SELECTING THE SOLUTION

May 1st, 2018

Is the best solution the one that solves as quick as possible?

Problems and solutions are often thought of in a rigid way, the way puzzle pieces fit. Only one piece fits into another.

For that sort of problem, yes, one solution exists. But that’s a simple problem.

Most problems are more complicated and might respond to a great variety of solutions. Which do we choose? Often the quickest and easiest. At least that’s how it seems at the beginning. Often those quick and easy solutions compound the problem, or spawn a new problem, or they are somehow incomplete. Inevitably this creates more work. The pattern is repeated, and a quick solution to the new version of the problem is applied. Bureaucracies are stellar at this snowball effect: creating largely unnecessary amounts of work over the long term by implementing short term solutions. (In essence this is the bad side of business, creating busy-ness in lieu of forging a new path, with clear and curious vision.)

The method of selecting a solution has become the real problem.

Unless you are snapping puzzle pieces together or dodging a baseball, quick and easy does not get it done.

A better way to seek the solution is to think about the nature of the solution, the work and the time.

Perhaps this is a more useful question:

What solution results in the least amount of time and effort over the long term?

Installing a sprinkler system might seem like a lot of time and work up front, but it’s better than running around putting out fires forever.

FIREBOMB YOUR LIFE

April 30th, 2018

The better things are, the less likely we want to stir the pot. Right?

Is the opposite true? Shouldn’t it make sense that the worse things are, the more willing we should be to stir the pot? I mean, what do you have to lose? Cut roots and take to the wind.

If things are mediocre, and this whole game ends with death anyhow, why not get feisty with the time left? Like those seniors who escaped from their retirement home. They had nothing to lose.

Perhaps the more interesting bit about those seniors is if they’d wished they’d developed that attitude sooner in life…

The only person who is really watching you, is you. At the very least, do yourself a favor and make it entertaining.

SAMPLE ALL THE KOOL-AIDES

April 29th, 2018

Why not try any available strategy to make it happen? Even if we don’t like it. Perhaps the more important question is why don’t we like it? 

Plants and trees strike their roots out in every direction possible. Just to cover their bases. You never know where the goods are going to be. 

Zig Ziglar might have a bunch of religious things to say, but does one potentially unattractive aspect taint the whole thing? Maybe. But if things are truly not good. Isn’t “I’ll take what I can get” or “I’ll use what I’ve got” a better strategy than the cynicism, nihilism, and the overly-critical mindset that got us to such a low point? Isn’t denying one’s self the potential good of something that’s not perfect, a limitation and a potential hindrance to making progress? . . .Much like the one little limiting religious aspect of the exuberant lecture that might make it seem for some like a claustrophobic turn-off? 

Shunning everything that might help simply because it’s not perfect, invariably limits us. From the benefits, from the growth, from the chance to develop a smarter mind, that can pick out all the useful, nutritious pieces for a future self, a better self. 

Identifying negatives for the sake of more inaction has a negative impact on us. It’s like passing up a free $5 because it’s not a ten dollar bill. 

If we’re really drowning, we’ll grab for anything. 

If we’re really drowning, we’ll break all limits of our personal bubble and reach out. 

If we’re really drowning, what have we got to lose?

First we must sample all the Kool-Aides.  And then we must cherry-pick, mix and match the flavors that will work just for us.

LIGHTNING AND TREES

April 28th, 2018

Trees throw their roots and branches in all directions to cover their bases.  You just can’t be sure where the water or the sun is going to be.   

This has something in common with lightning.

We naturally think of lightning as something that is instant and certain, but examining the formation of lightning on a microsecond level yields some fascinating stuff.

If you slow down some footage of lightning (and there’s some good youtube video of this with a link on the post at the tinkeredthinking website) you will see that long before the visible lightning occurs, there is a little blast of electricity that scatters out from a cloud.  It looks like many many pieces of lightning that are all branching out simultaneously.  Each arm is reaching, searching, changing direction every instant.  This tangle of lightening grows and grows and grows until.

One of them touches something.  Then.

boom.

The one path from the cloud through all of the other possible paths lights up a thousand fold, and that’s the lightning we see.  We don’t see all the other ‘failed’ ones that didn’t touch anything.  It’s the survivor basis of storms.  We only see the path that made it.  We don’t see all the other searching, wandering attempts.

Before the boom, lightning looks very much like a tree, reaching out in as many directions as possible.  But unlike a tree, lightening only needs one touch to work.

Can we learn from something as mundane as a tree and something as spectacular as lightening?

How many directions have each of us wandered?  Truly wandered.

How many ways have we tried it? How many more ways could it have been tried?

How have we covered our bases?

What do trees and lightening have in common? 

They are both a structural analogy for Curiosity.

NATURAL SPRING

April 27th, 2018

Picture a village well.

It’s a source of life that is visited daily by everyone.

Picture this village well overflowing. Forget everything about aquifers and how natural springs occur in nature. Forget the village. Just picture a well with nothing but fairly even ground all around it, and this well is overflowing.

What happens to the water? It spills over the edges of the well and goes all over the place in a growing blob. It advances with the small fluctuations in the land around it, racing into a dip and filling. Overflowing again, uncontrolled.

What to do?

Imagine you had a short time before you knew the well was going to overflow. What could you do?

Picture yourself like a kid at the beach, scraping out a path that leads out from the well. Then the water overflows once more. 

But this time, it has somewhere to go, if only for a short distance. Your small canal fills up and leads the water quickly out in the direction you chose. Till it reaches the end and the canal overflows. The chaos of too much water spreads again.

The next time, the remnant of your canal is still there. The edges have rounded, and it’s filled in some. But it’s something compared to nothing. It takes no time to shape it up again, make it a little longer, deeper, give it a turn or two. And then before the well overflows, you have time to start another canal leading off in a different direction. 

This time both your canals carry off the water till it’s too much and everything overflows again.

But you work again, and each time, you deepen your canals, you lengthen them and you add new ones.

Eventually, one day. The well will overflow, and your network of canals will fill like dominos falling. It will flow and glisten like some kind of magnificent maze. A landscape of your own design.

But what are we talking about here?

The well is simply the source of emotion. The water is the emotion. Doesn’t matter what kind, happy or sad. Just raw emotion.

When a child has a temper tantrum, that water is gushing from the well and going everywhere. 

The canals dug out from that well are our habits, our strategies, our systems. And they are all our own design. We may have built them haphazardly, even unconsciously, and probably poorly. Some may even lead to bad places. Perhaps only a few have been dug, and often overflow, leaving us to look like that little child, deranged by emotion. Rendered incapable, paralyzed and confused.

But each day is an opportunity to dig.

And while it may be constantly discouraging to see your canals flooded and overflowing, rounded and partially filled each time. At least something of them still exists when the waters recede. And you have something to work with. Something to work on. 

Till one day. After so many days of consistent constant work – work too big to be done in a day, work that must be done like dominos, when only one block can be set up in a day. Some kind of black swan comes along. Something unanticipated, perhaps disastrous. And the well overflows.

But now you respond differently. You have planned by practicing. By working and building. You interpret the disaster differently, and instead of simply reacting, now, you can take action. 

Your mandala of water is unfulfilled without emotion. 

And now some disaster has become an opportunity to see it work. 

What a gift.

P.S. Remember, once rivers get deep enough, they start digging on their own. Think of the grand canyon. Think of all your bad habits, and how entrenched them seem, how deep they have dug on their own. What about good habits? Where will you dig next?