Perspective

Mind your own

May 4, 2021

Not to support this side or that in chariot-racing, this fighter or that in the games. To put up with discomfort and not make demands. To do my own work, mind my own business, and have no time for slanderers.

~ Marcus Aurelius

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I recently had a run-in— well, to be accurate, I drove off the road… But I’ll call it a “run-in” with reality. (No injuries, no serious damage, just a bit of unexpected adventure in what should have been a boring car ride.)

First, as I touch-typed that previous sentence, I ended that parenthetical note by typing, “…a boring car die.)” If that’s not a Freudian slip, (where you mean one thing but say your mother,) I don’t know what it is. I stared at it for a moment and then corrected it, as it now appears above. Driving off the road didn’t scare me, but it has clearly been rattling around my thoughts recently.

Second, after more thought in the days after: Yeah, I’m ok with what I’m up to these days. Doing my own work. Working on minding my own business. Not making demands. Putting up with discomfort. …and that last one is not a passive-aggressive, “that’s ok I’ll just sit here in the dark.” (How many grandmothers does it take to change a light bulb? in case you didn’t catch that.) I mean simply putting up with discomfort; it’s hot, I’m sweaty and the gnats are annoying, sort of discomfort.

Anyway, I’ve just added this wonderful reminder from Aurelius to my collection of daily reflection prompts. There were 57, and now there are 58. It also becomes quote number 652 in my growing collection. If you’re curious about how these posts are created, it’s a mixture of scheduled posts and daily writing. Instead of scheduling this one out somewhere in the future—which does have the advantage of surprising me when they do pop out… Instead, I’m opting to drop it here to give me some room for more thoughts.

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The span we live is small

September 4, 2020

Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see. The span we live is small—small as the corner of the Earth in which we live it. Small as even the greatest renown, passed from mouth to mouth by short-lived stick figures, ignorant alike of themselves and those long dead.

~ Marcus Aurelius

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The clock of the Long Now

June 22, 2020

There is a Clock ringing deep inside a mountain. It is a huge Clock, hundreds of feet tall, designed to tick for 10,000 years. Every once in a while the bells of this buried Clock play a melody. Each time the chimes ring, it’s a melody the Clock has never played before. The Clock’s chimes have been programmed to not repeat themselves for 10,000 years.

~ Kevin Kelly from, The Clock of the Long Now – Long Now

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The Long Now Foundation was started in 01996. They always include the leading zero in years as just another subtle way to get one to think long-term. I can’t say for sure that I’ve been following them since they started, but it’s got to be darn close. I will be going to Texas, (and to Nevada if I live long enough to see the second clock built,) to visit.

The 10,000-year clock is just one project. Grab your favorite beverage, put your phone on do-not-disturb and go spend an hour or so reading what the Long Now Foundation is up to.

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Stretched out before me

June 11, 2020

I was aching for what came next. I felt my whole life stretched out before me like an invisible buffet. I turned toward my future, mouth watering.

~ Amy Poehler from, Take Your Licks | The New Yorker

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Partly I simply wanted an excuse to quote some well-crafted prose.

But mostly I like the image she conveyed. The visceral potential of it all. The feeling that at any moment—but I’m not quite hurrying—I will intentionally turn a corner and I’ll be able to see down the next street. There’s nothing particularly wrong with this street of course.

But do you recall what it was like to long to look around that corner?

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It’s really hard to see from another’s perspective

April 8, 2020

In such a simple situation, I placed a message in what I thought was the best position: The door knocker.

~ Steven Pressfield from, Stick It To The Doorknob

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It used to be that when someone asked me to look at something, or for feedback, I took it very seriously. Not “gravely” serious, but appropriately serious. I allocated what I felt would be sufficient time to give the task my undivided attention. I gave the whatever-it-was a deep thinking-through and tried to melt my mind into all the nooks and crannies(*).

No more!

Why? Because what do I desperately want when I ask someone for feedback? I want their fresh perspective.

I’ve already thought about it six ways to Sunday—I don’t even know what that means. I’ve a reason for every minuscule feature, every character, every color, … I don’t want you to ask me what sort of feedback I want… I don’t want you to get a pencil and pad out to write an outline… I don’t want you to think about what would be he best feedback to make the thing better… And these days I’m figuring that’s what everyone else wants too.

Just my first reaction. If I’m on my game, maybe my first few reactions; bonus points if I can muster a few positives and negatives. But either way, just *pow*, no holds barred. RFN (right now). As Pressfield said, hang the note right on the doorknob: “Your baby is ugly.” “That’s the most elegant Rube-Goldberg device I’ve ever seen.”

And then maybe ask a question or three once I’ve done the hard work of doing what I was asked.

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* Anyone else always associate that phrase with butter and Thomas’s English muffins?

Artificial constraints

December 7, 2019

A lot of my thinking, and sometimes even my problem solving, revolves around juxtaposition. What would the inverse of the current this be? Can I gain useful perspective from the other position? Big/small, loud/quiet, perfuse/sparse, etc.; there are many obvious qualities that create striking changes in perspective. However, I find particularly rewarding juxtapositions in unusual dimensions, and there’s one dimension in particular that pays off more than all others: Time.

Have a problem? …how would I solve it if I had 100 years? …what would have to be the case if I were going to solve it in 5 minutes?

It’s become common to talk about “minimum viable product” in the entrepreneurial space, and that’s a form of time constraint. (But it’s a useful idea because it also includes other constraints such as resources and people.)

The famous Getting Things Done system has many critical components. One in particular is paying attention to the next action for any given project. (And in GTD everything you do in your entire life is a ‘project’.) This too is a form of time constraint; it’s not, “I’ll move this project forward at some point in time,” (the perspective of unlimited time,) rather it’s, “if I was going to move this project forward in the next minute…”

Where in your life might a shift to expectation of greater or lesser time yield a huge benefit?

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This too shall pass

July 25, 2019

This is a news flash to some: It’s okay to experience unpleasant feelings. It’s okay for things to happen that you don’t want to happen. It is possible to notice these things happening and consciously allow them to be there. And it makes a huge difference to how traumatic or not-so-bad the experience ends up being.

~ David Cain, from It’s okay to be here

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I believe that in some people circumspection develops with age.

I love to remind myself: If things are not going as I’d wish, relax because they won’t last. Also, if things are going as I’d wish, relax because they won’t last either.

There will be a last time that I awake from sleep. There will be a last time I have dinner with my mom. There will be a last line of software I write. There will be a last parkour jump I do. There will also be a last wasp sting, a last broken bone, a last heart-break, and the hottest and stickiest time I’ve ever experienced.

Why exactly should I be affected by the flat tire on my bicycle, the traffic jam, the cancelled flight or the irate customer?

In the end, it is all the same.

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Look at that

July 4, 2019

In outer space you develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, “Look at that, you son of a bitch.”

~ Edgar Mitchell

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All comes out even at the end

April 20, 2019

Weak as I am, I carry on the war to the last moment, I get a hundred pike thrusts, I return two hundred and I laugh. I see near my door Geneva on fire with quarrels over nothing, and I laugh again; And, thank god, I can look upon the world as a farce even when it becomes as tragic as it sometimes does. All comes out even at the end of the day, and all comes out still more even when all the days are over.

~ Voltaire

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Sleep

April 3, 2019

There are exceptions, such as when I travel, where I end up unconscious on some other horizontal surface, but it’s as sure a rule as any that no matter what kinds of wild or unpredictable events happen during the day, the conclusion is quite predictable: me, horizontal and comatose.

~ David Cain from, We’re quite different but we still sleep together

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Elsewhere, I’ve written specifically about sleeping. Sleep itself is fascinating, and a critical component to—well, everything; Life, quality thereof, the ability to think, and so on.

But until I read David’s piece, I’ve never had the vertiginous perspective of millions of people laying out horizontally and slipping unconscious. A rolling wave of countless people passing into unconsciousness as the world rotates. It’s eery, a third of all people are unconscious right at this moment. Also this moment. And in a relatively few more moments, I will be unconscious again.

I’m not certain, but I think my perspective upon first awakening may have shifted a little towards the, “oh! This is interesting,” end of things.

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Happiness first

March 28, 2019

Social conditioning may have convinced you that sacrificing your happiness to maintain a certain bank balance, to send timely payments to corporations to which you’re indebted, or to pay for someone else’s needs and expenses is the proper way to live. Perhaps your parents played a role in this conditioning as well, teaching you the importance of being responsible and holding down stable employment.

~ Steve Pavlina from, Happiness First, Then Everything Else

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There’s a lot of value to the idea of, “and now that you are moving, you can steer.” Lots of metaphors here: A ship’s rudder doesn’t work unless the ship is moving; A car cannot turn around unless it is moving; etc. But there’s a vastly bigger picture that, “you can steer,” will never reveal.

It doesn’t matter how fast I’m “moving” or how well I “steer” if I’m on the wrong eff’in continent.

Steve often writes phoofy new-age mumbo jumbo stuff that I can’t even read. Why do I keep reading [you might ask]? Filter bubble. Perspective. Articles like this one which challenge the reader to wipe off the entire board and consider redrawing the plate tectonics.

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Riders on the Earth together

March 15, 2019

For the first time in all of time, men have seen the Earth. Seen it not as continents or oceans from the little distance of a hundred miles or two or three, but seen it from the depths of space; seen it whole and round and beautiful and small… To see the Earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the Earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold—brothers who know that they are truly brothers.

~ Archibald MacLeish from, The Pale Blue Dot

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The linked article is about Carl Sagan’s, Pale Blue Dot, but the quote is from a less well-known poet, Archibald MacLeish. He wrote an essay titled, Riders on the Earth, which appeared in The New York Times on Christmas Day, 1968.

I am well aware that this blog is a long sequence of my ideas which are inspired by others’. There’s a reason I lead with the link to the seed from which each idea germinated.

I recall exactly when, and where, I was when I had the idea to restart blogging. (Aside: Another reason I love my long-standing habit of journaling is the ability to look up things like this to audit my memory.) I cannot imagine where I would be today—frankly, there’s no chance I would have gotten to where I am today—if I hadn’t started this place to unpack my thoughts.

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We are all going to die

March 3, 2019

Life is a solo trip, but you’ll have lots of visitors. I say this a lot and always will. Your life is one long unbroken experience, and you’re the only one who’s there the whole time. Visitors will come in and out of your experience. Most of them are short-term and you won’t notice when they’ve made their last appearance.

~ David Cain, from You and your friends are all going to die, and that’s beautiful

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I’ve had this idea myself. That I won’t notice when this instance—this experience right here, right now, with this person—is going to be the last experience with this “visitor.”

You might think, as I once did, that this state of uncertainty must always be the situation. Because, how would you know for sure if this moment right here was the last moment with this visitor?

Have you, perhaps, figured out that answer?

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