Sherpas or flight attendants

Spirituality is another form of flight. That’s why you have to check the baggage.

I was watching the Matrix again. You’ve probably seen it many times. It occurred to me that Morpheus is more of a spiritual leader than a strategic one. It seems obvious when you listen to him, but when you watch him fight Neo, you can see it even in his body language. He has slow movements and distant thoughts. Things move slowly from far above. It just shows you that a masterpiece of a movie even does the small things right.

It made me think of spirituality as flight. Some people seek the highest heights, where they often find themselves at peace and alone. Others might use it only to overcome earthly obstacles and avoid anxiety. People often find their spiritual selves in prison or after horrible events. Somehow troubles always bring people closer to spirituality. Maybe it is for this reason, when you have mountains to overcome, anything that can carry you over them is welcome.

Let it loose

The truth is like a lion. You don’t have to defend it. Let it loose. It will defend itself. — Saint Augustine

The best quotes are like riddles. They’re clever enough to surprise you and simple enough to understand. They offer wisdom and sometimes even require it. If they’re really good, they lie to tell you the truth. Great ideas aren’t often black and white, but a thinker has to exaggerate in order to teach an idea quickly.

One person might make an interesting statement. People agree with it, and it becomes popular. It will later be criticized for leaving out important details. It’s hard to describe something without simplifying it. Simple maps are useful because they leave out most of the details. An explanation is another way of giving directions. It’s best when it’s short and sweet.

I write for the same reason I workout. It’s good exercise. It takes strength to tell the truth, and sometimes skill to describe it. You can’t tame the lion, if you’re afraid to write it.

Indecisiveness and inexperience.

Indecisiveness means you like to learn from inexperience.

One of the strange things about life is that the good and bad advice is all mixed together. You can’t know which is which until you don’t need it anymore. Even knowing the right answer, doesn’t make you doesn’t make you believe in it, or yourself.

I enjoy listening to interviews of famous people reminiscing over the moment they were first discovered. They are some of the sweetest memories of their lives. They give detailed accounts of the intersections between talent and doubt. A lot of their experiences overlap each other. Each risked a lot, meaning they often pursued their craft for no good reason, other than they enjoyed it. You can hear their interest in the history and future of their craft. And they met and befriended people who eventually helped them. I wasn’t looking for principles, but after listening for a while, I noticed patterns.

Maybe the best skill we can develop is our ability to deal with the unknown. Do we retreat, to ensure the future will look like the present? Do we commit ourselves to the wind and follow the unknown? It seems the selection of people I listened to followed either their passions or strengths until they found recognition. That answer does nothing for me.

I don’t care so much about their choices, but it’s interesting to wonder why they continued. In the end I think the artists followed their instincts, and like all artists, some of their work was well received. We all possess some artistry when it comes to the life we create. We take risks or we play it safe. In the end, the chances we take develop either our strength or our understanding.

A few pennies

Berkeley Postal Service Selling Main Post Office

I wrote this blog after emptying my mailbox of an armful of junk mail and 2 actual letters. It made me think. I wish post offices would stop increasing prices on stamps and instead increase prices on the 93 millions pieces of junk mail credit card companies send to my house.

When the stack of mail gets too big for your mailbox they send it back to the Post Office for you to pick up. But when you pick it up, it’s not always worth it. Most of my junk mail is credit card offers, insurance offers and local grocery store flyers. The first two are really big industries that make lots of money. Why can’t the Post Office just raise prices on the businesses that use them most often?

Why continue to raise prices on the little stamps so all of the rent payers have to spend a dollar to get 2 of them? I wonder if that balances the books for them? I’m sure I’m oversimplifying the entire situation, but it seems to me it would be better for them to get money from the customers who have the most of it.

Just a couple cents from me.

Seeing Yourself

A goal properly set is halfway reached. — Zig Ziglar

I’m not entirely sure what this quote means, but I liked it instantly. This blog is a gym for me and I said I’d come around more than I have. You workout because you want to feel strong, and if you do it often enough it becomes true. I’m not sure what I’m working out, but maybe people will notice and let me know.

I just realized something earlier this week that makes sense now that I’m writing. Listening to someone speak let’s you know how they see themselves. You can hear it. In much the same way blogging helps you find your own voice. It gets stronger as it gets clearer. The less you sound like other people, the more you sound like yourself.

I’m not completely satisfied with my voice so far. I thought I’d be a lot funnier. I can admit I mostly write because I want to say something original. But when you think about it, it’s a hopeless mission. Rearranging words everyone knows into ideas no one has heard. Thousands of articles and blogs are printed every day.

But if it was easy it wouldn’t be worth it.

Efforts and Optimism

A real entrepreneur is somebody who has no safety net underneath them. — Henry Kravis

You never know what people think of you. I walk past the same homeless person near my work at least twice a day. I have an incredible amount of respect for him. I’ve given him money a few times. He assembles massive amounts of rummage he can sell (e.g. cardboard, small electronics, bottles, etc.). He has a cell phone, I’ve seen it. The piles in the carts must stack 7 or 8 feet in the air, and he parks them right on the sidewalk. Then suddenly, he’ll disappear and come back with newer clothes and a cart that’s barely full.

Once he disappeared for two weeks. I was randomly walking alongside a young girl who yelled “You’re back!” when she saw him, smiled and continued walking by. There must be a few hundred people with some opinion of him and he probably has no idea what they are and probably doesn’t care. 

Napoleon once said “Respect the burden,” but I think mine is different. I respect his efforts and optimism. I wonder  what I might do in the same situation. Creativity and determination are like the spoon Andy used in Shawshank Redemption. Figure out what you want to do with what you have and do it.

Glory Stories

A man is already halfway in love with any woman who listens to him. — Brendan Francis

Men like to tell glory stories so that they can relive the good times. They’ll find new people to talk to just so they can repeat the same old favorites. There must be something to storytelling that let’s them live it again.

I think this is also the reason lots of guys never repeat the meat of old war tales. The interesting parts you want to hear. They never tell you how hard their time in prison was, or what they did during their long unemployment, or even talk about serious arguments. But bring up a time they won money in Vegas and you’ll hear every detail.

There’s something about explaining yourself to someone, who doesn’t understand, that is very exhausting. They might need to convince you that it was worse than you could ever imagine. Maybe you still wouldn’t get it. So they skip the questions that require them to relive the past long enough to describe a few scenes. That makes sense to me.

On the other hand, it doesn’t seem very honest. Have they conceded defeat to past experience? There is also glory in describing how and what you survived, but only if you see it that way.

Not Quite Picasso

You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea. — Pablo Picasso

If blogging were a relationship, we’d be at the point where we know we like each other, but we can’t come up with an excuse to talk. I’ve been thinking of what to say all week. It all sounded boring. So instead I wanted to take a picture (thousand words and all that)… I have no camera.

I’ve been in this situation before. We usually end up meeting on accident and talking about whatever is going on around us. Nothing is really going on right now though. Except I do have theory I came up with today.

Things get good, then boring, then creative.

  • Cameras take clear pictures nowadays, but people prefer filters. Maybe HD pics were cool but they got boring.
  • Picasso was an artist who learned to paint perfect portraits around the time photographs were becoming popular. Realistic paintings were good, but they got boring.
It seems obvious, but it makes me wonder about things that haven’t even gotten good enough to be boring.

If this blog were a real date, I never would have talked about this theory. I know better than that. I would have asked a lot more questions, haha. But I’m already too comfortable. Once my blog and I get past this awkwardness we’ll try to build something meaningful. For now we’ll just think about each other and hardly say anything.

Understanding Reality

Through the picture we see reality, through the word we understand it. — Sven Lidman

I’m randomly sitting next to a soon to be Japanese couple. The guy is doing very well, but I have no idea what he’s saying. All I can see is that he touches her hand, then her knee, then her hand and backs off and talks to her while she’s smiling. They’re both kinda curled up on the coffeeshop couch.

I know that’s way too many details, but they were right next to me. Somehow you just know this dude is almost where he wants to be and she’s not going to fight it. I don’t know how I know this, but I’m sure if you saw it you’d say the same thing. I always believe words make things easier to understand, but I didn’t seem to need them today. I got a good idea just from watching the two.

Who knows what the particular charm was, but lots of different types of people grow on us. Maybe a lot of things work when you’re genuine. People can tell. No matter how you say what you’re saying they’re trying to get an idea of your character or your intentions. If you’re using techniques or doing something because you think you’re supposed to, you’ll seem artificial and then people question your intentions.

I got the feeling that guy was trustworthy by how respectful he seemed, but you can’t always trust your eyes.

People who like to fight

Sometimes I think people who like to fight aren’t used to winning.

I can always tell when someone is really good at something, because they get bored of it. It’s not always true, but it’s true enough. Remember when you first learned to drive? You stopped volunteering to take the wheel after a while.

It probably sounds like I’m judging people with my generalizations, but there’s no way to find the truth without some kind of comparison. I talk to clients everyday, and I’ve learned that once you understand a person you can spend less energy trying to grasp the situation and make more moves toward solving it.

It’s useful to understand situations and how people are thinking. You can tell a person is having relationship problems when they start talking about their relationship. They use words to push their mental questions into the physical world. The same way people try to do math problems on paper, so that they can spread the problem out as a whole and work on it in pieces.

Generalizations are good as long as you don’t use them to put people in boxes. Few people mind being understood. But a lot of people will fight when they feel backed into a corner.