Month: July 2012

Look outside your window. What is out there?

Trees, cars, roads, streams, people.

I’m sure there are other things that you named, but I would doubt many of you thought to yourself, the one commonality of everyone reading the blog, and the biggest thing that is out there.

Air.

Why is this?  Well, the obvious answer is that we don’t think of air, since it is invisible.  However, I think it is more subtle than that.

The real reason is that air in (to our mind) unbounded – due to the fact that it is invisible, and therefore not an object that we think of.

Taking this idea to the next level, is the fact that we like to objectify our world.  It gives us a handle with which to manipulate our thoughts – and sits at a more basic level of understanding, before abstract thought.

Every object in our world becomes connected with it’s descriptive attributes in our mind, and thereby turned into a manipulative object – also known as a noun.  It is with these nouns that we explain our world and our place in it.

Therein lies the issue.

When we define something it, makes it black and white, and often the reality lies somewhere in the shade of gray.  Our mind doesn’t like gray, so we choose a side, and end up on one extreme or the other.

The problem is that since we really are existing somewhere on the continuem, the fact that we choose an extreme to explain our reality, doesn’t actually sit that well with us – and we feel off balance.

To find balance, we need to reject our object model, and instead find our balance point.  For without this skill, we can never find “emotional alignment.”

 

An exercise.

Try to imagine nothing.

Now to imagine infinity.

If you are anything like me, you end up creating a mental image of something like a vacuum and then a really big amount of something.

The problem with nothing and infinity from a mental perspective is that since they don’t exist in the physical world, we have no model with which to base our understanding.  Therefore, while we can conceptually understand them, and perhaps even use the concept in math, etc, we can’t actually envision them.

One important take away is that it humbles me to realize that there are truths that my mind simply can’t grasp.   Even thought I can explain the concept, and perhaps even apply it, in nothingness and infinity, I can see the boundaries of my own mind.  This helps me fully realize that there are things in this world that exist, without human capacity for true understanding, in a very concrete way.

 

 

I shared a story a while back about about a girl I met in DC, that was depressed by the fact that nothing in life was ever fresh, and shared a few thoughts on ways out of this perspective.  In truth, I now know that the core reason that she felt that was was that she was trapped in a self-imposed bubble of security, and was living her life reactively instead of proactively.

Let’s bring this idea out in a concrete way.

The last day of my trip to Ireland, I scheduled a one day trip to Belfast to visit and learn more about the history of the Irish conflict up there.  I paid for the trip, and went back to the hotel, having set my alarm to wake me up at 7:15AM, excited for the trip the next day.

Well, power plugs in Ireland, have a little switch by them, and I forgot to turn mine on, resulting in the alarm losing power in the middle of the night, and I woke up at 10AM.

When I realized what happened, I was faced with a decision.  I could reactively live, which would result in bemoaning my pitiful fate, or I could proactively live, and take the attitude that my life was taking a different path than I had expected.  The subtle difference in attitude is what allows life to be exciting and free vs. stale and constricting.

Further, I would argue that reactive living comes from a position of fear and desire for security (which does not exist), whereas proactive living comes from a perspective of adventure and confidence in one’s self.

On a personal note, I realized that what I have loved about traveling around, has been that it allowed me to live proactively, and upon deeper introspection realized that my life in Atlanta was highly reactive.  This reactive attitude, brought me down, and depressed me when I was home.  However, a small change in attitude to extend my proactive living attitude to my time in Atlanta, charged me, and brought passion back to my life.

I will note that I found that achieving this attitude comes about through finding inner self-security and living bravely, so if you find you have trouble with proactive living, give these topics some thought as well.

I want to take a moment to talk about trust a little bit.

Lately, I have been staying at people’s houses in my travels.  I use a website, where I just rent a room, and stay in their house.  Of course, before I do, I check out their “references” – and they, I assume, check out mine.

The issue of trust comes up a bit – will the person hurt me in the middle of the night.  It came up when I was in Ireland, and there was no lock on my bedroom door.  Was the lady I rented from going to come in and hurt me.  It came up in New Orleans, when the marine boyfriend with magazines like “guns and ammo” in the bathroom of the girl I rented from watched her place for the weekend – again with no lock on the door.

It comes into play every time I meet a stranger on my travels and create a relationship with them.

I think about it, when some ladies four year old kid comes over to me and starts talking at the airport, knowing that she probably feels she can’t trust me, the stranger, when there probably are few strangers safer for her kid to talk to in the world.

It is an issue, when my own child disappears for under a minute at a public event – even my almost thirteen year old still creates a little anxiety for me still.

I can’t trust others, and others can’t trust me.

Of course, we all have reasons not to trust.  We watch the news, we have been hurt by those we trusted, and even those we didn’t trust!

The issue for us as modern man, is that trust of our fellow man is at the heart of any relationship, and as trust continues to erode in society, what that really means is that the quality of relationships erodes as well.

One thing I do wonder is if the fear of trust is greater than the risk of trusting and being wrong.  I would love to see a study which quantifies the risk of trusting.

Meaning that, many people are scared of flying due to hearing about airplane accidents, even though statistically, it is much safer than driving.

Is trust the same way?  Have we as a society fallen pray to a overstated fear or is there a real issue at hand.

Having put myself at minimal risk a few times, my gut is that it is the former.  If that’s the case, we need to do something about that, and put a more popular (and realistic notion) to the fear of trust!

I had the great opportunity to spend some time in Ireland this summer, and while vacationing (or on holiday, as the Irish say), I spent quite a bit of time in Irish Pubs writing, talking, and listening to some great, and not so great, music.

While in the pub, I looked around, and saw that I was the most attractive guy in the pub.  Now, personally, I feel that I am of pretty average looks, so noticing this fact, I suddenly had a tremenedous amount of self-confidence, and noticed how this self-confidence came through in my conversations, and how people reacted to me in the pub. 

Of course, it was only a day or two later, that I realize that while I thought I was the most attractive guy, that was because, in fact, I was using “American” standards, and applying them to Irish people.  However, in truth, from the Irish perspective, I might well have been down-right ugly!

There are a number of lessons that we can learn from this, but I’ll focus on the fact that we often get in the way of our true self shining through, since our lack of self-confidence gets in the way.  So by getting out of the way of ourself, we can actually, truly live, which creates a truly beautiful – and engaging – person.