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The Other Guy (Independence Ramble)

When you look at the other guy, try to keep in mind that you don’t know him.

You don’t know the battles he’s fought and won (and lost).

You don’t know the way he looks at the world.

You don’t know his fears, his hopes, his dreams.

You don’t know what he’s thinking.

You don’t know his troubles – they may even be worse than yours.

You don’t know his triumphs.

You don’t know his pain.

You don’t know why he does what he does.

You don’t know his past, his present, or his future, and, concerning this last one, neither does he.

You don’t know what frame he’s coming from.

You don’t know what drives him – what gets him out of bed in the morning – what keeps him up at night.

You don’t know that earlier that day, he had a falling out with a friend, or a painful phone call with his wife, or an argument with his daughter.

You don’t know what he’s had to overcome.

Even after you’ve got to know him a bit, the other guy remains an enigma – an unraveled coil of mysteries, intangible darknesses, and hidden secrets.

The other guy’s Life may cross your Life, but they’re not the same Lives. He may affect, or seem to affect you, somehow, but you are still You even when he leaves the room, or you pass him in a crowd.

The other guy is not you.

The other guy (or gal) is doing what makes sense to him (or her).

Why should that make sense to you?

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Right Next Door

I walked to the plaza next door to get my favorite smoothie, Peanut Butter and Banana. As I approached the door to the shop, I was having second thoughts. I knew that this particular shop made all of their smoothies with soy, an ingredient I try to stay away from (soy raises estrogen levels – not a good thing for a guy). But I still wanted my smoothie.

Two doors down, there’s another shop that sells smoothies. I get a lunch bowl there from time to time (they have a wonderful one with shredded carrots, purple cabbage, green curry sauce) and I knew they have smoothies, but I had never tried one. I asked the girl if she wouldn’t mind putting a scoop of peanut butter in their banana smoothie, and ended up getting a smoothie that, while not quite the PB&B I was used to, was a tasty and more hormonally sound alternative. And distinctly peanut butter-y.

I got to thinking about how this applies in a bigger-picture way. Many times, I’ll be facing a problem and not know the solution. The problem may be a biproduct of something that gives me value (as in the case of the delicious smoothie with the estrogen-raising soy). I might even put up with the value-giving thing (smoothie), because it’s working for me, even though the problem (soy) isn’t. But one day, I decide that the problem isn’t worth the value I’m getting, and I need a solution.

Funny enough, the solution can actually be right next door – and I just, for some reason, wasn’t seeing it. The minute I realized soy was going to be a problem, I could have hopped next door and got something just as good or better without the problem. But I didn’t think to do that, until today.

Why?

I wish I knew. But I do know that this is a common phenomenon. Many of us wrestle with problems, but don’t see the solutions that are right in front of our faces. Maybe this is a rude but useful reminder that we’re Human, after all. Or maybe there’s a more convenient lesson here.

Maybe it’s safe to start looking next door for a solution. Obviously, there are no guarantees. But how much time – and, in my case, testosterone – could we save if we were more open to the possibility that the answer could be waiting for us if we just… turned our heads?

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Manic-Expressive

My dictionary defines Depression as:

severe despondency and dejection, typically felt over a period of time and accompanied by feelings of hopelessness and inadequacy.

I wish I could say I have no idea what this feels like, but unfortunately I’m all too familiar. In fact, I’ve dealt with depression intimately ever since my early 20’s. Hell, maybe even before. I was pretty emotional even as a kid. Then again, what kid wasn’t emotional?

There’s a medical definition as well, but it’s basically the same as the one I’ve just given, with some more specifics. I’m not going to argue with Merriam-Webster, but I’d like to propose an alternative definition to depression.

Depression, as I see it, is exactly what it is: a depressing, a closing in, a shutting off. It is so debilitating because it causes its host to do the opposite of what it was designed to do: to open up, to expand, to bloom. All energy is by its very nature expansive, and wanting to go out. Depression is the perverse opposite of this: a withdrawing in – but not in a way that serves the Being, but in a way that blocks it.

I wish I could say I knew the quick and easy cure. I could go on about emotions being like storm clouds, about how it’s all in one’s perception, but what good would that do? I’m not here to solve problems.

I like to think I’m not alone, however. In this big, scary, wonderful world, I like to think there’s others out there who knows what this contracting feeling is like – just as they know what the expanding feeling is like. I’d like to connect with those people – to get to know them by name, and to see what they’re all about. Not so we can commiserate with each other, NO! But so that we can begin to help each other. So that we can get out of the unnatural closing feeling, and get into the natural opening feeling.

Maybe we could go all the way to the other end of the spectrum. To a place where we’re open and blooming. That’s the way we’re supposed to be, it seems to me.

Manic Expressive.

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The Map Is Not The Road

Yesterday I was driving home from one of my all-time favorite places, Denny’s, and I was using my Garmin, as I am in the habit of doing when I go almost anywhere whose route I don’t know by heart, and it struck me that I did know where I was going, but I was still intently using my Garmin.

I knew that if I just continued down the road I was on, in a couple of miles I would make a right turn onto the road that would take me home, but I was so used to using GPS that I forgot that I had my own internal GPS.

This got me thinking about Life in general. Sometimes we just don’t know when or where the next turn will be, so we look to somebody else’s compass to guide our own way. We get caught in a one-dimensional view of reality (like the screen on the Garmin) rather than take a look around and get our bearings. Ironically, we lose touch with the real reality in favor of a map that’s designed to represent it.

Maps and Garmins are useful, but they are by no means the real reality – they are by no means the road we are traversing. Sometimes the most useful means of navigation is the one inside.

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Practice is not always necessary.

If I am perfectly happy with my skills I already have, and am confident I can retain them without practicing, there is no need for me to practice.

If I find more joy resonating in what I’ve already accumulated, then the more important thing for me and for the world might be for me to start “being myself.”

I can “be myself” (innovate) purely and truly only if I am 100% OK with the skills and the information I have at hand. What this means is that I have an Inner Life that is at such a high vibration that whatever it is that I normally practice (piano, Portuguese, parasailing) resonates with that vibration.

Frequently, to be maintained, this Inner Life requires more than just the vibration. It also requires engaging with Life and with Higher Consciousness on many different levels and in many different areas. These could be anything from practicing yoga to eating blueberry pancakes.

So, as it turns out, “being myself” requires, for most of us, more than just “being.” It requires “acting.” It requires conscious and deliberate steps towards the things that makes us tick. Sometimes part of this is Practice, and sometimes it isn’t.

If we Act in the right way, we can start get closer to who we really are and what we can offer the world.

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What Meaning Means

The difference between a meaningful life and a meaningless life is Action. Action being taken, specifically, towards a connection with something greater than ourselves.

If, in the moment, no particular Action is being taken to experience “higher consciousness” or “state of Grace” or “God” or whatever you’d like to call it, Life is without meaning.

Actually, life is always having meaning. It’s just not so obvious when the person living it is not taking Action towards something greater than his or her self.

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Information vs. Innovation

Real innovation comes from having the courage to sound like yourself. There’s a catch, though. Part of sounding like yourself is knowing what “you” sounds like. And you can’t know that until you listen to a few Others who already know what they sound like.

I’ve always been kind of envious of those who seem to be really good at assimilating bits and pieces of these Others. I guess that’s mostly because I always run into cats who seem to have more of a knack for assimilating than I do.

I’ve done a bit of assimilating, and I’m sure I’ll do more. But right now what intrigues me is the idea of working with what I’ve got. In other words, sounding more like myself.

It can be all too easy to have a hard time finding out what you sound like because you’re so concerned with properly sounding like someone else. As far as I can see, the only antidote for that is stopping acquiring more information – getting back to a Space inside of us that is uniquely ours.

I imagine it would go in a Cycle: Learn, Forget, Learn, Forget, Learn, Forget. The more complex the task, the more there is to learn – and therefore, of course, the more there is to forget.

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Money Or Time?

A friend told me about a study done showing that most Americans have next to nothing in their savings accounts.

The actual statistic: 69% have less than $1,000 and 34% have no savings at all.

In other words, if your savings account has more than a grand in it, you fall into the unbelievably small 21%.

This got me wondering, is this really all about unwise financial decisions? Or could it have something to do with the actual ability to save? Having worked my share of odd jobs myself (TV salesman, cashier, waiter, dishwasher), I know something about how challenging it can be, having certain levels of income, to actually save money.

Saving money is not just the act of putting money into a savings account. As far as I’ve seen, there is really one major factor: Time.

Though I can’t cite statistics, I know that car payments, rent, mortgage payments, food, fuel, utilities, and insurance of all kinds, are facts. Never mind any expenses that do not fall into insurance, or recreational expenses of any kind. In order to account for all of these things, it seems safe to conclude that every American below a certain income level must devote a fair amount of Time to, well, Working. (And unless you’re very lucky, your job is not perfectly aligned with your creative or Artistic talents or Vision.)

Ironically, some of the very activities needed to save money (cooking at home, minimizing travel, designing and keeping to a budget) can be hard-pressed to fit into Time that’s already spent Working.

Maybe these far-out numbers reflect a deeper problem than poor spending habits.

Source: Yahoo!: “Here’s how much Americans at every age have in their savings accounts” by Kathleen Elkins

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Should You Quit Your Job?

In Cal Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest For Work You Love, he provides an algorithm to be used in order to find out whether you should quit your job. I’m quoting from memory:

There are three criteria:

  1. You really hate the people you work with.
  2. You feel that the job is not helping people or doing anything good for the world.
  3. There is no room for innovation.

The first criterion is more or less black and white – you either do or you don’t hate the people you work with. The second two are far more subjective. Who’s to say if the world is being made a better place? And as far as innovation goes, are we talking within the confines of the job itself, or innovation outside of the workplace as well?

Most people aren’t interested in the second two criteria. They’re most likely already good at their job, or they don’t have any other source of income on which to fall back. But for those of us who are, it might benefit us to contemplate them if we’re not entirely certain that our current jobs will hold much promise in the long run.

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The Problem With The “Attraction Hypothesis”

There’s a couple of different ways of explaining why what happens to us happens, and why we get what we get.

One way would be to say, we created it. We had ideas, we had experiences, we had desires, and somehow these “attracted” the circumstances in our lives. We “reap the fields we sow.”

This may be the truth of how things work, but I would hope that everybody doesn’t buy into it. If everybody buys into it, you’ve got everybody expecting something. For example, according to the “attraction” hypothesis, if I want something bad enough, I will eventually attract it.

But this puts the idea, experience, or desire first. It suggests, “This is what you need to do, or think, or be, to have X.” But why would I want to have X in the first place?

The problem comes when I think X has anything whatsoever to do with my happiness. The problem comes when I think X has anything to do with the idea that I don’t have X, but I could have X.

Why not just start with Zero? Zero doesn’t create expectations. Zero doesn’t lead to disappointments. Zero is just Zero.

I am what I am, and I have what I have. Why? Because I am it, and I have it. The “attraction hypothesis” is flawed, in my opinion, because it mixes up our priorities. I believe the first priority should be figuring out what or who we are. Once we start there, we might find that our ideas, experiences, and desires have even less to do with us than we thought!