Why change is good

I and others just keep on living with the momentum of high school, college and graduate school behind us, accepting the decently-paid jobs that come our way to solve problems we're trained for, but don't necessarily question.

It's when we start questioning the problems themselves that the reasoning starts to falter. Why do we practice law and sell real estate and go to a 9-5 the way we do? Why are we such avid consumers and upholders of individual freedom? So much of it is cultural conditioning that we become self-aware of when we travel to another country, sometimes another state. It becomes clear that norms can be very different and we're surprised by the strange nature of other cultures. What a self-aggrandizing idea! I bet people visiting from other cultures have exactly the same reaction. So there's another layer to combat, the inherent ethnocentrism that emerges when we encounter not just different looking people, but a whole another set of rules we're not prepared for. It's like going through the 5 stages of grief, first there's denial and then anger and eventually we evolve to acceptance. We get the travel bug, spurred by not just wanderlust or a desire to escape, but to be renewed by our surroundings.

What if we could be renewed within our own cultural context? Major change usually occurs when we change our environment or our thinking. Travel ushers the former, but what creates the possibility for the latter? Self-awareness doesn't happen in a vacuum. We often think of meditation as an escape within ourselves, when it is in fact exactly the opposite, it is complete awareness of our present moment. That means we hear, see, smell and accept everything around us as it is. It's almost a hyper-sensitivity to our natural and unnatural surroundings.

The awareness of nature in itself is fascinating, because it can be very limited in an urban environment, but all of a sudden you see a beautiful tree swaying in front of your apartment building that you completely missed! Or you'll be walking in a hurry to a meeting and be stopped by pigeons doing some kind of mating dance in front of you. It's surprising that you could have missed it lost in your thoughts about what you're going to say, do, and think in your next face-to-face.

Nature is constant movement. Trees are never as static as they may seem. Life is happening around us, just asking us to witness it. It makes sense that our awareness sees that movement when we work simply to build up our senses.

What's even more fascinating is how aware we become of our unnatural surroundings, or rather the cultural mores that condition our minds daily to guide our thinking one way or another. If we're truly paying attention in the moment, we can immediately see the effect an advertisement has on us, its repetitive nature seeping into us hoping we'll think of the brand when we go to the store. We start noticing people's ticks and responses and our ticks and responses to other people. We hear the news differently, the intonations that exaggerate and polarize. We notice art in a way we never saw it before, seeing the incontrovertible evidence of the artist's life experience and emotion and reaction to the world embedded within a simple painting. We start seeing through things, not needing the environmental shift to notice how we live and why we live. The acknowledgement of our unnatural surroundings also becomes a constant as we shift to an instantaneous mental acuity of where we are and why we are.

How will we change otherwise?

How do I bring about change?

No one knows how. But many will try to persuade you they do. Ideology will emerge to spur you to action and you will interpret it as change. Something new is always exciting and as you become a part of it, it will soon grow old and you'll start looking for another new thing.

The cycle of looking for ways to bring about change are endless. There is no formula. If one system wins, another loses. And the winner will eventually be replaced by another system, one born from the past friction and opposition.

Changing the world, your life, your relationships is a deeply rooted internal inquiry, isn't it? Why do you want to change? What is it that bothers you? How are you a part of it? What assumptions do you bring to the problem? How will your thinking evolve?

It's not analysis, it's internal journalism. Bringing stale beliefs to a fundamental problem won't solve it. It never has. A new ideology is only new to you right now. You as a citizen human being must question yourself to the core so you don't mimic or repeat any beliefs you don't support. But who am I to tell you what to do? Who is anybody? You must do the work.

Krishnamurti puts it more eloquently:

"If I were foolish enough to give you a system and if you were foolish enough to follow it, you would merely be copying, imitating, conforming, accepting, and when you do that you have set up in yourself the authority of another and hence there is conflict between you and that authority. You feel you must do such and such a thing because you have been told to do it and yet you are incapable of doing it. You have your own particular inclinations, tendencies and pressures which conflict with the system you think you ought to follow and therefore there is a contradiction. So you will lead a double life between the ideology of the system and the actuality of your daily existence. In trying to conform to the ideology, you suppress yourself - whereas what is actually true is not the ideology but what you are. If you try to study yourself according to another you will always remain a secondhand human being."

How to be more patient

It's difficult to be patient. When you're trying to get somewhere, the last thing you want to do is wait.

When are you not trying to get somewhere though? We are always on the move, so where does impatience come in?

You can't beat time. How you get there determines who you are when you get there.

Impatience can be very selfish because we assume control over the end result. In our rush and foot-tapping, we think we can control time. The funny thing is if we get there and the other person is running late, it all feels for not. And now it's hard to wait once again.

You can't try being more patient if you're prone to impatience though. It makes no logical sense to wait when waiting is what's bugging you. Set your clock ahead, keep a good book with you, check traffic well in advance. Each trick will help but in the end it is just a trick that doesn't tackle the root problem.

What happens when you become impatient? Why are you so annoyed? What is it you are rushing towards? Do you feel like your circumstances got the better of you? Will the person waiting for you not understand? What is really making you angry?

Next time you feel impatient, ask yourself why. The answers are personal to how you deal with things out of your control. No one can understand what triggers you react to but yourself.

Spend time to make time

When you spend time meditating, you get back even more quality time. It's similar to the adage that you have to spend money to make money. When you're busy, booked and overwhelmed, making time to meditate is the last thing on your mind. But what if it adds more focused time in your day?

Meditation may seem like a strange investment at first. Sitting on the floor, in a chair, on a couch closing your eyes and focusing on your breath can sound like a waste of time when you think about it. Don't think about it. Do it. Only then it will become clear why it gives back more time than it takes.

Just start one day. Any time. Anywhere. Focus on your breath. Focus on a word. Focus on an image. Choose one thing and only one thing and concentrate on it. Let everything else go. Watch your thoughts float on by. Stay with what you chose. 

What's the point? The focus itself. Distractions are always tempting. Social media, email, instant messenger, podcasts, unread articles, are all waiting all the time. When distraction becomes a habit, loss of focus is the first to give. They're opposites on a balance beam with you in the middle.  

Finding time to focus means regaining focused time. There is no way to know until you try meditation. There is plenty of evidence to support that meditation improves focus, but you would only be reading again, not practicing the thing that can help you. Find out by doing it yourself.

Good writing

Patriotism's failings belie the unity felt during war, echoed in raw tones within this LIFE magazine article published on September 20th, 1943.

"Here lie three Americans. What shall we say of them? Shall we say that this is a fine thing, that they should give their lives for their country? Why print this picture anyway of three American boys, dead on an alien shore? The reason is that words are never enough. The eye sees. The mind knows. The heart feels. But the words do not exist to make us see, or know, or feel what it is like, what actually happens. 

And so here it is. This is the reality that lies behind the names that come to rest at last on monuments in the leafy squares of busy American towns. The camera doesn’t show America and yet here on the beach is America, three parts of a hundred and thirty million parts, three fragments of that life we call American life: three units of freedom. So that it is not just these boys who have fallen here, it is freedom that has fallen. It is our task to cause it to rise again."

The above quote is narrated here, creating the expected somber aura though with an inescapable hopefulness.

Why you need to see Fruitvale Station

I can't get Fruitvale Station out of my head and I'm writing about it two weeks after seeing it to see if I can explain why. I went to see it at Angelika in Soho and almost bought a ticket  for "Before Midnight" instead.

I had little foreknowledge of the Oscar Grant case and it didn't make a difference either way. The first scene of the film removed any foreshadowing whatsoever and it was more about the character's story than anything else.

Hard to talk about a brilliantly directed and acted film because really you just have to see it.

I'm still bewildered by the senselessness of what happened, shocked at the injustice of the aftermath, enraged by the helplessness I feel about avoiding it in the future.

This obviously isn't a light recommendation and I don't know what you will feel when you watch it. I simply recommend that you do. It's rare these days for a movie to move you so strongly. 

How to be happy and rich

There's plenty of research showing that money doesn't make you happier. If it did, then linearly, the rich would be happier than the poor. But turns out that's not true.

Assume someone takes this to heart and prioritizes something other than money. Family, food, music, dance, travel, time, healing, volunteering, etc. A competitive person who prioritizes money may now be better off because they have one less person to beat. More money for them.

But if enough people agreed not to prioritize money, who would the money-hungry person be richer than? The next money-hungry person right? It's completely relative isn't it? Those that don't care about money won't be at a loss. The value of money is only figurative so if it isn't the benchmark of success, it loses value.

Without everyone competing for resources on the basis of money, there will be less resources you can buy with money. There will be less of a high-price market for the rich. Less relative difference in production costs because "the poor" would become a smaller market (or larger depending on how you look at it).

What would we compete for then? Very little. The things we prioritize would determine the circles we participate in.

You can see this in reality when you hang out with a group of people that distinctly prioritizes something other than money, like food. They may work at a farm, or start a garden, or become part of a community-supported agriculture group, or go wwoof for a while. They may cook more or save money to go to nice places that use mainly organic, locally-grown produce. They may not spend their money on clothes or a car or an apartment as much as others who prioritize those items.

Money would go back to being merely a form of exchange for those basic things we all need, food, water, shelter. Competing with someone else to have a bigger house, or nicer car, or prettier furniture wouldn't make much sense unless it was just friendly competition. It wouldn't be about what lots of money can buy, it would be about what you want to buy.

It goes back to happiness, doesn't it? If money doesn't make us happier the richer we get, then why go after it? Why not just go after the things that make you happy? 

An integrated life

"Real life is doing something which you love to do with your whole being so that there is no inner contradiction, no war between what you are doing and what you think you should do. Life is then a completely integrated process in which there is tremendous joy."

I think of Krishnamurti as the Yogi Berra of eastern philosophy. There is such a raw simplicity to his words. His statements feel obvious. And familiar. Like the voice in the back of your head that tells you to slow down on the highway or give up your seat to the old woman. His writing turns that empathic sentiment on yourself.

Looking out for your self doesn't mean having your way. Rather, it's the internal struggle for integrity. Trying to deeply understand who you are in relation to those around you. Observing, understanding, paying attention to what feels right, who you respond to, what turns you off and how you decisions affect the world.

The mirrors you avoid are the mirrors that matter.

"You cannot have integration without relationship - your relationship with society, your relationship with the poor man, the villager, the beggar, with the millionaire and the governor. To understand relationship you must struggle with it, you must question and not merely accept the values established by tradition, by your parents, by the priest, by the religion and the economic system of the society about you. That is why it is essential for you to be in revolt, otherwise you will never have integration."

The quotes are from Think On These Things.

The Tower of Babel Problem

We will miscommunicate. It's a given. It's hard to say what we really mean because language is a bad medium for sharing our thoughts. Words mean different things to different people. Tone of voice can change the meaning entirely.

In the Bible, The Tower of Babel was to be built based on unity of purpose because we all spoke the same language and wanted to pay tribute to God. Genesis 11:6 says, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them." By taking away a shared language, God challenged us to unify again without a common medium.

This story is fascinating. Though we lose the ability to do the impossible, we know how to regain it. Communicate better. Our language can't help us, it is meant to confuse. We must learn to relate to each other despite its failures.

Knowing this, acknowledge it and make sure you understand what the other person means, where they're coming from, how they arrived at their conclusions. Repeat back to them what you heard. "What I heard you say is...", "Do you mean...", "Let me see if I have this right..."

Don't assume, simply relate your understanding. It's contagious.

Achieving Oneness

As I was biking through the park today, the uphill climb became effortless all of a sudden. My legs, body, and hands seemed irreversibly connected to the bike itself. I was flowing fluidly uphill with this two-wheel metal contraption underneath me, but it wasn't separate from me. I was a part of it.

We were one, but even that's not quite right. Rather, there wasn't any question in my mind that we could have been two. My body swayed perfectly and in tune with the bike's motion, my breathing timed to the rotation of the pedals, the weight of my arms evenly distributed for functional balance. Everything felt easy.

I've experienced this before when driving and walking too. In the case of walking, the pavement and I were separate to begin with and then we weren't. As I remember it, my body and the pavement just worked together and I felt more relaxed and connected to my surroundings.

If you can connect with inanimate objects such as the bike, the car, and the pavement, it's not a stretch to extrapolate this feeling to animals. People who ride horses, elephants, or camels regularly express being one with the animal's motion. They know when to slow down or speed up, read signs of danger and even emotionally understand the animal's needs. The word "whisperer" is often used to describe those that seem to naturally have this ability.

From inanimate objects to animals, I'd venture you can feel this way with people as well. Sometimes it's just really simple to talk to someone and you can't tell why. Every conversation starts off where you left it, a day, a week or even a year ago. I feel this way with some of my friends and occasionally with people I just met. You "click".

To summarize this feeling more generally, you and something other than you start as separate and then something changes to make you and that other than you the same. That's oneness. 1 + 1 = 1, perhaps. The idea of flow in psychology comes very close to describing it:

"In flow, the emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand.The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task  although flow is also described as a deep focus on nothing but the activity – not even oneself or one's emotions."

Alignment, disappearance of oneself, spontaneous joy, channeling. These are emotions that can only hint at the reality of the feeling. But how do you activate it? How do you flow or be one with something or someone on cue? What do you do to connect with someone who you feel separate from?

In my experience, the process is very educational. A sharing of knowledge and understanding between two entities. With inanimate objects, it can only come with experiential education. You bike enough that you start learning about its idiosyncrasies - the stiffness of the brakes, the rotation of the pedals, the balance of the frame - and start shifting your body to match them.

From my little experience with animals, I'd guess the learning process is very similar. Attention and mindfulness are key. If you're just riding the animal to get from point A to point B, that's one thing. You jump on and go and get what you need from the animal's strength. But if you recognize that the animal is taking the journey with you and listen to its needs, achieving oneness is that much easier.

How does it work with two people or even a group? The simple answer is empathy, but initiative really decides how quickly you'll feel a stronger connection. For example, when you meet someone new, how often do you extend your hand first? What does it say about the interaction? It's an amazing feeling when two people extend their hands at the same time for a handshake. That immediate connection and the timing is very telling.

Same goes with greater levels of connection. How often do you initiate a hug? A kiss on the cheek? What have you accepted culturally and what do you feel comfortable with? The start of an interaction doesn't define its entirety, but it can set a powerful tone for developing a connection. Context matters in that your initiation may put someone at ease, or make them uncomfortable. No reason to over think it, but be conscious that how you initiate can have an impact on feeling one with another person.

After the interaction has been initiated, a certain level of rapport must be established before flow sets in. This is usually small talk about the weather or current events. Too often, people get stuck here and don't get to the point of flow. I see this as another lack of initiative, on both sides. In order to be one with someone who you currently feel separate from, you have to ask questions, put yourself in their shoes, see the world through their lens, just as they are attempting to do the same for you. You have to grok them before oneness can take place:

"To understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience."

Think of a great party you've been to. Recall how the music, food, and people made you feel. Think about the ambience, and even the way people moved through the crowd. What made it so great? I'd wager it was a strong feeling of belonging. A feeling of oneness with everyone and everything there that made all the social awkwardness and disjointedness disappear. You grokked the vibe and were part of what made others grok it too.

Being curious and willing to learn about other people while sharing your story can be really fulfilling. It's educational for both sides and combines initiative equally. It moves you down the path of initiation, rapport, and empathy all the way to oneness. I'll give you a few examples from business, which suffers terribly from separation between the customer and the supplier. It doesn't have to be this way.

Think about brands and businesses you have an attachment to. They understand what you need and you go back to them again and again because of how they make you feel. It could be cheerful customer service before the 2nd ring, discovering slips of paper in your egg carton with the names of the chickens who laid your eggs, or a simple salutation customized for you that stands apart from all the auto-generated messages you receive in your email every day.

Achieving oneness is really about the way we approach the world. Whether inanimate objects, animals, or people, we bring something to the interaction that changes it, either bringing others closer or moving them further apart.

On that note, I'd like to hear from others about their experiences of oneness. This post will go to twitter and G+ so please share your thoughts.

How do you know you know better?

When I was fresh out of college, I had a job to get, an apartment to find, and new friends to make. Those were my objectives and I hung on until I got all three done. I didn't know any better. I didn't think about what kind of job I wanted, just that I needed one and preferably one that paid well. I didn't care where the apartment was as long as it was close enough to my job and a scene I wanted to be a part of. I wasn't selective about my friends, filtering only through mutual interests and hobbies.

Over the years, I learned that who you work with is more important than what you're doing. I moved to enough neighborhoods in NYC to understand their cultural differences and choose based on what best fits my lifestyle. And friends came and went, so I began selecting for longevity, not just common interests. I didn't know any better before and now I think I do.

But how do I know I know better? What if the filters I'm working with are all wrong? I don't believe this question is from a place of insecurity, but rather curiosity. I wonder what I'll know in 5 years that will make me rethink what I know now. And I wonder how I can cut those 5 years into 3, or even 2.

Though it takes time to gain experience to better understand yourself, how do you know you know better? What benchmarks do you use that let you know you've grown? Or devolved? Or stayed the same?  

Are you one of the lucky few?

Love this speech by Michael Lewis at Princeton's graduation. Luck as an explanatory factor for success is hard to reconcile within yourself. To paraphrase Lewis, you feel you deserve success because of x, y or z. "But you'll be happier, and the world will be better off, if you at least pretend that you don't."

"People really don’t like to hear success explained away as luck — especially successful people. As they age, and succeed, people feel their success was somehow inevitable. They don't want to acknowledge the role played by accident in their lives. There is a reason for this: the world does not want to acknowledge it either."...

"If you use better data, you can find better values; there are always market inefficiencies to exploit, and so on. But it has a broader and less practical message: don't be deceived by life's outcomes. Life's outcomes, while not entirely random, have a huge amount of luck baked into them. Above all, recognize that if you have had success, you have also had luck — and with luck comes obligation. You owe a debt, and not just to your Gods. You owe a debt to the unlucky. 

I make this point because — along with this speech — it is something that will be easy for you to forget."...

"But you must sense its arbitrary aspect: you are the lucky few. Lucky in your parents, lucky in your country, lucky that a place like Princeton exists that can take in lucky people, introduce them to other lucky people, and increase their chances of becoming even luckier. Lucky that you live in the richest society the world has ever seen, in a time when no one actually expects you to sacrifice your interests to anything."

Responding in kind

When you feel resigned to lose against hate, knowing you have a choice in your action matters. Knowing your response is prompted because of another and not from within yourself makes you pause and look over your convictions before saying anything.

How do you respond when a friend, spouse or relative rejects you? What do you do when your boss tells you you're not good enough? What do you feel when you hear a racial slur?

Understanding that others' hate comes from their own hurt, fear, misunderstanding, or grief humanizes them and also your response to their negativity. Knowing an eye for an eye only leaves you more hateful in the end, you put something positive out there, not to counteract but to heal.

Only sometimes do I succeed at responding to hate with love, but I understand why it can't be a strategy and instead comes from a deep connection with one's own vulnerabilities.

Empathy develops from a practice of self-awareness, discovering the minutiae that make you as human as those around you. The humility it takes to be continually positive without expectation seems awesome from the outside, but I bet it's as easy as flexing your hand when you know it. It's within you because you've become the person capable of it.

Negotiating mutually

"I offer my thoughts not as a Buddhist nor as a religious believer, but simply as one human being among nearly 7 billion others. One who cares about the fate of humanity and wants to do something to safeguard and improve its future" 

-Dalai Lama

My personal definition of negotiation is changing. Before, I used to think negotiation was very hard edged, it was fighting with somebody to get what you want. Now it has turned into explaining to the other person where you're coming from. Letting them contextualize it from their own vantage point. The other person truthfully needs to understand what you're going through. Putting them in your shoes and putting yourself in theirs extrapolates on the do unto others as they would do unto you rule. It's not a trick, it's just two humans working to understand each other.

One example is my negotiation with Verizon a few weeks ago when they called me the day after I got my iPhone about a promotion of 500 free minutes if I renewed my account. Since I had already renewed my plan, only 12 hours before, they said I wasn't eligible for the promotion anymore.

At this point, I had several Machiavellian choices. I could have gotten angry with the agent, making them so annoyed that they would've just given me the deal instead of staying on the phone with me any longer. The agent could've hung up on me, but that leads into the next strategy of calling as many agents as necessary before I got the one willing to give me the promotion. I could've pulled the "let me talk to your supervisor" bit, I could've threatened to cancel my plan, thereby being switched to the cancellation department who would've gladly conceded to keep a 5-year subscriber to their service.

Instead, I kept chatting with the agent who originally called me about the promotion. I told him how I got the iPhone after going to three different shops who all said I wouldn't get it for two weeks. He liked the tall tale I told (which was all true) and we laughed about my luck in finally finding a manager who was saving a new iPhone for his friend but gave it to me anyway (part of the reason he gave it to me was because I told him my story of looking for an iPhone all day and he understood why I wanted it before Christmas). The agent lived my experience and realized it was seriously dumb luck that I got the phone and that he called 12 hours later to give me the promotion.

He asked me to hold while he talked to his supervisor to get the authorization code to override the denial. He did this completely of his own accord. Turned out you couldn't override it on his system. Makes sense, just in case someone is up to those Machiavellian techniques I mentioned earlier. He apologized, but then decided to connect me to the customer service department to see if they could help. He was my spokesperson about why I wanted the 500 minutes and the customer service rep said she'd try it on her end. She could in fact make the change and we all had a "woohoo" moment when it worked. All in all, I was on the phone for under 20 minutes, generally had a good time talking to customer service reps and got the promotion on grounds that it made sense to everyone involved.

Empathy won out in this case and that's not to say it will in every case. The process of negotiation - I hesitate to even call it that in this case - was much more enjoyable for all parties. Their system could just not have accepted the promotion and even then no one would've been for the worse. We all would have tried to make the computer system understand human common sense and if it didn't, so be it. That's our loss, not just mine. At the end of it, they commiserated with me, we all had a laugh and moved on.

It was only 500 minutes after all. And that's the crux of it. I'd rather leave off feeling good if none of it had worked out, because it's a measly amount to worry myself over. If I had pursued the call to battle the reps, and not won, my blood pressure would've been up, the taste in my mouth would've been sour, my viewpoint would've been generally negative for the next few hours and the reps would've also been a worse place because of me. Later on in the day, I would've regretted messing up my mood for a mere 500 minutes on my plan.

Negotiating mutually may as well be called mutual understanding and if you take the "mutual" out of it, negotiation is just another form of coming to an understanding. There are a lot of tactics out there about leverage, stake, walking away and so on, and they have their place. Sometimes - car sales for example - you're simply walking into a battlefield.

Most negotiations aren't of this sort. Whether it's your rent going up or your insurance company denying your claim or a store not accepting your return, there's a human on the other end of that desk or phone. The system may not allow you to negotiate, but humans can come to an understanding that can override the system they built in the first place. You have a personal story to tell now and you'll have your chance to listen to someone else's story soon too. As they say, keep paying it forward. Maybe we'll even make it easier to buy a car someday.

George Carlin on Being Human

"I don't consider myself an active member of the human race. I know that by definition I am, but I don't go to the meetings, and I don't have a card." 

Start at 3:50 for the great quotables, but the whole thing is worth a watch.

Joan Didion - The White Album

Joan Didion makes me want to write.

I'm on a vacation/staycation, sweating in a humid apartment with two fans running, one in front, one behind me. I finished The White Album a week ago, reading The Year of Magical Thinking now and looking forward to her 56-page essay-book, Fixed Ideas: America Since 9.11. I only heard of her a month ago in June after finishing Patti Smith's Just Kids. I wanted more writing like that; non-fiction, in-depth explorations of life through an autobiographical lens.

For a sci-fi/fantasy reader, it's been a wayward and rewarding pleasure. If psychobabble holds any truth, I went from "escaping the real-world" to jumping in it full-fledged.

"Most of us live less theatrically, but remain survivors of a peculiar and inward time. If I could believe that going to a barricade would affect man's fate in the slightest I would go to that barricade, and quite often I wish that I could, but it would be less than honest to say that I expect to happen upon such a happy ending."

There's a distant apathy to her style. I picture her flippantly flicking her hand as words go from brain synapses firing onto the page. She's good, she knows it, and it bothers her. She achingly tries to elucidate this feeling in her writing. "A sense of anxiety or dread permeates much of her work", as an anonymous Wikipedia contributor references from an article about her.

"I gravitated to the random. I swung with the non-sequential."

She's more funny than serious though. More lost than analytical. She comes from wealth, is wealthy, and has a clear understanding that her station in life - as a renowned journalist and author - allows her (comped) access to varied aspects of life that others don't see. Her candor gives you front-row seats.

"Bike movies are made for all these children of vague "hill" stock who grow up absurd in the West and Southwest, children whose whole lives are an obscure grudge against a world they think they never made. These children are, increasingly, everywhere, and their style is that of an entire generation."

She's talking about the generation of the 70's, but I see the hipsters of today or sometimes the disconnected teen entrepreneurs or the laid-off brokers turned freelancers. Held accountable to rules that no longer pertain to them. Absurd, begrudging, distant.

I keep reading Didion because she keeps hinting at recurring themes. Having written since the early 60's till today, she could very well point out the "human search for meaning in a changing world". But it's something Obama might say in a campaign speech. We might see it on a billboard promoting Scientology, abortion rights, or Chase Bank. It may be assigned as a homework assignment in an English class focused on the classics; Of Mice and Men, Dickens, or Brave New World. The cliche doesn't bear repeating, so she writes to convey the feeling.

Checking Email

It's 10:30am and I haven't eaten a thing. I have though checked my email twice, both for work and personal accounts. As if an hour is going to make a difference. Email, or the checking of email, somehow slows down time. It becomes imperative to check it regularly, though it's only been 1/2 an hour, an hour or two. You can do a lot in that amount of time, but the sense of urgency isn't warranted. As Tim Ferriss quipped in premonition four years ago, email is distracting and time-consuming if checked more than twice a day at regular intervals.

The Art of Non-Conformity » Hello, My Name Is…

"I don’t think that any of these ideological constructs are bad—in fact, they’ve clearly done good things for the world and helped a lot of people live more intentionally. But I do think it’s a mistake to group yourself into someone else’s idea of identity."

From Hello, My Name Is… by Chris Guillebeau

This post is one of the most clearly laid-out arguments against labels. The most difficult part about fighting labels is becoming another label during the process. You become anti-label and the cycle is never-endless from there.

I like the way Chris links labels back to defining your personal identity. So many of us gain from dressing up, looking a certain way, having a higher-sounding title, living in a swanky neighborhood, working at that awesome company because of the way people look of us. Their perception of us makes us feel better. We become what others admire in that era - that specific moment in time when dark jeans or ties or hats or geekiness or tech work or working at Apple or McMansions or Beverly Hills or whatever are the in thing. We're social animals and we climb that hierarchy set for us by our social structures. Memes.

If we step out of that moment - or rather mement - and dig down deep for what we care about, we might find something different. Something dissimilar to the current social norm. We can never avoid labels, but going through the "know thyself" exercises lets us create our own or more solidly become part of a mission that we consciously agree with.

What mement are you a part of or do you want to create?

Money, Happiness and Personality

"Life, except for the obvious physical needs, is not so much defined by the external situation as by the inner one. Having money won’t change your internal makeup. If you’re an anxious sonofabitch without money, you’re going to be an anxious sonofabitch with a lot of money."

From Delayed Echoes

Money, or the lack thereof, brings out the real you. Stickler, freewheeler, bragger, hoarder, hider, straggler, whatever your personality might be is what personality you have with money. The link between money and happiness is much more uncertain than with money and personality. It's the not the personal earning, but the personal growing, changing and evolving that will change someone's relationship with money.

I've been learning a lot about my personal relationship with money and how closely it's associated with my philosophy of life. I don't much like what I'm discovering. The strong correlation just means I guide my life around its accumulation. It's not just currency, it's my value system. And I'm working on changing that.

The strongest influences are people who's value systems define their currency. For example, some people believe strongly in the value of relationships. We all might think we do, but we mostly hang out with similar socio-economic groups, lots of us make friends up the ladder, and marriage-wise, misunderstanding about financial issues is always among the top 3 reasons for divorce. People who truly value relationships deal in a different currency. For them, social capital may be important; how many friends you know that you can rely on, the level of trust you've garnered with your partner, etc. They're trading and bartering on a social exchange rate.

Other people have value systems surrounding creativity. They deal in the currency of art, originality and aesthetic.  Regardless of money or power or social capital, they're motivated and drawn to what moves them visually or musically. It's something unseen, but felt at their core.

I'm learning these different currencies, which seem so new to me, but have been around forever. Everything is intrinsically linked to money, but it doesn't have to be the guiding force or value system that drives us. It's the byproduct that lets us be more ourselves, whatever that personality might be. In a capitalist system, all of us are susceptible to being caught in an accumulation cycle and it's when we stop and assess our personality, values and motivations that we can truly begin to grow and change our relationship with money, and happiness.

How to Be Unremarkably Average

"Use your credit card as your primary means of spending. Get the largest mortgage you can qualify for. Fill it with plasma TVs and expensive furniture. Buy a big, new car and complain about the cost of gas. Spend all you earn, or maybe even more than you earn. The government will help you if there’s a recession. Spend money on things you don’t want but will help you impress others."

From: The Art of Non-Conformity » How to Be Unremarkably Average

The scary thing was how much of this artfully satirical diatribe related to me and how much I bet it relates to a lot of those who read it. It does describe "average" after all.

The recurring theme is personal security; doing what's safe, sticking to what you know and understand. There's nothing bad in that. We are all trying to achieve some form of security, but when we reach it we slow down. And we certainly reach it when we hit the average mark.

The key word is "trying". We should never stop. There is no achieving "security", only the sense that we have. The revolutions going on around us wake us up to that fact. Security is an aim, not a reality. There's nothing disconcerting in that. Rather, it keeps us alive!