is spent together, the favor will be returned.

These three possibilities show an increasing amount of leniency with regards to the details.  And from a business standpoint, this might seem unwise.  A penny saved is a penny earned, which means that a penny needlessly spent is double the loss it would be if saved.  But to look at friendships, or any close relationship as a kind of business transaction or business relationship is a mistake.    For the simple reason that there is an important factor at play beyond the pedantic ritual of keeping tally.  Cushy words like ‘love’ and ‘generosity’ aside, we must examine the reason why relationships beyond blood exist.  Friendships in particular are of greatest help to elucidate why keeping a strict tally is such bad practice.  Any friendship based solely on the specifics of what one has done for the other and the equivalence of those two set of acts is far more fragile than one that is not concerned with such.  Friendship that permits a much wider berth when balancing the checkbook of back scratches shows a much lager implicit value judgment that extends and includes things beyond the acts that can be easily monetized or numerically valued.  Such a circumstance between friends indicates a wider perspective.  Each person in such a friendship sees the other in a way that is greater than the sum of parts that can be seen ‘on paper’.    While this is obvious between good friends who are willing to give far more than they might expect in return, it would be a wise perspective to take on all human beings, friends and strangers alike.  The reason being that we cannot predict with absolute fidelity how someone will act or what they will become given a new circumstance.  While history is generally a good indication of how someone will act in the future, this is a general indication, and not an absolute one, which means while probabilities are high that someone won’t change, we cannot ignore the real possibility that a chance has the potential to lead to something new.  The flip side to remember is that no chance creates an  absolute probability: a probability of zero that something new will happen.  Generosity beyond the equal tally creates the opportunity for a non-zero probability that something new will happen. 

We might think of VC’s giving loads of capital to a small group of individuals with a new idea.  It might not pan out.  In fact, it probably won’t pan out, but the VC realizes that without a large initial act of generosity, some ideas have an absolute probability of zero when it comes to chances of materializing in reality.

Such is the perspective of loving friends with one another.  The potential absolute value of another person is frankly unknowable, and a real friend intuits this in practice.

What is that phrase about loving unconditionally?  The result of such unconditional tethers is never explicitly talked about.  For good reason: it is unpredictable, and unquantifiable. 

Many stories of karma elucidate this point: how a tiny gesture of kindness on one person’s part ends up saving their life when circumstances are flipped to a hyperbolic degree.

Whether it be karma or the strategy of Venture Capitalists or a bill unsplit between friends at a bar, the whole concept of keeping a tally usually undermines our long-term hopes for the way we function in the world, which is almost exclusively through our relationships to others.  That being said,

It’s best to throw away the scoreboard.  We must still be mindful of leeches that want to simply take advantage of us, but realizing such does take time, and may result in lost resources, but in the long run it’s best to give everyone the benefit of the doubt longer than feels comfortable.  Simply put, none of us know what kind of long-term investment we might be making.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: NIBBLE

October 7th, 2018

When Lucilius was young and full of restless wander, he set off on a great journey.  With a pack of essentials, a few beloved books for study, and good weather, he set off.

He was not far from the town he had left when a terrible odor wrapped about him, choking him of air.  The sky was clear, but the air was still.  And in that stillness, something had flooded.  He walked on, a scarf over his mouth, and then finally he came upon the cause.

A deer, some time dead was a few feet from the path.  There being few predators in these parts, it was being claimed by thousands of insects. 

Lucilius watched for a moment, forgetful of the awful stench, entranced by the awesome sight of nature. 

Each tiny creature was carrying off a piece of the animal so small it was unseeable.  And yet the carcass was clearly wasting away. 

Lucilius watched the spectacle until the stench was too much and then he carried on.

Several days later, Lucilius was aching from the days of walking.  The pack felt as though it had become heavier and he was beginning to wonder what he was doing.

It was then the weather started to turn.

First the skies darkened.  Then the rains came.  And Lucilius was soon walking wet and cold.

The rains did not let up and several days later, Lucilius felt frail under the constant taps of cold drops, his clothes soaked with weight, his pack and books drenched.

Lucilius stopped in the trail, and he was blessed with a clear moment of thought.

He asked his shivering body if it was really so cold.  And though it was unpleasant, he began to suspect that his mind was making it out to be worse than it really was.

He wondered how this could have happened.  No great misfortune had befallen him.  His clothes would eventually dry, and so would his books.  His skin and body would not suffer as they might under a grueling desert sun.  But how could his mind turn on him like this and make things worse.

At that moment a single drop of rain landed on his nose and made his eyes clapped shut. 

A single drop.

Lucilius wondered how many drops must have found him in the last few days.  He had felt each one, and carried most of them until they drenched down his clothes and body.

Each one had taken a small toll.

Or rather, he had allowed each drop to take a toll on him.

It was then he remembered the deer, being slowly eaten, and smiled. 

Lucilius walked on, untroubled by the rain.

Years later, after many adventures, and much contemplation, Lucilius finds himself often sought for counsel. A young man approaches him, full from a feast.  Well acquainted with Lucilius, he tosses himself down next to the wise man and belches.

“Lucilius, I am so very full.  I feel like I might pop.”

“I do hope you’ll keep from popping my good friend.”

“We shall see, but in the meantime, I need your advice:  I have been tasked with a huge endeavor.  It is so large I have no idea how I might accomplish such a feat.  How does one do anything so tremendous?”

“Blinders,” says Lucilius.

“Blinders? Like on a horse?”

“Yes.”

“Lucilius, you are like a wise elder, but sometimes you say such strange things.  How might blinders help me with my big task.”

“You see too much.  Just as your eyes were bigger than your stomach at the feast today.  You have eaten yourself silly, and now you can only lay useless while you recover.”

“I see too much? I eat too much?  How does this help me, you strange old hermit?”

Lucilius remembers the deer and the rain from years ago, and smiling, continues, “If you face something larger than yourself, you cannot unhinge your jaw and consume it whole, like some great snake.”

The young man looks disapprovingly at Lucilius, then regards his taut belly with comforting hands as Lucilius continues,

“You must take your time, my friend.  You must nibble.”

SANDCASTLES IN THE SURF

October 6th, 2018

What percentage of thoughts during any given day are actually useful and lead to positive action?  While this is certainly an impossible number to ascertain, we can make a reliable estimation of which way the scale tips.  Most likely most thoughts are useless.

And what are these thoughts that we find the majority of our day lost in centering around?  Do they center on the present?  Unless we spend the majority of the day performing brain surgery, chances are good that the majority of our days is not spent centered on the present.  This leaves either the future or the past to think about.  With either, there are only two general dispositions that we can take.  Either we are yearning for or resisting.  We might yearn for a better future that is better than both our past and our present, or we can dread the future, and simultaneously yearn for some kind of nostalgic past.  Likewise, we can dread the past, obsessing in a circular rut about some embarrassing instance.  We can even dread both in flip-flop fashion.  Disliking where we’ve come from, where we’ve gone and feeling pessimistic about what tomorrow might bring.

Spending more than a little time in any of these islands of thought do little to no good.  Regardless of how much we wax poetic about some wonderful past or wan over some idealized future, we get to experience neither.  The present is all that is ever available to us.

It is all too easy to imagine someone with comfortable resources being miserable on some island vacation get-away.  When we juxtapose this with a group of barefoot children smiling while playing a game in squalid conditions, it’s plain to see that our internal disposition dictates our experience, not our external circumstance. 

Easily described in theory, difficult in practice.

A single decision to focus on the present is a trap door for failure.

We must build a trend of like decisions to focus on the present.  Every time we catch ourselves lost in thought about the past of the future, we must remember our singular condition of being solely planted in the present.  Other thoughts new and old will arise and wash away our focus, but if we continually build, like a child building sandcastles in the surf, we can achieve a lasting impression.

Vacation, for example is often seen and utilized as a pressure release valve for the monotony of the workweek.  Perhaps we will read a book, but often the desire and goal is to indulge in a languid infinity.  Retirement is likewise seen as the pressure release for most of life, and those who do not plan on retirement being plump with new and different activities often find their physical and mental health on a much quicker path of atrophy.

A vacation would be better spent in thoughtful contemplation about the wider scheme of life.  If the need for the pressure release of vacation is so constant, perhaps this is a comment on our daily workweek, and a break is not needed, but a levelling-up of the work we do.

Such a thoughtful contemplation requires a mindful understanding of what the present moment feels like across many of our like moments.  This requires looking in the rearview mirror at some kind of set of data points of mindful moments during our work week, where we can genuinely ask if our abilities are being used at their cutting edge.  If not, then our priorities need to shift in order to slowly transform the present into a more fulfilling pattern of activities.  Executing a shift of priorities might involve eschewing certain habits and ways of living and clawing at the introduction of others.  Success in both these fields is determined by how well we can walk the tightrope of the present.  We will fail, constantly, perpetually and find ourselves lost in the ruts of old, habitual thinking, but if we spend enough time building  sandcastles in the surf, we may realize that when the tide finally goes out, it is not a time to sit back, order a margarita, and let thoughts melt away into a stupor.  It’s time to put our practice of the present to work and build a castle that cannot be washed away by the next tide.

This episode references a bunch.  Episode 32: Rear-view, Episode 10: Priorities, Episode 88: Tightrope, Episode 125: Rut, and Episode 12: Natural Spring.

WISECRACK CANARY

October 5th, 2018

Humor provides a very important function, beyond entertainment, for human relationships. The comedy within a group of any size of people provides a unique perspective that can register an important metric about the group’s mentality and health.

In the age of Kings, the court Jester walked a difficult path of providing entertainment by pushing boundaries without going so far as to piss off the king to such a degree that the jester would lose his job and potentially his life – the most extreme form of censorship.

When the mental tone of a group starts to veer towards a composition that historically looks like totalitarianism, it’s the journalists, along with the comedians who are the target of censorship first.  But we need not look at such a large scale of people to see the effect and need of humor within a human group.

Just as the jester pushed the boundaries in the court, most humor is an attempt to push some kind of boundary.  The most tempting question might be to try and ask what exactly this boundary is, but any answer is far less informative than the more obvious answer to the question of which direction is the boundary moving?  Comedy is often an attempt to push this boundary out, to expand the circle of conversation.  One function of humor may simply be to arouse a good feeling while we introduce a difficult or unpleasant subject to the realities of language.  This good feeling evoked by humor may be incredibly important for the very reason that the difficult or unpleasant subject would never enter the world of conversation otherwise.  This expanding and inclusionist function of comedy may very well be one of the most important mechanisms we have for hauling problems into a light where we can see them clearly enough to try and solve them.

When the boundary of conversation is moving in the other direction, comedy, like journalists, functions like a canary in a coalmine.  If comedians are being shunned, censored, or worse, we can be fairly certain that the scope and breadth of conversation for that group of people is getting smaller.  Suddenly issues that were in the conversation that might have been solved, begin to be erased from the public sphere, perhaps because some larger, overarching answer to problems claims to have been found.

While these ponderings about comedy appear geared to large populations, the same ideas may apply very well to much smaller groups, right down the the smallest group of just two people.  We might ask how much is available for conversation when humor is not a possibility between two people.  Humor might not be present between two people, but it’s more important to see if humor is simply not possible. If humor becomes less possible between two people than it’s probably a fairly reliable sign that something deep has gone sour.  After all humor is generally a hallmark of good friendships.

Comedy may even have something fundamental to say about a single individual’s mind and if it is set on expanding to a more generous context or not:

It’s simply impossible to make fun of someone who is going to genuinely laugh along with you.

Perhaps this is why it’s so easy to make fun of wannabe dictators.

Their shrinking minds are so easily… trumped.

This episode references Episode 163: What the fool believes. 

ALWAYS WITH YOU

October 4th, 2018

When we feel very good, when we are happy.  Where exactly does the feeling, the experience and the sensation exist?

If we concentrate on the experience of happiness in the most specific sense, what would our answer look like?

Most people would probably report a feeling of lightness in the chest and the body.  Maybe a sort of bubbling feeling somewhere around where we expect the voice to originate from.  Maybe a kind of relaxation and ease with our external circumstance, and of course, probably a big smile.

This need not be some kind of deeply inaccessible circumstance that we must mine out of life.  All of these sensations are very close to any other state of being. 

We might also think about the reverse.  What does sadness or anxiety feel like.  Chances are we’d report a certain heaviness in the chest or a sinking frenzied feeling in the stomach area.  A choking up of our voice, perhaps even a welling of sensation around the eyes and a tight brow.

We must regard these as bodily sensations first and foremost beyond anything else.  They are separate from any external circumstance that we feel might be their cause or trigger.  It’s very important to realize that there is no direct mechanism between any external event and the way we might feel that does not involve some kind of physical alteration of our body.  Although even those who have suffered major bodily trauma still find it within themselves to feel the satisfying feelings of levity and happiness, which works further to show just how untethered our emotional state is from circumstances outside of our direct control.

Happiness is always with you.  If you so chose. 

Phrasing it as such might feel aggravating for those who find it difficult to activate within themselves.  We might wish to phrase It another way:  the physical mechanisms that allow us to experience happiness are present in our body and in our mind wherever we take them.  Recognizing that the mechanisms for happiness are not directly connected to external circumstances is one of the most important realizations to come across. 

We might be convinced that getting sideswiped by a car, or not getting the promotion or being unfairly criticized by a spouse are good reasons to feel aggravated, annoyed, disappointed or downright depressed, but all human lives are peppered with an unending stream of things both big and small to get upset about.

When we dwell on such things in a way that perpetuates feelings of unhappiness, it is akin to keeping a hand too close to a fire as opposed to having the wisdom to back away.  One circumstance is far more pleasant and dwelling beyond the obvious lessons of the past never reveals any deeper wisdom that can be applied to our present or future.

Luckily the paths to happiness are varied and stable, and with practice such paths become increasingly short so that we may call up a nearly perpetual feeling of wellbeing if we so choose.  While the obvious and often recommended ingredients of exercise and good diet, meaningful work, well balanced time with friends and the healthy relationships within family are a good start, the most direct path is the quickest and most enduring:  the realization that no external circumstance need dictate our emotional state. 

Given any adversity it is possible to calmly smile. 

Remembering that possibility is always with us can, with time and practice, grow to become the way we enjoy the process of living.