15 Things I’m Thankful For in 2011
November 25, 2011 | Filed Under Health, Small Talk | Leave a Comment
My life is amazing. A dream life. Doing exactly what I want to do, day in and day out. How I got here, I don’t really know. But I’m thankful.
Here are 15 specific things I’m thankful for this year: Read more
Value and The Uniqueness Myth
November 13, 2011 | Filed Under Small Talk | Leave a Comment
(Sometimes I have music on my mind and this post brings several songs to mind… so here’s a link to the soundtrack for this post in case you enjoy multi-sensory experiences like I do;-)
We all want to be valued. That’s a basic human need.
For whatever opaque reason, in romantic relationships, the need to be valued turns into the need to be unique. To be special.
When it comes to love, all romance can be understood as an expression of uniqueness and irreplaceability (see Rihanna’s “Only Girl in the World” music video to understand the basics of this sentiment… video at bottom of post).
In one sense, yes, we are all unique. But in the most important aspects of romantic love (as opposed to familial love), we are not unique. And we are completely replaceable.
That girl who makes the blood pump through your veins at warp speed… she’s not the only one who could do it. But she wants to be. There are hundreds, thousands, probably millions of others who could do the same thing. The only uniqueness is located in your environment – her proximity, her availability to you.
But most people want to *feel* special. Want to feel *irreplaceable* – Why?
It has to do with a primal fear of being abandoned. We want signs and other indications that we will not be abandoned by the people we care about and who give us a sense of stability/security. And yet it is a curious fact that this primal need gets expressed on a social level as needing to feel like “i’m the only girl in the world” – which, if we’re honest, is an illusion built upon a blatant lie.
Being Grateful & Wide Eyed
November 7, 2011 | Filed Under Small Talk | Leave a Comment
Since saturday I have seen some amazing spectacles of nature for the first time in my life:
- female pygmy goats doing some kind of dance as part of a mating ritual
- Alabama cotton fields under the glow of a setting sun
- a flock of this tiny little white bird on Florida’s gulf coast pattering around in the sand as a collective whole, moving this way and that
sometimes i wonder if it’s just a matter of having your eyes open.
Nature is Carnivorous
November 7, 2011 | Filed Under Health, Small Talk | Leave a Comment
Animals kill and consume animals. It’s a fact of life. And the Earth itself not only provides life for animals but it consumes them too (through death and decomposition). Nature is carnivorous, through and through.
I do not mean this as a criticism of vegetarianism or veganism. Everyone has his or her reasons. But I really do think that a person who loves reality, who is committed to being at peace with reality as it is, will not shy away from the consumption of animals on purely ethical grounds. Perhaps taste. That is understandable. Some people simply do not like meat (though the lamb lollipops I had last night make this hard to believe:-P )
It is also understandable to not eat meat because you are not happy with the modern food supply and modern practices of raising meat.
But let me just be clear about something: modern industrial practices do not nullify the fact that human beings are part of nature and, in fact, natural meat eaters.
The best solution for the modern person is not to abandon meat and thus further your displacement from nature, but to change the way you eat meat. Raise your own animals and participate in (and appreciate) their death. Or buy your meat from a neighbor. Know where your meat comes from. Experience the harvest of an animal (this past spring I experienced the harvest of rabbits for the first time and it was a rewarding experience). For a great book on this topic read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.
As a species, we have displaced ourselves from our natural setting. Part of realizing peace and health is restructuring our lives to be at peace with our natural constitutions as human beings.
All the science shows that every successful population of human beings to have lived prior to the agriculture revolution (i.e. the vast majority of human history) consumed meat / fish / fowl as their primary source of calories. And modern science (and personal anecdote) clearly show that meat satiates us better than any other other macronutrient. The thing is, just like everything else, doing meat the *right way* takes work. It’s a lot easier to get our calories through convenience than our own hard work. But it’s not the best way.
We are omnivorious and primarily carnivorous. Just like nature.
30 Things Every Guy Should Know About Women … and mostly not give a f#@k about
October 12, 2011 | Filed Under Small Talk | Leave a Comment
Yesterday I read this article at Men’s Health and admired the female author for her candor about typical female insanity (of course this comment is not directed at the over 3 billion anomalies).
Here are the 30 Things Every Guy Should Know About Women with my interjected commentary:
1. Her Best Friend Knows Everything
- You mean that girl who hasn’t had a date in like 12 months?
2. Your Hands Turn Her On
- Birds fly. Water flows downhill. And rocks fall to the earth.
3. She Wants To Sleep in Your T-Shirt & Be Reminded Of Your Smell
- Yeah, olfactory smolfactory. It’s the female version of a Super Bowl trophy or a 10pt buck.
4. She Lies About Her Number (sexual amnesia)
- Remember the formula for general sexual relativity (GSR) as a basic guideline: 2x + 1. Unlike the speed of light, there are variations.
5. If She Likes You, She Fantasizes About You That Way
- As long as she’s attracted to you, you’re closer to home than you thought. Just push through the coy pretension.
6. She Compares You to Her Exes
- So either don’t care (this is not only the best frame, but the only one that’ll work with every woman) or be with girls who have zero and zero exes.
7. She’s Googled Your Exes
- And… she’s jealous of their boobs?!? Too bad.
8. She will be so enamored with you that she’ll starve herself
- This is serious stuff man. Better pull back. Or wait. Is it the other way around? Ah, hell. Just ignore it. Too complex.
9. Her body isn’t naturally smooth and hairless
- Could have fooled me.
10. She can be disorganized
- Especially when it’s time to flake
11. She knows about your porn stash
- Good. Now show her how to bend over like a porn star
12. She always needs extra time (I’m ready = 7 more minutes)
- Maxim: she never means what she says (you’re supposed to read her mind, not her words) so just smile and assume the opposite
13. She’ll always be late
- Maxim: she never means what she says (you’re supposed to read her mind, not her words) so just smile and assume the opposite (e.g. Stop… No… Yes…)
14. You’ve made her cry more than you’ll ever know
- You’re not supposed to feel anything. It’s sort of like discovering that there are more grains of sand in the eye of a camel’s needle than you’ll ever know.
15. She likes it when you call
- Slow motion is a man’s best friend. Tranquilize the hamster.
16. She wants you to talk a little dirty
- If she’s totally into you, ditch the “little”
17. She saves your voice mails
- A recent scientific paper revealed that obsessiveness is a gene on the X chromosome. Beware.
18. She wears granny underwear on the first date
- Only if you’re a nice guy. And oh, forgot to mention, the aforementioned study also found the crazy gene on the X chromosome.
19. She spends a lot on clothes
- Only if you let her. You fool.
20. She’s constantly testing you
- And the key to passing is to not take the test. Make her take yours.
21. She checks out your butt
- Don’t let anyone fool you. Women care about looks too. “It’s what’s on the inside that counts” is perhaps the most misleading myth ever propagated on young children.
22. She needs to know you want her
- Go Spartan. Once every 60 times that you actually feel it. So like once a month is probably good.
23. She loves it when you are jealous
- The only jealous guy is a guy without options. And even if you don’t have options… she’s not worth your jealousy.
24. She likes it when you’re on a mission
- She likes watching you do your thing. So keep doing your thing. But not for her.
25. She starts fights when she’s feeling ignored
- Just smirk and smile and say “You’re so cute when you get angry”
26. She thinks your cheap if you let her pay
- Unless it’s steak, let her pay.
27. She’s fantasized about your best friend
- That just means you keep good company. Now if she screws your friend, ditch her and keep the friend.
28. Her friends know things before you do
- This is a good thing. It’s best if you never hear 99% of the things that she says to her friends. Sort of like 99% of the noise that comes through cable television.
29. She gets nostalgic about “Us”
- Birds fly. Water flows downhill. And rocks fall to the earth.
30. She wants you to take control in bed
- In bed, forget everything you learned about gender equality. She’s waiting for you to ravish her. So do it.
Beyond Narratives
October 3, 2011 | Filed Under Small Talk | Leave a Comment
I know a woman who’s entire sense of self is wrapped up in what others think of her. To increase her sense of value, she seeks validation. Because she does not get the validation as often as she’d like, she genuinely believes that people do not love her (even those close to her who would die for her). And because she believes that the people close to her do not love her, she actively looks for evidence that people do not love her. And in actuality, her false belief that people do not love her causes real-world alienation between her and the ones who do.
For many people, serious problems derive from the stories they tell themselves and their rules for determining self-worth. We are prone to define narratives in our minds which then establish expectations. But when reality does not match our expectations, we are prone to get depressed, feel alienated, feel resentment, etc. The thing is, we have control over our expectations.
Does this mean we should get rid of our expectations? No. Expectations are a tool of the mind. But they are a very limited tool. Expectations are best suited for learning how the world works. They lead us astray when our entire sense of self worth gets wrapped up in them. Especially when our expectations are out of line with reality.
Most people analyze their own self-worth and the rest of the world at the level of stereotypes and labels* (i.e. Do people give me the right label or the wrong one?). Labels are really just ways of defining how we think other people think about us. Am I smart? Am I good mom? Do I have a degree? Am I successful? Am I a writer (I dreamed of being a writer my whole life after all!) ? Am I rich? Am I green. Am I the greatest golfer of all time? Am I in the right social circle? Am I a whore? A slut? A good girl?
All of these labels make reference to our pasts and futures, but tend to paralyze or strongly constrain the present. That’s not always a bad thing. As I said, we want to honor reality, and we honor reality by learning about reality and forming expectations about reality and acting based on (hopefully) accurate expectations. But our modern minds are in overdrive and we tend to create a reality that isn’t really there. And it not only lets us down, but it keeps us from living fully.
The mind is a tool for existence. It is to be used for living. It should not define us. We should not live by the stories we tell ourselves (especially if they are inaccurate). We should simply live.
*Note: I read a study recently that suggested that most women, when looking back on their lives, evaluate their lives based on their children (was I good mom? did I produce well-functioning adults? do my kids love me?) and most men evaluate their lives based on the total balance of successes and failures (was I a successful businessman? when I started something, was I likely to finish it? could I fix things? was I in control of my family?). It’s an interesting distinction between the sexes, but in both cases, relies on a mental narrative that does no good in the present. As Tony Horton says… Do your best and forget the rest.
basic math doesn’t work for every domain of life.
October 2, 2011 | Filed Under Small Talk | Leave a Comment
in business, it is often the case that spreading the pie increases the size of the pie. so 20% can be greater than 100%. this doesn’t make intuitive sense, but it makes sense in the light of human motivation and social cooperation. the sum is greater than the parts.
let’s say that i have a business that i try to run on my own. i have my own skills and talents. but i also have limitations. i can only achieve so much on my own. so i turn to some business partners who each have something unique to contribute. i take a gamble and offer them each 20% of the business, conditional on their meeting some pre-specified goals. with 5 people, each with their own unique talents and motivations, and realizable goals that correlate with business growth, it is quite likely that the value of the business will grow exponentially. So rather than 500% growth which would make my 20% equivalent to the previous 100%, we may very well get 5000% growth. And that 5000% growth makes my 20% much more valuable than my previous 100%.
this sort of dynamic is quite common in business and often requires the founders of a business to take a leap of faith – to really believe that the business will grow exponentially with the right people involved.
but there is also a spiritual law where basic math doesn’t make sense. i’ve found that sharing joy with others drastically increases your own personal joy. whereas hoarding joy, descending into the self, is the fastest path to the death of joy. so the more you share yourself and your resources with your friends and loved ones (within reason and human limitations), the more you are rewarded with happiness. however, you do have to be selective. you are not an infinite being. you can overextend yourself. and you can burn through all of your resources. so there is a fine line to walk. but when you have the time and the energy, it pays to put it into other people rather than just putting it into yourself all the time.
Burning incense at our altars
September 9, 2011 | Filed Under Small Talk | Leave a Comment
I was attending a lecture with a varied but exclusively university-oriented audience of some five hundred when the lecturer, a Ph.D. in physics, said, almost in passing, “Remember that only three hundred years ago men actually believed the world was flat!” Considerable knowing laughter greeted this astonishing misrepresentation (or, should I say, falsehood?), and the assembled all murmured a kind of self-congratulatory hum of satisfaction with their own superior knowledge. At another point the lecturer dropped a reference to the onetime belief that the sun revolved around the earth. More laughter. The physicist, it was apparent, was merely offering burnt incense at the altar of some of our twentieth-century idols.
- G. B. Tennyson
Sadly, we are all prone to do this kind of thing in order to puff ourselves up. When your value derives from comparative-isms rather than your self’s best, you spend your whole life burning incense.
nor do I think that it is a desirable state of affairs when women see men as the enemy
August 29, 2011 | Filed Under Small Talk | Leave a Comment
For the Strauss-Kahn case has uncovered the divide, not between men and women so much as between old and new feminists. Old feminists, from Genevieve Clark to Erica Jong, believed that the goal was political and sexual freedom for women, not the political and sexual subordination of men.
I cannot accept the idea that womanhood automatically implies victimhood, nor do I think that it is a desirable state of affairs when women see men as the enemy.
The man-hating tirades of my female colleagues are nothing but puritanism in disguise and I suspect that our feminist forebears would be dismayed by the climate of inquisition that seems to dominate relations between men and women today.
DSK case exposes rift between feminists
Conservatives & Liberals
August 25, 2011 | Filed Under Small Talk | Leave a Comment
Conservatives want to be your daddy, telling you what to do and what not to do. Liberals want to be your mommy, feeding you, tucking you in, and wiping your nose.
