What are you serious about? How far will you go?

Brilliant post!

I agree with his observations but not how he applies this knowledge. 

As I got older it became clearer to me that not many people are really serious about anything. Some people go their whole lives without ever having met anyone else who I might describe as actually serious, so they find it hard to believe that anybody could really mean what they say, since everything everyone says is bullshit. I remember feeling like that myself at some of my low points in life, when I was at my most depressed.

Looking back now I don’t think I was entirely wrong, the issue was that I was overly fixated on unpleasant truths. I find myself compelled to describe it as “LinkedIn World”, where everyone is performing a bullshit role in a bullshit play.

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Anyway so– it’s actually quite rational for most people to assume that any other random person probably isn’t serious. That they don’t really mean what they say. Lots of people play-act seriousness for social reasons, but quit when the going gets tough. So it makes sense that lots of people are broadly cynical. Cynicism is a completely reasonable defense against fraud and bullshit. The trouble with cynicism as a defense mechanism is that you can get so good at it that you inadvertently also defend yourself against anything good happening for you.

[---]

I mean something closer to ‘dynamic persistence’, and a sense of humor is often critical to that. It’s hard to persist for a long time if you ‘take yourself too seriously’. You become rigid, stiff, the opposite of dynamic, and eventually you bang up against something that breaks you one way or another, because you weren’t able to back down, or laugh it off.

So the point is to take the work seriously but you don’t take yourself too seriously. 

There’s a riff about this in Stephen Pressfield’s War of Art, where he talks about how amateurs are too precious with their work: 

“The professional has learned, however, that too much love can be a bad thing. Too much love can make him choke. The seeming detachment of the professional, the cold-blooded character to his demeanor, is a compensating device to keep him from loving the game so much that he freezes in action.”

 

Meta Value - 27

All conditioned things are impermanent’ — when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering. 

- The Buddha, Dhammapada, verse 277

Truth - Impermanence of life, and everything else. 

I think within a few months of Max coming into my life, I understood this. My time with him is limited. I have to immerse myself with him "now" like there is no tomorrow. 

I don't remember how I understood this; if I had read Buddha or I understood this viscerally being with Max. 

Our relationships, life, money, fame, friends, wishes, dreams, and decisions all are impermanent. 

Understanding this helped me become a much kinder living being and on the contrary, it also helped me stand up against bullshits of envy, jealousy, self centeredness et al.  

Everyday, even today and as long as I breathe - I live by understanding that everything is impermanent. Ironically, this  truth is beautiful. 

The Signal

The Signal - I loved the unique storyline and final (good) twist. 

Humanity needs more stories like this to think beyond self and their families. This quote says it all!

Somethings are bigger than us. 

I really don't care how humanity was in the past but we need to learn to sacrifice for things bigger than us. Things that reduce pain and sufferings for all beings and more.

Moments During Termor

I was working and was in a meeting. Neo was lazy and lounging on a bean bag. Fluffy and Garph were taking a nap. Weird enough, I could hear Saroo and Blue were having a quintessential sibling fight few minutes ago in the upstairs bedroom (yeah, Saroo is probably the culprit).

Then I heard a weird noise buzzing all around and the whole house started shaking... my heart started pounding. My mind was engulfed with thoughts that NYC has been attacked and there are fighter planes flying above. But yet, part of me said this is an earthquake. 

Those few moments felt like eternity. 

I had no control in front of mother nature. I wanted to save all five in the house and I had no idea how to do it. My mind was refusing to draw a clear plan in those moments.  

And it stopped. 

My heart and body was still pounding, expecting an aftershock which might be worse. But nothing of that sort happened. 

Those few helpless moments, I remembered my favorite lines; a meta value of mine: 

Mind as a River

Understand: the greatest generals, the most creative strategists, stand out not because they have more knowledge but because they are able, when necessary, to drop their preconceived notions and focus intensely on the present moment. That is how creativity is sparked and opportunities are seized. Knowledge, experience, and theory have limitations: no amount of thinking in advance can prepare you for the chaos of life, for the infinite possibilities of the moment. The great philosopher of war Carl von Clausewitz called this "friction": the difference between our plans and what actually happens. Since friction is inevitable, our minds have to be capable of keeping up with change and adapting to the unexpected. The better we can adapt our thoughts to the current circumstances, the more realistic our responses to them will be....

Think of the mind as a river: the faster it flows, the better it keeps up with the present and responds to change. The faster it flows, also the more it refreshes itself and the greater its energy. Obsessional thoughts, past experiences (whether traumas or successes), and preconceived notions are like boulders or mud in this river, settling and hardening there and damming it up. The river stops moving; stagnation sets in. You must wage constant war on this tendency in the mind. 

- The 33 Strategies of  War by Robert Greene

No amount of preparation would have allowed me to plan and react accordingly in those moments. 

But this meta value and inner peace, is probably what I depend on most to help me think clearly  if the worse would have happened. No one can preplan in this uncertain life but lifelong meditative understanding of fragility, epistemic humility and the importance of a clear mind without preconceived notions is what I depend on to make decisions during good and bad moments. 

I survived. Everyone around me survived. The gift of life continues. 

Eschew clinging to the past, building future "legacy", and zillion other pleasures humans seek causing so much pain and suffering.  

Heaven on earth is nothing but life itself. 

Meta Values - 26

Lack of pain and suffering is a gift for me. I don't go in search of happiness. 

Years, months, weeks, days and moments without pain and suffering is absolute heaven. 

Inner peace is more precious than happiness. 

A life with more moments of inner peace than anything else is heaven on earth. 

Meta Values - 25

Hardest of all my values but the most valuable - I have to move from explanations to solutions. 

From human nature to animal suffering, my life should focus on offering solutions. 

I have no idea how to go about finding solutions. I will keep trying until my last breath. 

Good Bye Daniel Kahneman

Blind to the obvious, but also we are “blind to our blindness.”  

We have very little idea of how little we know. We're not designed to know how little we know.

- Daniel Kahneman

When his book Thinking, Fast, and Slow came out in 2011, I sent Max's holiday card to him. He was the only person I have ever sent Max's card outside of family and friends. 

David Brooks wrote that this era we live in will be remembered as "Daniel Kahneman's Era". 

Thank you sir for everything you taught me and the world. 

Saroo & Blue!

In the poem of life Max created, two new beautiful sentences were added yesterday. 

Saroo and Blue are brothers who are six years old. Saroo has settled in comfortably in Max's Walden but Blue is acting like Fluffy when she came home six years ago. 

                                                 Saroo

Blue

Happy Birthday Max!

Max turned 18 years today! 

Wow, what ride it had been. I miss you my love. 

Good Bye Frans de Waal

Steve M Wise few weeks ago. and now Frans de Waal...

Giants who lead torch in reducing pain and suffering of non-human animals have passed away. 

The man who brought humans and monkeys together

Frans de Waal died on Thursday evening US time at the age of 75 in his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia (USA), as a result of metastatic stomach cancer, his family confirmed.

De Waal was the most famous Dutch primatologist for decades. With his calm speech, great knowledge and undeniable love for our fellow animals, he was also a well-known figure outside of science. Often shown on television, often quoted in debates.

De Waal rose to fame in the 1980s with his book Chimpanzee Politics (1982). This book was based on his observations of the power struggle in the chimpanzee colony of Burgers Zoo in Arnhem. The book offers a radical new view of ape leadership: it is not brute force and the direct application of power, but rather the mediation of conflicts and careful management of alliances that characterize the life of an ape leader. The monkey world suddenly became very human. So humane that conservative Republican Senator Newt Gingrich recommended the book in the 1990s as educational reading for young members of Congress.

This is a common thread in De Waal’s work: apes are much more like humans, and humans are much more like apes, than we think. 

As he said in a speech about his work in 2014: “I have moved the monkeys up a little and the people down a little.” …

We have a moral obligation to carry on their work. 

Thank you sir. 

Frans de Waal has died. Below is a photograpgh of Frans' showing a male chimpanzee inviting another to reconcile after a fight with the invitation accepted a few minutes later. One of my all time favorite images.