Author: Philo

human

Mastery

Try to become a master at something. It is difficult. It is misunderstood. And if you succeed, which is doubtful, you will live in a world that thrives on mediocrity and overlooks your art. It will redefine mastery to include mediocrity.

But to be a master you must overcome all of this. A master dismisses those who smile snidely and do not care for such heights. A master does not brag because an artist does not need to. Mastery, though, comes at even a higher cost than all of this.

Failure is the norm. Progress is slow and tedious, often feeling like it is non-existent. You will be alone and the world will not care for what you love most. It will take a lifetime to realize that you have not achieved your goal. There will always be better. Your ego will stay bruised and you will relinquish pride with a tear in your eye.

Honesty will be forced and you will kneel, humbled, at the foot of the mountain that you know you must climb. This is when you will be a master but feel like a novice.

Celebration

We want to live and enjoy life. we drink and we are merry. We eat what we want to eat because it tastes good. We enjoy our respite from the world and from ourselves and sometimes we desire to be nothing more than lazy and irresponsible, if only for a while. We might ask for too much, but most of us probably do not.

And yet, just for a little time in the sun, just for a beer or two, or a large, filling meal we pay the cost. We are guilty.

“I’ll gain weight.”

“I’m lazy.”

We might say. And still just for that short time living beyond our own strict regiment the fun of doing so is taken away. Relaxation turned to regret. This is not how it is supposed to be but often it is how it is. We reach goals only to have them swept away because we have dared to celebrate.

But we must smile every now and again because misery is our only other option. Take a piece of celebratory cake and our week is ruined. But savor the sweetness and the texture, and savor the slight smile on your lips.

The universe does not exist for us, but we must always remember to rise above the universe.

Compromise

The word “compromise” sounds good in our modern ears. It rings of progress and of social good. And it is good. It is even necessary. One of the arguments in its favor is that it allows all to sense contentment and happiness. It is for the common good after all.

But there is a price for everything. Not even death is free from this. And compromise is a much more expensive commodity than mortality. With every compromise we make we sell happiness. It is important to remember that all commodities have two aspects: quality and quantity. It is also important to remember that happiness is a quality and compromise is a quantity.

We chip away at the quality of one to allow more of the other.

Compromise is a necessary component of civilization and is becoming more important as we over-populate this planet but to say that compromise is always better is a fool’s game. We compromise our own happiness for numerous reasons but only one reason is worthy. Compromise is warranted when it causes the quality of each of our lives to be greater, not lessened.

Compromise in most of its forms is a lie wrought by those who know nothing of happiness.

Happy

Happiness is an ambiguous word like “love” or “intellect” and because of its vague nature it is often misunderstood. The irony is that we search for happiness without really knowing what it is or what it takes to be happy. Some parameters might help.

  1. Learn to differentiate from those things and people needed from those that are not and choose accordingly.
  2. Although happiness is often thought about as an emotional state, as such it will be fleeting and dependent; it will be insubstantial. Happiness must be a good in itself; it must be the end-goal.
  3. We must rid ourselves of the need to impress others. We must learn to disregard the unwarranted opinions of others, even of those we love.
  4. We must be curious and passionate about learning. we must accept the pitfalls and frustrations that come with actualizing knowledge.
  5. We must never fall prey to gadgets and toys constantly offered to us by consumerism and so-called culture. Happiness will not be found in a thing.
  6. We must do those things that make us better persons. And as we do those things we must learn that doing such sets us up to do be happy in a meaningful and substantial way.

Genius

Richard Feynman’s approach to learning is famous in some circles. What it amounts to is work. But work relies solely on the ability to focus. I recently ran across a useful definition for genius in Scott Young’s book, Ultra-Learning.

Genius: is the ability to focus intently over long periods of time.

It’s a paraphrase but the point is clear. We spend an inordinate amount of time speculating, practicing, and contriving ways to be more efficient, fast, better, in order to become better off financially. However, our ability to focus is slipping away.

The definition above puts many things into perspective. First, it reminds us that what we do is in most cases not important as how we do it. Secondly, it reminds that no matter what our goals or ambitions are they will always be determined by how we thing rather than what we think. Our greatest tool is our mind but we must be willing to use and perhaps nowadays, protect our minds.

Focus is a lifelong goal. Something that demands our time and is difficult. For those reason many will make excuses for their inability or unwillingness to do such “impractical” things. But for those of us who find value in learning we must remember:

A fool walks away in ignorance. A wise man simply walks away.

Meaning of Life

Life is not magical, but it can be.

There are black holes the size of galaxies and the universe is infinite for all intent purposes. Light years are not only measurements of time but life times, of generations. Far more living things have gone extinct than are living today.

These are thoughts that ought to be comforting if not a little unnerving. But they serve to remind us that life is so much more than a miracle. It is a gift from a watchmaker, but a blind one. The worries that we have are about us, and they are important to us, but not as important as we like to think.

And while many around us are blind as the watchmaker itself to this underlying fact does not mean that we should give up on living a life of happiness and satisfaction. In fact, being happy and satisfied is based on the acceptance that the universe is infinite and meaningless…and we are part of it.

Success!

What is success but an acceptance of being unsuccessful for long enough.

We all hear platitudes about persistence and fortitude regarding being successful but actually living this way is not easy. The other side of those sentences about success is usually “then you can get what you want.” Success is usually measured with economic value but persistence and fortitude are so much more worthy.

In fact, a good life is so much more than the latest gadget or “newest model” and so is success. Getting things is easy. Getting credit is easy. But earning things and earning credit is not. And success is directly related to earning what we have, what we actually have. If we do this long enough then we will start to realize the value of fortitude and persistence.

Being unsuccessful is not necessarily failure. In fact, failure often means the opposite of what we think of when we use the word. Failure can mean that we tried. Failure can mean that we have learned what our limitations are, at least for the moment. Failure can imply that we have tried to be better.

Those people who fail in life are often those that are curious and intelligent. And those that are successful are sometimes not.

A big house and an empty head often go together.

Age

It is a peculiar thing, age. In some ways clarifying, opening unseen pages of a book that we have forgotten. And in some ways oppressive, sucking the life-energy, the blood from our veins.

How we think about age matters long before we grow old.

In those years before age we talk of the past in terms of years and then decades, not often thinking of ourselves as young or old. We simply are, and this is good. But it would behoove us in our impetuous years to consider our own age then, and in the future.

When we are young we create our older selves.

Age comes upon us quietly and shrouds us in doubt and apathy, in fear and pain. Unmotivated to act we must draw upon our younger selves. Those times when we knew what we were capable of. When we are old we need to know our limitations. It is a different side of the same coin.

So if we know our limitations, and strive to know what we are capable of the child within will never really go away. We can live comfortably knowing we are old but believing we are young.

We can spend our old age playing like children.

The Forlorn Places

There are places in the city that are forgotten. They are passed by. Once, they were fortresses of pride and now they are empty shells. These places in the city are bastions, a haven for the weary city-dweller, busy always with the burning of time for nothing.

Be that as it may in these places one can disappear, taking a break from the endless reaching and taking. The tired dweller can take a break among the lost causes and arrogance.

I like to walk my dogs in these places. They run joyfully through the overgrown acres and through the trees and bushes once pruned and now growing freely. they pay no heed to the cement structures sitting silently among the unnatural forest.

These places are my favorite places in the city. they, in their failure, are a success. They are a peaceful bastion and I search them out. They are my secret out in the open. they are my own paradise in the endless succession of more, and more and more.

Looking for answers among a myriad of possibilities is asking questions that cannot be answered. Perhaps I’ll find answers in these forlorn places? Maybe you will too?

Bored

There is something about a sunrise. Early in the morning. It must be the light, but it seems cleansing and rejuvenating. Especially on a day free from plans. Nothing is needed. No desires and no one desires anything of you. The light, the freedom from and the freedom to. The hours ahead drip calming your head consciously.

These mornings fresh from sleep, a little drowsy, coffee in hand, before the world wakes up are the church where god is found. These minutes are void of those pesky minutia and memorandums that we so often live our lives by . Days like this are silent and still and I wait for the second coming: boredom.

But this boredom is nothing to scoff at. It is needed. It is the sky in which my mind soars. It is the sun which doesn’t burn us as we fly ever closer. It is space in which dreams are born and ideas are molded. Boredom is the topsoil that we plant our hopes in. For without boredom what are we but the mechanization of a narcissist?

Be bored and see what dreams come.