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Bruce Springsteen:

‘You can change a life in three minutes with the right song’

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“You’re never going to be 100% ready and it’s never going to be just the right time, but that’s the point. It means that every moment is also the right moment.

If you want it, you just have to do it. “

—

(via alunit)

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So. Back on October 30th 2016 I saw a great article in The Guardian about Bruce Springsteen that made me think about a topic I discussed with a group of young people later that week that all moments matter <and we should admit it and accept it>. Then yesterday was Springsteen’s 70th birthday and I spent some time watching Zach Mercurio’s key note opening to a group of people where he said “moments that matter” and, well, I revisited this 2016 piece.

Let me get to my more controversial, debatable, statement: “all moments matter.” All moments matter mostly because you don’t know which ones are more important than others.

Yeah. Some moments pop up as “whoa, pay attention to this one, this is gonna matter”, but most truly important moments slip by seamlessly in the never ending inevitable moments of what we call Life and responsibility. Those moments either add up to a slow curving in direction <good & bad> or, in hindsight, you’ll reflect what was little was big.

This can be a tiring belief or understanding.

“I mean, what the hell, I gotta pay attention EVERY moment ??!!???”

Geez. That sucks.

But that is where Springsteen made me think.

“You can change a Life in 3 minutes.”

Uhm. He plays 2 ½ hour concerts. That is 50 3-minute opportunities to change a Life. What happens if he takes off the 3 minutes that someone is paying attention to? <by the way, having seen him 2 times in concert he does not take any 3 minutes off>.

And that is my point. Whether he accepts it or not he is thinking that all moments matter so “I gotta treat moments as if they matter”. Whether he consciously accepts it or not, he assumes some responsibility to put forth the energy to treat all moments as if they matter.

Now. That can seem like an incredible burden and incredible pressure on “self.”

But later in the article Springsteen says one thing in the article that just popped out to me that helps me explain this:

“I still have great pride in what I do. I still believe in its power.

I believe in my ability to transfer its power to you.”

Far too often we think about moments as “us” moments. Moments that steer our own Life. Moments that seal some moment in our destiny. Maybe we see this moment as incredibly important to us … and, inevitably, we focus on how these moments will affect us.

Springsteen suggests the opposite. In that if you pay attention to your own moment and do what you do, and do it to your best with the best intentions, then … well … you transfer the power of you to others <and the moment itself>. Well. I would point out that this is ‘meaning.’ Meaning is doing things, or something, from which others benefit. Their benefit gives meaning into whatever you do. That said.

Meaning?

Architect of fate?

Master of your own destiny?

Control the moment?

Living in the now <or the present>?

Shit. I don’t know and I don’t care what you attach to that thought … but … it is a good thought.

Now. Some people can certainly affect others more so. For example a Springsteen can certainly make things stop for a couple of minutes versus someone like me.

But. Yeah. You, me, anyone can change lives <your own as well as someone else’s>. And, yes, that demands a couple of attitudinal aspects in your own behalf.

One is that you need to embrace the ‘link’ in time.

For example, Springsteen estimates he has signed some 17,000 copies of the book. As the author of the article notes … he, surprisingly, enjoys the experience.

“You meet the fans – only for 10 seconds, but you meet them one by one,” he says. “And they have an opportunity: what’s the one thing you always wanted to say over the 40 years of the relationship we’ve had?

I actually found it quite moving. Always enjoyed that part.”

Well. In order to believe you have power to transfer your best not only to the moment, but also to whomever you are interacting with, you have to be open to the engagement. I wont call it a ‘dialogue’ with someone … just an investment, an opening of yourself, to embrace whomever and whatever is within the moment. I imagine I am suggesting that you think you are not inserting yourself into the moment, but rather you are linking into the fabric of whatever exists in that moment. Maybe that sounds too philosophical but the Springsteen example makes it less so.

Attitudinally he sees that something as mundane when viewed simply as an “I” responsibility can be viewed as a way for him to not only energize someone he intersects with, but gets energized himself.

That is linking.

That is an attitude.

That is, well, meaning.

I would be remiss if I did not point out this is not choiceful, as in “today I will do this but tomorrow I may not”, but rather a 24/7 attitude to be brought to living Life.

Embrace the link.

One is a belief that you can ‘own’ the moment.

For example, when Springsteen is asked what he means when he says his covenant with his audience <which is his version of having a belief he can own the moment> depends on honesty, he replies without pause, without any errs or urrms, in a single perfect paragraph, that requires not one piece of tidying in the transcription:

“I guess we come out and deliver the straight dope to our crowd as best we can. It’s coming on stage with the idea: OK, well the stakes that are involved this evening are quite high. I don’t know exactly who’s in the crowd. But I know that my life was changed in an instant by something that people thought was purely junk – pop music records. And you can change someone’s life in three minutes with the right song. I still believe that to this day. You can bend the course of their development, what they think is important, of how vital and alive they feel. You can contextualise very, very difficult experiences. Songs are pretty good at that. So all these are the stakes that are laid out on the table when you come out at night. And I still take those stakes seriously after all that time, if not more so now, as the light grows slightly dimmer. I come out believing there’s no tomorrow night, there wasn’t last night, there’s just tonight.

And I have built up the skills to be able to provide, under the right conditions, a certain transcendent evening, hopefully an evening you’ll remember when you go home. Not that you’ll just remember it was a good concert, but you’ll remember the possibilities the evening laid out in front of you, as far as where you could take your life, or how you’re thinking about your friends, or your wife or your girlfriend, or your best pal, or your job, your work, what you want to do with your life.

These are all things, I believe, that music can accommodate and can provide service in. That’s what we try to deliver.”

Well. Imagine that is you and every day, every moment, every task you are doing, is simply your moment on your stage.  Ponder that because many times most of us feel like we are at the mercy of our circumstances. And that in fewer instances we are masters of the circumstances.

Inevitably this translates into focusing on the moments in which we believe, perceive, we can master the circumstances.

I could argue this is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I could argue that most of us just suck at recognizing which moments we are masters and which moments we are at the mercy of.

I could argue that we shouldn’t leave anything to chance and we would be better off if we simply assumed that we were never completely at the mercy of our circumstances and that we can always master at least a portion of every circumstance.

I imagine, in my mind, that this is more about the way you, attitudinally, live your life as much as anything. It is more about your overall philosophy <which kind of demands you actually have a philosophy I guess>. It is more about deciding to be decent, fair and … well … good.

I tend to believe that Springsteen always believed his music needed to be authentic in that it always needed to embody his philosophy toward Life.

I could argue that means his songs always carried a little bit of his inner meaning and not just his craft.

I could argue that means if you apply your own philosophy day in and day out, minute in and minute out, even in and event out … well … each moment will carry a little bit of your soul  and not just the ‘craft of doing the moment.’

In other words. You are not just doing your best because it is required of you but rather you are doing your best because it is a part of who and what you are.

Yeah. It is a philosophy. It is a ‘code of living, I suppose’ <as Springsteen suggests>.

I think this attitude is what makes Springsteen more of an idea <or ideal> then simply a performer or a person. And I cannot imagine why it would be any different for an everyday schmuck like you & I if we were to embrace this attitude <don’t be blinded by the outcome magnitude comparison>.

Look. I imagine that part of managing moments well in Life is not just about getting older and more experienced, but also how you grow up and what you do with that experience.

Some of us learn the lessons fairly well and begin assuming more and more responsibility for more moments.

Some decide it is too much work and too disappointing <mostly because you don’t always see the fruits of that decision immediately> and therefore you focus solely on ‘the moments that matter.’

Some of us just decide that we are made up of some endless energy which means that no matter where we go, no matter the moment and context, we will always try and add value to the moments <and, inevitably, the lives of those around you>.

In growing up, Springsteen says, “you have to come face to face with a lot of your weaknesses and the things you do poorly, so that you’re able to assess the landscape and find out what are the righteous paths you can travel down, and what are the roads that are just going to lead you to a dead end.”

Some of us learn this better than others.

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“For us, there is only the trying.

The rest is not our business.”

—

T.S. Eliot

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Well. There is a shitlaod of advice on focus but the truth is that learning what to disregard is one of the most difficult things in the world.

To be clear. This isn’t really about ignoring shit nor is this about tuning out distractions, this is more about acknowledgement of and the inevitable ‘setting aside’ of things. In other words, deciding ‘the rest is not our business.’

Simplistically, there is a huge difference between disregard and ignore.

Disregard implies a denial of attention to something because of superior knowledge or more pressing considerations.

Ignore particularly stresses that something has been rejected without any conscious consideration while disregard can suggest a more careful, conscious evaluation that results in dismissal. 

So this becomes a combination of deciding what to omit and what to not omit … what is essential and what is unessential.

This is hard as shit.

To anyone who hasn’t had to deal with this on a consistent basis in business, this whole issue gets disregarded as bullshit … ‘because common sense will tell you what is essential and what is not’.

Wrong.

And wrong again.

And let me say again … that is really really wrong.

If it were that easy, that much common sense, we would be the most efficient sonofabitches in the world.

We are not.

Speaking personally, for a curious person like me, I can quite easily find myself going down senseless rabbit holes and teasing out useless information from … well … useless information.

Everything is interesting to me, therefore, purposefully being disinterested in something seems just wrong.

Yeah. If I do this too often I become relatively useless to people. I know a lot about many things that are, frankly, not really worth knowing a lot about.

Here is what I know about recognizing something as something to be regarded and the ability to disregard the others as just ‘things’. When viewed correctly, some things show you how to interpret what is <and, I imagine, what could be>.  This means that the things to disregard are the ones which will not help you in any way change ‘what is’ because, inevitably, I imagine the point of anything is to change what is. Ok. That’s just how I filter things. Ponder and choose your own filter <but have a filter>

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“To develop the skill of correct thinking is in the first place to learn what you have to disregard.

In order to go on, you have to know what to leave out: this is the essence of effective thinking.”

Kurt Godel

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Now. My last thought may create some disagreement with people. They may disagree that the point of things, in general, is to change what is <in other words, change shouldn’t apply to everything>.

Well. Here is my point.

Left alone, things will decline or deteriorate/decay in some form or fashion.

This includes thoughts and thinking. Unfortunately, even a great thought declines in value the longer it remains stagnant and static.

I would point out that the mind, itself, is exactly the same <some philosopher called this ‘the principle of entropy’>. The basic principle is that while good things happen to people within events the general arc of things tends to be negative. Therefore someone or something needs to arise to prevent the natural downward arc. But that ‘thing’ needs to be refreshed or replaced because their impact is biggest initially and loses effectiveness against the downward trend over time.

Uhm.

What that suggests is things you should disregard will vary depending on the context and the time.

What that suggests is things you should disregard will most likely not be a replication of something in the past.

What that suggests is things you should disregard are most likely not uncovered most easily by ‘common sense.’

What that suggests is things you should disregard are most likely derived through a need to separate fact from fiction and then an assessment of the value & relevance of the facts.

Nothing in what I just shared is easy.

Nothing in what I just shared suggests identifying ‘the rest is not our business’ is easy.

I do know that being successful in business management and leadership often tilts on how well you are able to identify what is ‘not our business.’

Life is not particularly kind to people who suck at not discerning what to disregard, but it rarely kills you for this suckedness.

Business is particularly unkind to people who suck at not discerning what to disregard. Not mastering, even partially, this skill will cost you promotions and, even worse, trust in independent work. Once you are deemed a shitty assessor of ‘not our business’ type of shit you will have someone looking over your shoulder for the rest of your professional career.

I end on that last thought mostly because anyone who wants to rise in a business organization knows this and they are most likely to handle that by going to the complete other side of the spectrum, i.e., make everything their business <yeah … they are the ones who claim to be perfectionists and do everything, even the unnecessary under the guise of ‘not leaving any T’s uncrossed and I’s undotted … but it is their fear of leaving the wrong things in the ‘not our business’ bucket>. They are horrible, pain in the ass’s, to work with.

Anyway. ‘The rest is not our business’ is really hard to identify.

The only thing I can suggest is ‘practice makes perfect.’  The only way to get better at it is to do it <but you will never be perfect>.

And as long as you can navigate the inevitable mistakes in judgment along the way you will do fine and will actually become fairly good at judging what to regard versus disregard.

  
———

“Teach me how to gracefully let go of things not meant for me.”

—

via lilac-veinss 

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“There are moments in the life of a man, and of a nation, when it is right to say:

I have done my utmost, and I can do no more, therefore I will cease my striving and seek another road.”

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“People will try to hold on when their world starts to tilt. They will grab onto whatever is in reach.” 

—

Claire Zorn

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Ok. Letting go of shit may be one of the hardest things to do in the world.

Even more difficult? Letting go gracefully.

What I mean by that is .. these are the moments in which you have decided you have done what you have done, done what you consider enough and you are, well, done.

These are the moments in which you actually consciously think:

—

How do I let go?

Where do I begin?

Do I let go memory by memory?

How many goodbyes will this take?

Do I leave words with everyone until I have no more words left to give?

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Oh. And if I do all this, will it even matter?

In addition. You are tempted by these two whispers in your head:

—

Maybe I should do nothing.

=

Maybe I should just stand here and let others let me <or ‘it’> go.

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Suffice it to say letting go, in general, let alone gracefully … is hard. Really hard.

And while we typically suck at letting the right things go, let alone anything I imagine, we REALLY suck at letting things go gracefully.

I feel fairly confident in saying most people don’t let go gracefully let alone let go at all.

You just get stuck.

You just hold on tight and then when you do let go you just want to throw it away and ignore it as if you never held it.

And maybe you get a little confused.

Well. There is no handbook for “how to let things go gracefully.” It does not exist and so you must try to find ways to figure it out on your own.

Frankly, it seems almost cruel that a handbook on “letting go” doesn’t exist <let alone gracefully> because it may be one of the most common things we do in Life.

Huh? What do I mean by that?

We don’t seem to notice the almost daily experience as we let go, every single day, countless amounts of things:

Moments.

–

Minutes.

–

Objects.

–

People.

–

Well. We may not notice these countless seemingly meaningless ‘letting gos’ until

a.we realize how much has been let go, or

b. we are faced with a situation that we want to hold on or that we are the ones being let go.

What both of those things have in common is a moment where we realize we are the ropes in a tug-of-war. Someone holding on at each end until one decides to let go.

You realize Time is watching you leave or maybe you end up watching Time leave.

Someone watches you leave or maybe you end up watching someone else leave.

Regardless. We have lots of personal experience letting shit go. Most times things are let go little by little andd in these small, but significant, changes we don’t really learn the ‘gracefully’ part … just the letting go part.

Oh.

Not only do we let most things go in small insignificant increments often you have no control. They just go. Things get lost. Time, people, experiences, things … they just let you go regardless of whether you ask them to or not.

Anyway. I have said it before, but part of growing up is leaving shit – regrets, stuff, people, choices, etc. – behind.

But you really know when you have grown up when you have also learned the graceful part. For all things. You’ve learned to let things go gracefully that you not only made the ‘let go decision’, but also the things that were ‘let go’ by someone else.

In other words learning to let things go even when your world starts to tilt.

Maybe that is what makes this whole letting go gracefully so hard. Holding on is a shitload easier than letting go. And, in fact, I am not sure there is such a thing as ‘holding on gracefully.’ You are just, well, holding on.

Sigh.

Let’s end with this thought.

Unfortunately I tend to believe you encounter more things not meant for you than those things actually meant for you in Life. People, moments, experiences, decision crossroads, whatever. I just think we encounter more than what is really meant for us. Yet. None of these things wear little name tags that say “meant for you” or “not meant for you.”

That means, unfortunately, while we may eventually get better as we get older with regard to sifting through all these things inevitably you will end up with a lot of shit that … well … aren’t really meant for you. And even more unfortunately there really isn’t anyone to help you sift thru and, well, no one is going to … ‘teach me how to gracefully let go of things not meant for me.’

That is something you just gotta figure out on your own and hope you are more graceful on the important things.

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“Intellectual advance consists of the displacement of one paradigm which has become increasingly incapable of explaining new or newly discovered facts, by a new paradigm that accounts for all those facts in a more satisfactory fashion.”

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Ok. I believe the whole concept of ‘thinking’ in business has been commoditisized.

Everyone can think.

Any idea is worth pursuing.

We make doers thinkers and thinkers do and, yes, that makes thinking a commodity.

So, when thinking becomes a commodity, ‘intellectual advancement’ almost becomes the pursuit of fools or just ‘wasted time’ or “over complicating things” <or you can just call the commodity version of thinking: common sense>. Thinking becomes so shallow it doesn’t even come close to any true intellectual advancement instead it veers closer to “let’s think through all the details we need to think about to do what we just thought of.”

Which leads me to the important part of the quote I opened with:

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“To be accepted as a paradigm, a theory need not, and in fact never does, explain all the facts with which it can be confronted, it only must seem better than its competition.” 

The structure of Scientific Revolutions: Thomas Kuhn

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Well. In business ‘paradigm’ is one of those words that imply bigness. Even suggest a paradigm shift and people start shifting in their seats <I almost wrote ‘shitting in their seats’>. “Big” has  nasty habit of making people feel uncomfortable.

Ok. They like it. And hate it. Both at exactly the same time.

What that typically means is that everyone gets excited initially by the bigness of the idea and as time goes on the idea gets chewed up by all the ants who are scrambling around hating it.

So. Before you start killing the next idea that sounds like a really really good idea by slicing it up with a thousand small cuts under the guise of “but what abouts?” remember this:

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 “When people think seriously, they think abstractly; they conjure up simplified pictures of reality called concepts, theories, models, paradigms.”

Samuel Huntington

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Maybe Sam reminds me why I dislike the term ‘big idea.’ I don’t care if it is big, medium or small <or even venti or grande>, all I care is that it is a serious thought.

To be clear, most serious thoughts in business demand some intellectual investment <sorry to tell everyone that>. It is not a flippant shallow thought, but an intellectually well thought out abstract thought. And, let’s be completely honest, a well thought out abstract thought, let’s call it some paradigm shift in this case, is rarely truly simple. At best the articulator has simply conjured up a nice neat simplistic package which makes it seem even more appealing. But, simplistic? Let’s get serious. That ain’t gonna happen if it is truly a paradigm shift.

For a true paradigm shift we would need to accept that it is abstract — that not all the facts are explained.

Unfortunately, for some reason, the business world seems to struggle with that last thought.

We love the idea. We kill it in detail.

It’s unfortunate.

For paradigm shifts, which are important in terms of shifting behavior and attitudes, are concepts. Therefore when we kill them in detail we miss huge opportunity for shifts in attitudes & behaviors.

Nuff said. That last sentence alone says it all. That sums up how most opportunities get killed in business.

Now. I would argue that our unhealthy relationship with detail is driven by a desire to avoid intellectual discomfort. Intellectually driven discussions and conclusions, initiatives, demand some faith. And while a business cannot solely be run on faith there are certain situations which demand some faith. Some people may argue with my word choice, faith, and suggest I actually mean ‘believe.’

I don’t. All business will have moments in which we have a choice; to make a leap of faith or to not make a leap of faith. I think we can all agree you don’t want a shitload of these. But any good business will have them on occasion. That is where intellectual debate & discussion is imperative <because there is nothing worse than a non-intellectual rationale leap of faith> and that is where people will be uncomfortable.

Look. I am not suggesting detail doesn’t matter because it does. Without detail the impossible remains impossible … with detail the impossible has the possibility of being possible. But that’s the thing with ‘impossible’ shit <paradigm shifts> … you will never know all the details if you decide to make the leap of faith.

Sure. You can work your ass off to define all the details you want, but part of ‘faith’ is that there will be an incredibly uncomfortable space occupied by “some shit we have no clue about until we actually do it.”

What made this come to mind was I had a couple of conversations with some new business people and a sales director of an international company. I found myself telling all of them they were in the ‘leap of faith’ business — it is just a matter of context and degrees. You are trying to convince someone to get from where they are to where they want to be <or go>. The point here is that while almost all of us invest gobs of energy and time telling them excruciating detail by excruciating detail how they will be safe with us <and they will have some added value in the end> we will never show enough detail to completely eliminate the fact they will inevitably have to make a leap of faith in some definition we can provide them.

And with that definition it is up to us to offer enough intellectual stuff to show them there is a path to ‘what is possible.’

For some of them you will offer a true paradigm shift and to others it will just be a paradigm shift in that it will be something new to them. I would point out here that a paradigm is a paradigm in the eyes of a beholder so trying to contextualize a paradigm is a waste of time.

Anyway. I imagine my real point is that even if you are in the doing business <and pretty much everyone is> you are still in the intellectual thinking business.

You have to be.

You cannot explain everything. You cannot offer up all the facts. You cannot conjure up enough simplified reality to enable someone to comfortably overlook what is most often complex. What you can do is offer a definition people can find some certainty in <comfort>, and enough details so that, intellectually, you advance the concept of where everyone should ‘go’ so that, well, everyone can make the leap of faith. Because the leaps are where true progress occurs.

It is an uncomfortable place this ‘intellectual advancement’ thing, but paradigms, shifts or perceived shifts, are uncomfortable places so intellectual advancement & paradigm shifts are a match made in heaven.

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“There are those who say all crimes can be ascribed to one of two motives – love or money – but I don’t believe that. In my experience everything we do is predicated on one of two other things: greed and fear. Oh, sometimes they get mixed up, but mostly you can keep them separated. We feel greed for what we don’t have and fear because of what we might lose. ‘

—

John Connolly

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I tend to believe most people are actually fairly good at making a decision, but, I also believe most people actually suck at how they view the decision itself. If that is true, well, all we have to do is work on how we think and view these better, make it better, and all the good decisions within us will just happen.

But, and this is a big but, effective decision making resides in viewing the decision well. Yeah. I am actually suggesting HOW you view a decision, not the decision difficulty itself, is the most important thing. Yeah. I am suggesting perspective may be the most important aspect of keeping yourself from decision sucking.

Let me explain our typical suckedness <because it is fairly explainable>.

Decisions <small, big, inconsequential, consequential, monumental & insurmountable>.

We, in business, always want things to be really important and really big so that we can showcase our value in the decisions we made within these important and big decisions.

This creates a variety of issues. We make the small decisions look big. This is bad because … well … businesses are rarely driven by any truly big decision but instead a massive quantity of smaller decisions. Most leaders know & understand that. Most middle management kind of knows that but hates admitting it.

We make the truly big decisions look like frickin’ Mount Everest. This is bad because they then take on a rich & royal hue of insurmountability. Middle management does this to pass responsibility on to the shoulders of those who get ‘paid to climb Mt. Everest’ and bad leaders do this to cover their ass <I mean, c’mon, how many people really can climb Mt. Everest?>. All in all this makes decision making tough. Especially the bigger ones that need, and should, be made.

In addition there this this weird thing we do with decisions called past sight.  Because almost all decisions take on more importance than their actual value we seek things to create some comfort. 90% of the time we find this comfort in things done in the past. We use past sight to reflect upon ‘big important decisions.’

Uh oh.

Let’s be clear. In present sight many of those decisions were just decisions — not insurmountable not monumental nor were they even ‘too big’ and they may not have even been a ‘big important decision’ <with the larger repercussions that past sight is now showing>. They were decisions. In past sight we have sifted thru the chaff and uncovered the wheat.  Metaphors aside I would suggest that time is better spent sifting thru the chaff today than using past sight.

But this is about where business people typically suck. Suffice it to say while we mismanage most decisions we certainly misidentify the bigger more difficult decisions to a point where they can often be insurmountable <and therefore no one makes the difficult decision>.  There are 5 aspects to how we make decisions harder than they have to be:

• The Consequences of Making a Decision.

In times of significance, that space in time may decide if you follow your instincts or let another factor prevent you from making the right choice. Peer pressure, overwhelming doubt, fear, and all those demons that like to whisper in our ears. You might make the wrong choice. Or the right one. But those little devils return to doubt even your hesitation and contradict themselves by pointing wildly at the other option.

Kids need to learn that sometimes making a decision (or doing nothing) has an effect on the freedom of choice they would have otherwise.

• The Consequences of not making a decision.

It should be one of the deadly sins. Maybe more dangerous than lust, pride, sloth, greed, envy, gluttony, and wrath put all together. (Ok, I may be exaggerating a bit there.) Hesitation is the cause of many regrets and failures, as evidenced through numerous clichés in literature and media.

Because in that moment, before making a decision or taking an action, the consequences of what follows may lead to the remaining sins. And I don’t mean that hesitating before choosing whether or not to eat ice cream will result in accusations of gluttony for the cold dessert. Nothing so drastic as that.

• Learning why you may not have made the right (or best) choice.

Asking yourself if you could have done something differently. Maybe learning that there were other “just as right” choices. this has a nasty habit of not only diminishing our energy against a decision already made but feeds into overthinking, freezing. On the next decision.

• Coming to Terms with Mistakes (or less than the best choices).

Learning that although you might not get what you expect, you learn and find something new. Regrets and fears are worse when it’s about something you didn’t do but, in general, while we talk about mistakes as being earning moments reality tends to simply view them as mistakes. Truth is too many mistakes only encourages less risk taking. We don’t want kids to become deranged risk-takers taking any choice that appeals to them, but rather it is important to make mistakes and use them for critical thinking aspects.

• Relating thinking and decisions to others.

While critical thinking often focuses on personal choice & view, it is good to consider how the outcome of the decision will affect other people. Sure, sure, sure. Everyone says they do, but the reality is more an 80/20 rule – 80% my view & 20% what that view means to others. Let me just say learning the dynamic that exists between individuals, the group, the relationships and repercussions of decisions not just on self but in totality is a constant work-in-progress if you accept that responsibility.

All that said.

I would argue all of those aspects have slipped into everyone’s mindset with regard to what decision they will make and the criteria used to actually make a decision. I would even argue these same things come into play when viewing a trend (because you don’t look at trends just for entertainment, they are used to guide decision making) which most good decision makers try and look at (because you want to see how any one decision fits into a larger arc of context).

Regardless. I tend to believe most people are actually fairly good at making a decision, but I also believe most people actually suck at how they view the decision itself. If that is true, well, all we have to do is work on how we think and view these better, make it better, and all the good decisions within us will just happen. Yeah. I said the exact same thing upfront. I just wanted to emphasize. And i also wanted to point out while easy to type, its incredibly difficult to do.

Decisions are a responsibility. Treat them as if they are.

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“We work harder and aspire the most.”

A rich person <Ipsos research interview>

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“It’s a fact of modern life that there is disparity and ‘Is it fair or unfair?’ is not a valid question.

It’s just the way it is, and you have to get on with it. People say it’s unfair when they don’t do anything to change their circumstances.”

A rich person <Ipsos interview>

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“Quite a lot of people have done well who want to achieve, and quite a lot of people haven’t done well because they don’t want to achieve.”

A rich person <Ipsos interview>

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“She destroyed too many good things in society, and created too many bad ones, then left a social and moral vacuum in which the selfishly rich and unimaginatively fortunate could too easily destroy still more of what they don’t need and can’t see that everyone else does need.”

—-

 Emma Darwin

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This is about rich people and their perceptions with regard to themselves as well as the rest of the non-wealthy world. To be clear. I don’t begrudge the wealth, the uber-rich, their wealth. That said. I have conducted research in the past with wealthy people (several levels of wealth) as well as lower income/poverty people and, well, if it weren’t proprietary I would write gobs of articles expressing “this is why wealthy people are disliked.” Today I get to lean in on a publicly shared piece of research from Ipsos (to make the same point).

Beyond research, having earned my share of wealth at one point in my Life, I have glanced off of the uberish-richy Hamptons, Palm Springs, Monte Carlo and south Florida world a couple of times in my life. I would suggest they live in a fantasy land, an alternative universe, from the rest of us. In this land of theirs they have a view of the world, and the people who do not live in their world, which is, frankly, kind of warped.

I do feel semi-qualified to share my view on this because while I have certainly had enough wealth to own a nice house, go on nice vacations and not worry about paying bills, I have also sat up at night worrying about how the rent would be paid the following month and using credit cards to get through stretches of time.

I thought about this for the first time in a really long time after I read a story about how the wife of the US Treasury Secretary <Steven Mnuchin multi millionaire businessman and Yale graduate> posted a picture on Instagram which she hashtagged all the designer labels she was wearing.

And then some woman, @jennimiller29, replied: “Glad we could pay for your little getaway #deplorable.”

From there another multi-millionaire wealthy person slid down into the wretched hole of douchebaggery:

“Aw!!! Did you think this was a personal trip?! Adorable!” Do you think the US govt paid for our honeymoon or personal travel?! Lololol. Have you given more to the economy than me and my husband? Either as an individual earner in taxes OR in self sacrifice to your country?”

 While that was just being a lower level asshat … she couldn’t just stop there:

“I’m pretty sure we paid more taxes toward our day ‘trip’ than you did. Pretty sure the amount we sacrifice per year is a lot more than you’d be willing to sacrifice if the choice was yours. [Curled bicep and a face blowing a kiss emojis].”

 Oh … and …

“You’re adorably out of touch. Your kids look very cute. Your life looks cute. I know you’re mad but deep down you’re really nice and so am I. Sending me passive aggressive Instagram comments isn’t going to make life feel better.”

“Your life looks cute.” <suggesting … how quaint and ‘play the lottery every week’ your life is>

I could point out what a fucking uber rich narcissistic self-adulating pompous grown up rich kid this woman was for lashing out at some ‘less than’ person who dares criticize her, I will not. I will not because we should be clear. We just got a small glimpse of a discussion that happens day in and day out in anyone of the uber rich social circles as they hob nob with each other <kibitzing about the adorable peasants>. The only differnece is this wealthy person got busted. And it only happened because these wealthy assholes <people> mostly stay in their cocoon echo chambers and this one’s husband had the audacity to take a public servant position outside the cocoon.

Anyway. I will absolutely suggest that the majority of us have no clue what the other ‘haves’ <even if they are really have–nots>experience. We live in our own worlds and, in general, have little clue what the lives of people are like in income levels we do not share.

That said. The privileged wealthy are really out of touch <note: I will say that having any significant amount of money changes everyone’s perceptions>. This privileged wealthy class looks at accountability in a warped way. Accountability always seems to be measured by accumulation of wealth and the trappings of wealth. That is their measuring stick. And in their petty little gilded world it is the only measuring stick. Unfortunately that measurement doesn’t work outside their little world. And all it does is show they didn’t go to the same math class as the rest of the world, well, almost none of the same classes the rest of us went to.

Now. To get some of my wording right today, while I was fairly sure what ‘wealthy’ <nice word for rich> meant, I wandered into my go-to book on words Hayakawa’s Use the Right Word.

Wealthy:

synonyms: Affluent, flush, loaded, opulent, prosperous, rich & successful.

In fact rich is not considered a flexible term <unlike wealthy> because it is an either/or word – you are either rich or you are not. Seldom is one spoken of as being ‘moderately rich.’ In addition … rich, unlike wealthy, is widely used in extended senses to mean full, pregnant or abundant.

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‘… a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.’

Oscar Wilde

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 And, in fact, rich people are also inflexible. They are more focused on their own goals and desires. Research even shows that they also ignore people a little more <focused more on the trappings, materialistic aspects of their Life>.

“If you have more power and status, you may not have to care as much about what people are thinking and feeling; and also, if you’re in a resource-scarce environment, where things are a little more unpredictable and maybe a little more dangerous, it would be very adaptive to pay attention to others, how they’re feeling and what they’re going to do.”

Research: one-on-one interview research study conducted by Ipsos where they spoke with rich people <earning $1 million a year to $10 million a year>.

What they discovered was a startling demonstration of ignorance. While they earned a lot of money and may of them made their money managing their people’s money they knew next to nothing about other people’s incomes. When asked to relate themselves to the rest of the population, these high-earners completely misjudged the magnitude of their privilege.

How much, we asked our group, would it take to put someone in the top 10% of earners? They put the figure at £162,000. In fact, in 2007 it was around £39,825, the point at which the top tax band began. Our group found it hard to believe that nine-tenths of the UK’s 32m taxpayers earned less than that. As for the poverty threshold, our lawyers and bankers fixed it at £22,000. But that sum was just under median earnings, which meant they regarded ordinary wages as poverty pay.

While people may haggle over some of the research thoughts the real takeaway should be the rich’s obliviousness to reality outside of their opulent cocoon.

Yeah. The arrogance of the entitled rich is usually contained within their snake pit cocoon. In their cocoon anyone outside it is ‘poor little people who are quaint and aggravatingly jealous and don’t understand’ and within it is a mosh pit of excessive upmanship. Simplistically, anyone outside their cocoon must be a ‘lesser than’ who can never understand what it is like within the cocoon.

They tend to be ‘opulent’ more than prosperous. They imply personal success, regardless of whether they put in the hard work to attain their riches or not, is found in the trappings, the imagery, more than the intangible aspects of character, attitude with regard to work & fair play and kindness beyond ‘donations & charity’.

And they use all their ‘trappings’ as a portrayal of ‘success’ to the rest of the world outside their cocoon. What I mean by that is it is incredibly hard to conceive of a rich person not considered successful by most people even if they have no redeeming value outside of opulence <and, yet, we can conceive of someone being highly successful but not rich>. Simplistically, most of the hard work rich people do is to work hard at looking rich.

Which leads me to the ‘sacrifice equivalency.”

Whew. This one is always a little hard to swallow.

Because the rich measure everything by money they measure sacrifice in the same terms. Sacrifice has little to do with self, in and of itself, but rather what was sacrificed from what the materialistic self could have gained.

It is a warped view of sacrifice stripping it of its most redeeming qualities to some naked monetary transactional measurement.

In their snake pit world it is a measuring stick.

In the real world it is a hollow definition of sacrifice.

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“The excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than in its value.”

Charles Dudley Warner

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I say that because if you reread Mrs. Mnuchin’s post I would imagine, if you use the measuring stick I just offered, you would say she was offering a valid well intended response based on her world view and in doing so she clearly outlined the fact her cocooned world has very little to do with the real world.

I could say I feel sorry for her, but I do not.

I hate that belonging to different social classes means we struggle to relate on a daily basis.

I hate that America’s top one percent of earners is earning 81 times the average of the bottom 50 percent.

I hate that research shows how the wealthy and the working classes really do live in different cultures and, therefore, see the world in different ways.

I hate that research shows, ironically, rich people rated themselves as more empathetic — a “better-than-average effect” — when in reality the opposite was true.

The results “show that people who are higher in socioeconomic status have diminished neural responses to others’ pain. These findings suggest that empathy, at least some early component of it, is reduced among those who are higher in status.”

<Michael Varnum, neuroscientist at Arizona State University, a 2015 study on empathy>

I hate that success & wealth is significantly Life pre-programmed and that general mobility is a myth.

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“We now live in a separate economy, we live on a separate level to the vast majority of people in the country. We don’t send our kids to the same schools, we have more choice over schools, we have more choice over health, we have more choice over where we live, we have more choice over where we go on holiday and what we do for our jobs. And we live in a completely different world to the people we live next door to.”

a more thoughtful rich person at the end of the Ipsos interview

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Look. Every one of us lives looking at Life thru the lens of what we know. Someone who has only lived in poverty can only see poverty or ‘slightly more’ and someone who has money & been uber rich can only see wealth <and what comes with it>. And even those in-between are kind of trapped in what they know. I even think the manager who earns $145k a year is more often than not oblivious to the Life choices of their $45k a year employee.

Shit. Even I who has wandered between comfortable wealth and ‘holy shit I have no money’ views lowest income differently than someone who has only lived in lower income. How? I always believe I will not be there forever.

If something is all you have had, and is all you know, then that is what you are going to be in your head.

That said. All of us know that success in Life can be found by persistent working, never forgetting to pursue some dreams and being kind & caring while doing it. Unfortunately some of us forget that, but the rich people almost always believe they are the former <because they have wealth as proof>, think of dreams as tangible materialistic things and see kindness as anything to do with sharing their wealth, i.e, the framing for everything is associated with their wealthiness.

I tend to believe that we are all born equal, but we are not treated equal and not everyone is on an equal playing field. I don’t say that so some people should feel persecuted just as I do say that so some people recognize that they had better, easier opportunities than others.

There is always a way forward incorporating kindness … always. You just have to find it and relentlessly decide to find it. Unfortunately, it takes as much work as work itself. I would note this is not empathy (in my mind) this is about gaining perspective. You cannot put yourself in someone else’s shoes but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t put in the work trying to see what Life is like from where they are standing.

I have to conclude, using the Mrs. Mnuchin public comment, that most rich people just don’t want to put in the necessary work.

I have to conclude, using the research, most rich people are just douchebags out of touch with what we everyday schmucks deal with.

I have to conclude, using personal experience, the Rich Club doesn’t even like its own members and, in general, believes they reside in such a lofty place it is unreachable for mere mortals.

I have to conclude, given all the information, the Rich Club has no clue what Life is really like.

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“Pride and excess bring disaster for man.”

Xun Kuang

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“Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.”

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John Green

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False hope may be one of the worst things in the world and nowhere do we abuse hope more than with the discussion of possibility, i.e., “there are infinite possibilities.”

Wow. What bullshit.

Go online and you will see a gazillion articles, posts and general bullshit ramblings unequivocally stating:

“You are a being, full of infinite possibilities!”

“You are born with infinite possibilities.”

I will point out that by saying all this bullshit we are screwing the whole damn concept of possibilities let alone fucking up the truth of possibilities itself.

Your future is not filled by infinite possibilities.

Shit.

Your present is not filled by infinite possibilities.

Now. To be fair. We may have more possibilities than we think we do at any given point in time, but they are certainly not infinite. In fact, possibilities — your own possibilities in any given time and situation — are quite finite. And finite in a variety of ways:

Time inevitably squeezes your possibilities quite often into an almost suffocating finite space.

Ability inevitably squeezes your possibilities quite often into a fairly pragmatic sphere of finite space.

Context, or the situation itself, squeezes your possibilities quite often into a less than infinite, or maybe better said “a variety of different sized infinities,” choice space.

We do possibilities a huge disservice by suggesting ‘infinite.’

Shit.

We do ourselves a huge disservice by suggesting ‘infinite possibilities.’

Simplistically possibilities would be much better served if we suggested the depth & breadth available within the finite space available to us rather than some nebulous infinity.

Why? Because while finite may sound constricting it actually can help us keep our head in the game that is being played in the here & now. And finite actually helps maybe 80% of the people <I made that % up> in that the majority of people just do not feel comfortable answering the ‘call of the void’ <the unknown and uncertain>.

Regardless. Let me discuss possibilities for a minute in the context of multiple sized infinities.

At any given time in your Life you are absolutely surrounded by possibilities. But possibilities do not always lie directly ahead of you or in the direction you face. Possibilities swirl around you in a multi-dimensional fashion.

Therefore, possibilities can reside in any direction.

Therefore, in order to see all possibilities you may not be able to rely solely on peripheral vision but to turn around and view in a 360degree fashion <and, yes, if you turn around I would note you are then looking forward just in a different direction>.

Therefore, progress can reside in any direction.

But this is not infinite. It just may feel like it is infinite simply because of the complexity associated with context and what your mind can realistically grasp.

Our minds can only stuff so much crap and stimulus in at any given time and anything over that capacity starts to edge into “infinity” frame of mind. And it is not. It is simply the shit that is beyond our current capacity. But, suffice it to say, if you remain committed to restless movement and possibly some strategic side to side steps, and even thoughtful steps back, it is all part of progress in pursuit of what is possible.

All that said.

We would be much better served if we admitted that not all infinities are same sized. I also believe we would be much better served to admit that possibilities are finite to any given individual.

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Side note.

To be clear.

If you progress to a new and different time & space your existing range of possibilities will change <so you can certainly change what is possible for you>, but this simply means, thru environment context chnage, you have changed the finite scope of possibilities.

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Anyway. Here is why I loved the quote I opened with.

I love the idea of infiniteness. I love its expansiveness and I love it embracing of ‘hope for what could be’ and I love the fact it suggests possibilities. But I have always felt like suggesting possibilities being infinite as false. It had the unintended consequence of falsely suggesting that anyone could do anything at almost any time if they elected to do so. I felt like it had the unintended consequence of almost ‘freezing’ people into indecision in its vastness. It created such a vast sense of false hope that many people squandered the true possibilities within grasp.

And the quote suggests the best of all. You do have an infinite universe of possibilities circling and swirling you at any given moment, but not all infinities are created equal <basically suggesting there is a finiteness to many infinities>.

What an awesome thought.

Owning infinity and finite at exactly the same time.

And you know what? It actually reflects a Life truth.

You do have a shitload of possibilities swirling around you in a 360degree view of things.

And it may all appear overwhelmingly infinite in its pragmatic possibility view.

But that is just because, well, within your finite world and your finite choices and your finite ability to view & assess the choices you have, you have the ability to explore the infiniteness of who and what you are and who and what you could be.

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“Don’t dwell on things. Don’t stay in one place too long.

It was the only way to stay ahead of sadness.”

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Rick Riordan

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“That’s the thing about pain. It demands to be felt” 

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John Green

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Well. Let’s just say Life is best lived moving. Moving forward, sideways and even stepping back on occasion.

Why? Because trailing behind you almost every step in Life is sadness, pain and maybe regret. Suffice it to say that wherever you go there are a bunch of less than desirable things that keep close behind you awaiting you to stop.

The good news is that they just aren’t really fast enough to catch you.

The bad news is that they just relentlessly pursue until they have the opportunity to step up beside you.

And when you do stop moving?

They all have a nasty habit of demanding attention by tapping you on the shoulder and say “remember me?”

And, more often than not, as we stare back at them all we can see is all the shit we didn’t really see when we were moving and all the shit we didn’t really feel because we were doing something else.

I am not suggesting up to this point most people ignore this shit, just that we are busy getting on with getting on.

It is only when you stop <mentally or physically> that we are faced with all the ‘less thans’ and all the ‘imperfections’ and all the pain and all the sadness which you had left trailing behind you as you encountered the ‘more thans’ in Life and the ‘improvements’ and the good feelings and the happiness most often associated with ‘getting on’ with Life … ‘being actively engaged with Life’ may be another way to say it .

Sigh.

But here is the unfortunate Life truth. Life demands you stop at some point. You have to <unless you are a robot>.

And when you do all that stuff that has been shadowing you wherever you have gone, well, they all demand to be felt. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out here that Life is strewn with things which demand to be felt. So many it can create some sensory overload. So many that in the overload it becomes difficult to discern what is actually being felt and from what the ‘felt’ is coming from.

Sure. Some things stand out and you can clearly see the cause of what you are feeling, but most times everything, the less thans & imperfections & pain & sadness, all stand around you bludgeoning you with whatever they have at hand to a fairly numbing degree. And maybe it is because of that we numb ourselves to as many things as possible figuring it is the only way to manage our way thru the onslaught of things demanding and demanding and demanding.

The clamor of their cries for attention seems deafening if you listen too closely.

For all the happy horse shit ‘think positive’ crap around us in general Life, while Life certainly isn’t always despair & disappointment, it is more often than not involves a series of fairly gymnastic bobbing & weaving on our part in the attempt to avoid less than moments and disappointments and sadness and some pain.

For some reason <and I am sure there is some research somewhere on this>, but we remember the tears more than the laughter, the unhappiness stronger than the happiness and the failures more than the successes.

Maybe it is Life’s way of insuring we don’t get too confident.

Maybe it is Life’s way of insuring we pay attention to Life.

Maybe it is Life’s way of insuring we don’t get complacent.

I don’t know.

What I do know is that you have to work a little and have to work seemingly too hard sometimes, to stay ahead of the shit that inevitably dogs our steps – the sadness in other words.

Look.

Everyone reflects.

Everyone stops at some point.

And everyone will be faced by a number of uncomfortable things which will demand to be felt.

But, in the end, regardless of what demands to be felt it really comes down to one, and only one, thing.

“We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.” 

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“The trick is in what one emphasizes.  

We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy.

The amount of work is the same.”

Carlos Castaneda

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“It’s not what you actually do in life that you regret just the opportunities that pass you by. It’s even in what you choose to do the opportunities you do not let pass by. In those moments it is sometimes only that you are not courageous or brave but rather you have simply exchanged one fear for another. Afraid for what we were about to do and how you will do versus the fear of what we might not do.”

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Craig Johnson

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“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”

Joseph Campbell

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It recently occurred to me that at the end of 2014 someone had asked me to explain that year and I said “it was the year of fear.”  It matters here in 2019 because I think its reckoning time. Why? If 2014 was a year of fear so was 2015, 2016 (one candidate ran almost solely on stoking fear), 2017, 2018 and, frankly, 2019. It is not difficult to imagine, if one sits back, to think “that much fear mongering is just not sustainable.”

Let me remind you a bit about 2014 just so you can see what I think was the point where fear became a ‘thing.’

Now. It would have been easy to suggest it was a year of anger or intense negativity or a seemingly relentless crisis and end up all the way to an overall anger at society.

I could have begun with beheadings, disease, terror attacks, missing airliners, police brutality, and the threat of world war spanning Russia or North Korea or the Middle East or … well … within America itself.

I could have listed the Ebola outbreak in Western Africa, Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the ongoing turmoil in Ukraine or even the emergence of the Isis.

Instead, I think of how we, the people, responded to all these ‘things’ <events>. All you had to do is look around America and, well, see fear and anxiety <mixed in with what could appear like anger, but it truly is only fear & anxiety>.

Let me highlight the response to the Ebola outbreak. Millions of people worked themselves into a panic over a disease that has claimed the lives of fewer Americans that year than some random exploding air bag.

Why did it seem so bad? One word: “exogenous.” Exogenous events are events impossible to predict.

Let me be clear. Most events are unpredictable and, yet, there is no lack of people predicting shit. There are a shitload of ‘experts’ who espouse their brilliance on ‘I predicted’ or ‘how could we not have seen the consequences when we did <or didn’t do> this??!!??”

Its bullshit. Everyone who ‘predicted’ either:

<a> has a resume filled with predictions that never came to fruition therefore their one successful prediction is an anomaly, or

<b> their ‘prediction’ or hindsight brilliance has some other prediction attached to it <a consequence> which is false.

For example.

• Those who predicted ‘the rise of ISIS because <insert whatever brilliant criticism of Obama here>” usually also attached ‘terrorism coming to the United States!’ <when ISIS is mostly dedicated to killing other Muslims>. The net? Domestic white nationalism terrorism is actually the larger issue in the US.
• Those who predicted “Russia invading Ukraine/Crimea as a reflection of weak America” also predict World War 3. The net? No world war.

Suffice it to say that predictions are shit. And people who claim predictive events are shit holes.

The world is strewn with exogenous events … events impossible to predict.

And the world is also strewn with assholes with access to media <who loves to put these assholes onscreen> who love to treat exogenous events as rational predictable events <and therefore someone can be blamed>. And the world is strewn with everyday schmucks <people> who love to believe exogenous events are anything but exogenous.

Regardless. All that really matters is that things that are impossible to predict create fear among normal everyday people.

We like to think the world is predictable <despite the fact they know that their own lives include a strong thread of unpredictability> and get absurdly indignant when uncovering rational reasons <something to blame> for seemingly irrational events.

Trump doesn’t help.

News media doesn’t help.

Someone wrote somewhere that news today is like a:

… group of kids playing soccer: there is no strategy, just a raw, run, get it response. All running after all of those balls, irrespective of origin, and just trying to shoot. Plays happen in bursts, with no resolution.

It seems like the news network’s purpose is to let you know that something is on fire and that we need to burn someone at the stake for starting the fire <but there was no arsonist … it was just lightning>.

I say that … but … we cannot blame media. Shit. I cannot even blame Trump. It is us … the people.

Sure.  The media are surely bound to have a role in exaggerating common misperceptions and Trump has  massive role in stoking fear thru absurd lies, but, here is the deal … the fact that this happens everywhere shows we can’t lay the blame entirely with the media/Trump; it’s a much broader, attitudinal ‘people’ global issue.

The issue is us, the people, and how we remember information, how vivid demonstrations/metaphors are retained in our heads, regardless of whether they are describing something that is an exception rather than the rule.

We also suffer from what psychologists call ‘emotional innumeracy.’ This is where we focus more on what is worrying us more than trying to get the right answers, i.e., concern leading to our misperceptions as much as our misperceptions creating our concern.

Commenter on Ignorance article:

We may be ignorant on proportions and statistics but we know and can trust what our eyes see

Example we don’t have to be told immigration is out of control and all the rest of it

This comment reflects how most people respond to facts & information and proves the point I am making. People cannot trust what they see in terms of statistics & experts because they filter what they see through what they think.

Look. There are two accepted approaches in the quest for knowledge – the deductive and the inductive.

The danger of inductive method is that we can be led to a false conclusion even if we begin with the correct assumptions. It actually makes more sense to deduce — challenge and modify and assumption repeatedly until you find truth. Unfortunately in everyday life most people do the opposite — develop a set of rules based on personal experience <and beliefs> and then apply them to other experiences.

In addition. We tend to view events, even global events in which we have no set of experiences nor have any dimensionalized real perspective, through rules of our own personal experience. Let’s add in an uncomfortable truth that most times we don’t care unless we believe it will affect us.

For example. In August 2014 ISIS became a household word striking fear into Americans that with their long reach global organization they would terrorize America.

Why? Despite the fact Isis took control of Raqqa that January the world wasn’t interested until they beheaded an American journalist in August. All the while ISIS went ahead killing other Muslims.

And our fear became spread over a variety of fronts mainly because while the corporate al-Qaeda had been confronted and squeezed, it had become a franchise <ISIS or al-Qaeda on the Arabian peninsula or al-Shabaab in Somalia> & more nimble, violent and capable of planning around local defenses. Even more importantly, it became unpredictable, yet, a number of very vocal people (mostly politicians) started predicting things.

Simply. The events and words forced everyone into a liminal space. Which means, simply, we fear what we do not understand.

We understood Bin Laden. We understood a Taliban stronghold <dedicated to US terrorism>.  Once that went away we lost our basis of understanding <and the unknown created a disproportionate fear>.

But this isn’t about ISIS. This is about fear and how we people respond to fear.

Because in our fear we want to assess blame or seek to have someone destroy what we do not understand.

Another 2014 example? In March a civilian passenger plane disappears without trace when Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanishes. Yup. It happened. A big passenger plane with lots of people just disappeared … and then it stayed disappeared. Our fear resorted to blame <as if people sought to be incompetent and kill hundreds of people> all the way to absurd conspiracies and speculation.

In May polio made a global comeback. But America has a vaccine for polio <and I think it was impossible to tie it to a conspiracy or some incompetence of Barack Obama> so Americans didn’t care and we had no fear.

In July Israel and Palestine basically went to war <exchanging a shitload of rockets>. But because Israel has an army and Palestine does not … Israel won.

Well.  We think they did because something else newsworthy appeared for TV and all of a sudden no one was talking about Gaza anymore.

So I imagine I should admit I have no clue how it ended.

And we had no fear in America other than some absurd fear that it had something to do with diminished American impact upon global affairs.

Then. In October we started screaming Ebola can kill you and is going to kill you. By November we realized Ebola wasn’t going to kill you and didn’t <and maybe the CDC really knew what they were doing>.

Anyway.

I recap some stories to point out how fear dictated our view of the world in 2014. And you know what? I could have recapped almost the exact same things, with different storylines, for each year since. And here we are in 2019 with a President shouting at the top of his lungs that fear has a home within the borders of the USA and that actually we should be fearful.

Let’s be clear.

While USA has issues, 99% of the 340million people wake up, are relatively healthy, a shitload of them go to work , are productive, interact with people around them in a courteous way, go home a little tired but to a home they are relatively happy with, talk with some friends and, in general, have not much to fear.

So there you have it:

You can make a lot of something from nothing.  Even the search for nothing or the threat of nothing, if the people allow fear to play a role.

2014 was hardly reason to be blanketed in fear, and yet, we were. The same for 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019.

In general every year we constantly made something from nothing.

I believe we are at our time of reckoning. I believe we are at the point where, well, we are exhausted and almost everyone realizes that all those fears we have had over all these years, well, never came to anything. I believe it’s actually the moment where more people stop acting like ignorant scaredy cats and focus more on rational thinking than emotional thinking.

Sure.  In the minds of most people <everywhere> the idea that certainty & predictability, and sticking to your personal attitudes & beliefs, is better than uncertainty and compromise.

Yes. It has become easier and easier for a person to find some media outlet <television, radio, or Internet> they agree with. And it is a natural human tendency to find ‘your people’ <people who share the same philosophical view>.

To be clear … we are fairly simple as people in what we want and like:

• want to know for sure whether something’s right or wrong, and
• tend to follow or bond with those who agree with our ideas, and
• through confirmation bias, ignore or attack things that contradict our personal beliefs <or experiences>.

These are normal human reactions.  We all do it.

In addition.  We naturally tap into emotions and emotional responses are much faster than intellectual ones.  And traditionally once we let emotions take total control we lose the ability to think rationally. But I think in a time of reckoning, even in the face of loudmouthed predictors of fear & doom, people are so emotionally exhausted that the ‘time of rational’ is upon us.

Look. In any ideology there are ‘fundamentalists’ on both extremes with the majority of people spread about on a continuum. The many in the middle <who tend to view multiple aspects of a single idea> mostly calmly discuss different points of view. All the while extreme point-of-views <and the ‘partial truth’ advocates> are LOUDLY INSISTING THEY ARE CORRECT.

In the time of reckoning I believe a lot of people will just shut out the loud asshats seeking rational explanations and rational narratives for the future.

Some people may associate this with authenticity or ‘being genuine.’ I do not. I think this is about elevating rational in the discourse. Period.

I believe it is Rational’s moment in time because most people are tired of all aspects of fear:

• Fear of wanting some reason <and not finding simplicity in a complex world>.
• Fear of the unpredictable.
• Fear of the exception being the ‘rule.’
• Fear that it is bad & getting worse.

Which leads me to my finishing thought and my message to people:

“Nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems.”

• Nothing is ever as good as it seems.

This may sound pessimistic and while there are certainly lots of good things in life & in the world it’s important to remember that if something seems too good to be true; it usually is.

This is the insidious side of fear. Fear that it will not stay ‘good.’ and constantly seeking out things & people to blame for it ‘not being as good as it used to be.’

Stop. Just fucking stop it.

It most likely wasn’t as good as you thought it was <particularly because when we look at things in the rear view mirror they always seem to look better than they really were>.  We shouldn’t be dictated by a fear of ‘losing good.’ Just be careful and maintain some perspective.

• Nothing is ever as bad as it seems

When it seems bad it is incredibly easy to exaggerate the severity of the situation <in our own perceptions as well as by asshats trying to influence our thinking>. Most times it is not as bad as it seems and it will not become as bad as you imagine.  Sure. There are ‘we are in deep shit’ moments and events. But most of the time it is just not as serious as we think. And most times it will not have as serious repercussions as you imagine.

Both of these are about perspective. Fear makes us lose perspective.  Lose the fear … gain perspective.

Look. 2014 thru 2019 was not as bad as we feared.  In fact. Most of what we feared never happened.

What a waste of energy.

And who is to blame?

Us. The people. No one else.

Not the government. Not the media. Not the president. Not some incompetent greedy business leader.

Not anyone but us. The people.

Fear can only happen if we allow it to happen.

I believe it is our time of reckoning where we get tired of fear and, well, I’m hoping the outcome is we create a string of years of unfear.

I believe it is a time for rational words, thinking and thoughts stepped to the forefront. I know a shitload of people will shove this up my ass – “rational doesn’t get people excited” or “emotional engages.” You know what? Context matters. For 5 years we have constantly been told to fear something. Shake the fucking etch a sketch. Share some rational thinking in an engaging way and, well, I am willing to bet a lot of money a lot of people are in the market for something other than fear.

Ponder.

Regardless of whether you agree with my solutions I think most people agree we are at a moment of reckoning. If you do, well, then rethink my solution because the moment is important.

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“I am confident that, in the end, common sense and justice will prevail.

I’m an optimist, brought up on the belief that if you wait to the end of the story, you get to see the good people live happily ever after. “

—

Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam

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Well. I, frankly, cannot see how anyone could go through life without any optimism. I don’t see how anyone could live anything other than a fairly dismal life if all you did was embrace cynicism & skepticism. Fortunately, I do not believe many people are that completely dismal. I tend to believe most people believe common sense and justice may not always prevail, but certainly has better than even odds of prevailing in Life.

I actually think the bigger issue is that we sometimes feel suffocated by negativity and perceived ‘badness’ all around us. It can seem crushing on occasion. So crushing that it sometimes seems like it is more powerful than justice … and certainly more powerful than common sense.

That is why we need optimism.

Now. To be clear.

I am not an optimist. I am more a cynical optimist.

I am not a dreamer. I am more a pragmatic dreamer.

And, yes, I believe in hope, but, well, more a ‘lunch bucket” type hope. “Lunch bucket”?

Well. Certainly hope requires thinking. But thinking far too often remains just that … thinking … and no doing.

Lunch bucket hope is about putting in the work.

Lunch bucket hope is about full dreaming and not hollow promises.

Lunch bucket hope is about the harsh truths and not ignoring truths.

Lunch bucket hope is about recognizing ‘what is’ can change but ‘what will be’ will not happen magically.

This lunch bucket attitude combined with optimism, at its core, brings a belief that nothing may work. but that everything might work.

It is about understanding that there is no one silver bullet to solve something or to dramatically turn things around, but understanding that if you try 100 different things and each one makes even a little impact that there will be progress <and you get just a bit closer to what you hope>.

It is about recognizing that Life is rarely simple cause and effect and more likely a series of complex intertwined events <not chaos>.

It is about seeing that Life is always a work in progress where many times progress is difficult to distinguish from stagnancy.

It is about seeing that change, more often than not, is neither spectacular nor disruptive, but rather subtle nudges easily overlooked.

And … it is about only being confident that common sense and justice will prevail if you bring a lunch bucet attitude along with your optimism & hope.

I will admit.

My lunch bucket optimism is surrounded by pessimistic thoughts & cynical thoughts all wearing a well-worn comfortable cloak of hope.

I will admit.

My thoughts have a healthy respect for hope.

This permits my type of optimism to not be some kind-hearted pushover, but rather one capable of yelling, sharing hard feedback and resilient to a world which, very often, brings an even harsher cynicism.

My type of optimism defends the arc of history which embraces good against the attacks of bad … which relentlessly seek to slow the natural arc of progress.

And, yet, as I defend what I view a the good arc of history I bring a legitimate care for the world at large along with, what could be viewed as cold & harsh, a view in which I may simply see people as the actors on the stage of this greater world.

I do believe kindness & generosity differentiate performance; not successes & wins. This is not an easy task the pragmatic optimists take on. It demands that you have to do hard things and sometimes be hard in how you deal with Life … all the while keeping kindness in your heart.

I once used Jamie Varon’s words to say I am a professional aspirationalist. <That’s not a word, but I’ve made it into one, since there was nothing that could quite describe me because I didn’t want to say I’m a “professional dreamer” because that sounds like some hippie shit. I have aspirations, like, lots of them.>

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“I am not afraid of my truth anymore and I will not omit pieces of me to make you comfortable.”

Alex Elle

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I believe being a professional aspirationalist helps me to be a little more confident that common sense & justice & ‘good’ will prevail in today’s world.

I believe this because professional aspirationalist is a compass and not a destination. It is a direction.

Aspirationalist is a moving target.

Being an aspirationalist means not only having dreams, but dreaming and, yet, I remain a pragmatic optimist. It means I am restlessly pursing what is good and better  … relentlessly seeking, traveling, doing, thinking … professionally constantly in motion <mentally or physically>.

To be clear.

All of this is not for the faint of heart.

All of this is not easy.

All of this is often an eternal struggle against a shitload of negative forces in the world.

But. Isn’t all of that truly what being yourself is all about?

Isn’t Life, and living it, sort of about having some courage to suggest ‘I will not omit things just to make you comfortable’ and finding your own version of bravery?

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“I am a world that cannot be explored in one day. I am not a place for cowards.”

Caitlyn Siehl

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I imagine my point is that today’s world, in general, is not a place and time for cowards.

In addition, being a pragmatic optimist means you are not a place for cowards. I say that because pragmatic optimism, professional aspirationalist, all these types of thoughts are not simply about being a dreamer, all these thoughts have rich & royal hues of reality threading its way through its fabric.

And you are forced to not be a coward because this pragmatic optimism demands people to think about dreaming, but also demands doing.

Pragmatically, we cynical optimists, aspirationalists as it were, do seek approval and acceptance and we do seek to actually do shit (albeit ‘good shit’).

Now … I could argue, whether you like it or not, whether you think it is right or wrong, in some form or fashion we all care.

We all care <not just aspirationalists> about all of this shit <and shit in general>.

We all care what the people around us think about us. And by people I mean everyone from those closest to you <who would most likely accept you in any shape and form you ended up in> to society overall.

And we all care about good shit happening rather than bad shit.

And we all care about providing some value to the world.

Uhm.

But maybe that is where being a cynical optimist, a practical dream, a professional aspirationalist has an edge in today’s world.

We do not seek solely finding value from proving ourselves to others.

We don’t accept solely finding value in and of ourselves.

We seek finding value in uncovering pragmatic ways that our optimism can come to Life.

The value resides in the fact that the proof exists in our optimism being vindicated.

In the end.

It may very well be my timeand the time for people who think as I do. We cynical optimists. And I am okay with that.

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“It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, “Wait on time.”

Martin Luther King Jr.

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