An endless fascination with learning

There is something inside most people that stirs them to action. The distinction between those that take action and those that do not, can, likely, be reduced to the consciousness surrounding the actual thought itself. In English: if you know you’re being sucked into the tide of everyday life and that 9 am will lead to this and 11 am will lead to that, and the swirl of life takes you far, far away from what you envisioned, you can try to plan around it. This will be the most difficult thing you can possibly do.

Life wants or demands nothing from you. It does not care one iota if you live or die, and frankly it is so detached from you that it cannot possible be thought of as supporting you or encumbering you on your path. You, however, demand things of life, without giving any thought to whether this exercise is futile. You then begin to curse your circumstances when things don’t go your way and when you’re on some path that leads to nowhere. This is insane. You do not see bears angrily screaming at huge logs that they cannot travail. A bird does not rant about a fish that was too fast for it. They have, as far as one can tell, no conscious thoughts surrounding these things. They simply try, and then continue. An endless feedback loop, which results in their surviving until they die. They do not bemoan an un-lived life because there is no such thing to me. There is only now. Alive. Now. Not infinite possibilities. Humans, however, were granted this gift (curse?) of introspection and future planning and we haven’t the faintest what to do with it. In the midst of this, human life make endless tedious demands of our time and attention. Long before the iPhone and the internet, we were just as scattered with television and radio and taxes and war and all the other things we now forget. And before that, well, before that, life wasn’t so great. Farmers had to farm all day and then die. Merchants had to sell all die and then die. Etc. Etc. At best, a higher power was given to us to likely placate us that some really cool amusement park was waiting for us once we stopped toiling. We have lost that. Both the perks and the costs.

Do you wish to do something radically different in your life (or even not so radically)? Then create a life which creates the conditions best suited to do that radical thing. That thing is not guaranteed, but once you set sail, it is a one hundred percent certainty that this new path will then lead to other new paths and other new paths and other new paths and then who knows. Life is not in charge. Life does not care. You are in charge and you must decide the toll you’re willing to pay for exploration and adventure, even if that means quite literally abandoning everything or maybe just one thing. Everything has a cost. But the highest cost, the most serious cost, is that of blaming other things. The handicapping of our gift. Of our consciousness and our ability to take action. To, in the midst of the sway of the everyday tedium, nevertheless push forth without thought to where it may lead. To live that un-lived life. To follow that green light, not knowing where in the world it takes us. We must abandon comfort and reach. We are not bears and we are not birds. We must not squander that gift.

I have this tendency to ingest. This internal consumerism. I read and read and read and learn. Then I read more. Then I listen to podcasts, and read more. I then do some more of that. I have read countless, innumerable articles on the way to grow your business. I have listened to an ungodly number of podcasts; interviews with world class performers who generously spill their secrets for the entire audience. I have done all of this, for years, and I most want a nap.

Action is the tough part. It’s what sets apart those people who actually accomplish things from those who read about those people who accomplish things. This is not to say you must rush something. In fact, you shouldn’t rush things. You should take the time required to learn what you need to learn, but you must not forget to act, lest you become simply an observer. You can chalk these things up with being lazy or disinterested. You can tell yourself that you simply don’t have a passion for what you do, sure, but the world still moves. It still lurches forward while you sit on the sidelines watching it do so. For some, that may be just fine. Non progress for some, is a form of progress. But that’s a trap as well. If you continue to simply consume, and you fail to create anything, you’ve essentially taken an easy route. Action begets action, so even if you don’t quite know what you should do, you should do something anyway.

There are caveats to this. Investments need only time. You must not do a thing. You merely need to let them compound and do their thing and never touch them. The same goes for health. You should take the same steps over and over again and not tinker too much (though, by definition, there is action there.) You must allow yourself large periods of time to simply sit and think. Same goes for enjoying the moment. None of these things require much from you. For everything else, though, there is action. Action can be tiny. It can be an email or a call or a letter or a gift. It can be a walk or a swim or a run or a journal entry or a dinner. But an initial action must be taken. We often allow ourselves the runway to say “I just need to research this a bit more” and, at some point, that becomes a license to sit and simply consume. At some point, you must enter the arena. Best to do that sooner rather than later. Even without a plan.

This word has been bastardized recently. A term meant to evoke thoughtful, conscious, step by step implementation has been morphed by a society that travels to fast for itself. Slow is now synonymous with stunted. “Are you slow?” people ask (or used to) someone who they don’t find intelligent. It’s analogous to intellectual paralysis.

Slow, if you really sit with it, is a beautiful word. A concept that reminds you to stop fidgeting. Stop grabbing the phone, the TV, the book, the whatever and allow things to happen. Watch. Do little if anything. Accept. Again, the very idea to do little if anything and just allow things can seem infuriating. We are the dreamers of our dreams. We fight the dying of the light. We do not go gently. But how much of this effort is just wasted energy. I don’t mean this in a rhetorical way, I quite literally ask that you look at how much effort you expend on things and how much you have to show for those things? I’d venture to say that most of what you do on a daily basis is just wasted energy. Doing things for the sake of doing things because “they need to be done.” Many things do, of course, need to be done, but how many of those things are we doing on a daily basis. 1? Maybe 2? The rest is filler.

We have so much time on our hands we don’t know what to do with it, and the idea that we would take things slowly, that we would sit quietly in a room, by ourself, is simply too much.

You don’t have to sit on a chair cross legged, zoned out, to feel as if you’re “slow.” You can just do a tiny bit less, day by day. You can ask yourself if the thing you’re doing is essential, and if so, why, and if not, why do it? You can relax your shoulders. You can take off your armor and stop beating back against the incessant waves that will never stop hitting the shore.

Slow is not some outdated new age idea of living on a beach and picking your own coffee beans. It’s simply a reminder to observe the greater world around you, rather than forcing yourself to brrrrrrrrrr into it. It’s to take a step back, mentally, and physically and be present. You’re not solving anything. There’s no goal (this drives many of us crazy.) You’re just quite literally breathing. Then another one. Then another.

Create it for yourself in whatever way you need to. Play defense or offense or all of the above. Turn the phone off or on silent. Run or walk away. Excuse yourself (nothing will happens-the world will continue to do what it does without your attention.) Do not search for answers but allow answers to come to you. Be receptive to them. You’re not “finding them” so much as your opening your attention up to finding what is already there.

At some point over the last few decades or so, the prominence of thought and the power of thought took hold of Western thinking, and hasn’t let go since. That we should view our thoughts, as if outside ourselves. That we should sit with our thoughts. That we should try and change our thoughts in a more positive direction. That only we, as captains of our own ship, have the power to change the direction of our lives. Our thoughts have given birth to DRT, CRT, and a bevy of of other capital letter salads at the psychology buffet, in hopes of analyzing who “we”, specifically are, and why we think what we do, as if this is hidden in some far corner of the mind, just waiting to be rescued.

Certainly, the dissection of thought, it’s origins, and it’s implications on our every day choices is a worthwhile goal, but it, most times, comes at the cost of action. We are so well versed these days in the concepts surrounding changing our thought patterns, that we believe (we are made to believe) that the work is simply more thinking. You can theoretically always be working by always reading more books on thoughts and your thoughts and why you think what you do and how your mother, when you were 5, really did this thing and now you’re 56 and of course you act the way you act because of that thing. That may masquerade as the work, but does it actually change anything. Yes, perhaps the curtains are opened just a bit, but perhaps they must be ripped off, and the ripping off requires the physical. And we are not talking that much about the physical, and the physical should probably be placed in an area of more prominence.

If you absolutely abhor your job or where you live, you are now faced with three basic decisions. The first is to seek professional counseling where you can dig deep into specifically why you do not like where you live or where you work, and what you’d rather be doing (for money), as if you know this thing and merely forgot about it and are now two decades into a career which does not seem worthwhile to you, but thankfully here you remembered you always wanted to be a pilot. Often, even if you do find “clarity”, and, mind you, you’re not sure where this clarity comes from or why you didn’t know about this before you sat down on the couch at $350/hr, you will, wholeheartedly, with every fiber in your being, desire to change your life and you won’t. You won’t because the action requires the action and there is a cost to the action, but the thought, outside of the hourly fee, is very much free. The second choice is to grin and bear it. Double down. Find things from your home life and your work life that you can live with, and re-frame the way you look at these thing. In this rather grotesque scenario which is served up quite often these days, you need to actively trick yourself and deny the feelings you’re feeling every second of every day and tell yourself “No, you are wrong. This job is redeemable, as is where I live, and I simply must, no matter what genetics tell me, look at this in a different way. You are force fed the idea of being grateful for this home and job because did you know many people are dying around the world and so far your death has been postponed so please stop being so trivial about the small things in life. This will, no doubt, lead to the shrink, and we circle and circle. The third choice, the most violent of the choices, is to quit your job and move. This involves almost no thinking. This involves almost nothing other than action. It’s pure, mainline, clear action. It’s brilliant in its lack of alternative. You haven’t the faintest idea what’s behind this door but you don’t care, since you know what’s behind the others. Very few people make this choice and those that do may often regret it, but that’s almost besides the point. We are, for all intents and purposes, subjected to so much inertia to think about things rather than do the things, that doing the things is an act of revolution.

The doing the thing doesn’t have to be so drastic. It could be doing wind sprints in your backyard. It could be planting a tomato. It could be selling your car, buying a cheaper one, driving to the airport and booking a ticket to a place you see without ever once thinking “What happens if I don’t have pants for dinner.” This comes callously close to spontaneity but it is not spontaneity. It is action for actions own seek. Outrospection (interestingly, not a word) instead of introspection.

We are all too guilty of this. We stew in our emotions and we vaguely attack our problems until our lasagna is ready and then we put them to the side, waiting for our feelings to change. Then, we die. But taking the action has nothing to do with nihilism or existentialism or even re-incarnation. Taking the action helps our muscles get used to taking the action, and hopefully things work out and maybe not, but you’re much, much, much more apt to take further actions if you took the first one. Buy a stock you like. Go ballroom dancing. Divorce. Cook beans. Whatever.

What happens when all we do is think about thinking and obtain wisdom but don’t ever actually practice it. The stoics and the Buddhists and the Christians and the Jews explicitly warn us about this. Bring God into the world through action. Practice meditation not on the cushion, but in your life. All of this, all of the ancients and the old men, and all of nature tell us, implore us, scream at us, to simply take action. We should follow their advice.

The idea of sharing wealth rather than hoarding it is a rather remarkable turn in one’s viewpoint. To constantly struggle with this is natural. If you’re a bit Hobbesian, as I believe many of us are, you do your best to do your best so that you can get a bigger piece of the pie. You’re not necessarily concerned about the “why” of it, you’re satisfied with just trying to get more. Deep down, you may feel this discomfort that someone is going to take it, or you’re going to need it, and that becomes that ballast against the waves of uncertainty in everyone’s life. It provides a comfort, and whether that comfort is real or imagined, it nevertheless exists, and it tides the overwhelming anxiety surrounding just how quickly things change around you. Many argue that that is the wrong position to take.

The real work, the real gift, is to share the wealth. It is to provide all with your wisdom, your specific gifts. It is to help and to create and to make the pie much bigger. It is as close to a call of duty as you can get. Instead of hoarding, the idea is to freely give. Usually, this comes in the form of intellectual knowledge, but really this can be tangible property as well. You give and you shall receive. It’s biblical (and way before the bible came around stories like these were passed down.) Whether you have a moral responsibility to do so or whether you just believe it’s the right way to go about it, the idea is to freely give away that which you have access to. The trick-the rub here, is that you must do so without regard for the gift coming back to you. The motivation is just as important. Give, without regard of whether it comes back to you. Help without demanding thanks. David Brook’s once wrote about a nun (or maybe not, I can’t recall) who would help with the sick and the poor and the drunks. And they wouldn’t ever thank her. They’d spit at her and curse her and really just be awful. It didn’t matter. The point wasn’t that you’d get some ethical stars in return, but that you’d do the act for the sake of the righteousness of the act.

I am not righteous. Far from it. I’m quite selfish. Yet as the years fly and drag on (all at the same time) I recognize some internal pull towards the sharing and less towards the Hobbesian hoarding. Perhaps it’s kids and the idea that germinates inside you: make it better for them. Perhaps idealism and self preservation meet somewhere. I don’t really know. I know that I struggle very much with the idea of giving, rather than taking. The only other thing I know about this is that it cannot be conceptual. You must do it, over and over. Practice. Over and over. And don’t worry about the results. Just act.

Once you begin opening doors, be mindful that things can rapidly change for you. The door you opened may not be what you envisioned, it may contain things that you didn’t suspect, care for, or are prepared for. Journeys always happen like this. You must go through the thing to see the other side, but the fear in going through the thing must be acknowledged as well. When you shed your skin, realize that what is underneath might not be what you expected after all.

Instead of searching for your purpose, which is always, for some reason, to be found alone in an exotic destination, you might instead list your priorities and take steps to address each one in order of importance.

Health. Family. Relationships. Nature. Finance. Religion (or not).

If you focus on the boring, hard, tedious work, purpose typically finds you, rather than the other way around.

A really interesting question to ask yourself comes from Jerry Colonna: “How am I complicit in creating the conditions I say I don’t want?” This seems somewhat easy at first glance; but sitting with this for a few moments typically allows more layers to appear.

It is a rather succinct way of taking responsibility for one’s life. Of owning the work and the omissions of work. Of stopping the strong current that you claim keeps carrying you, starting around 9 am and ending around 11 pm.

How am I complicit in creating the conditions I say I don’t want?