Facing this new year one of the things that struck me recently was the returning wisdom of always being able to find opportunity in a situation no matter how dire things may appear. In the midst of the haphazard handling of the Covid-19 epidemic by the United States, the passing of a family member, and a swirling mass of chaos that I call a career, I’ve had a lot to think about. Rather than mope and grieve in this particular situation I’ve been hit by the life altering questions of “, what actually matters and what is worth focusing on right now?” Now having spent the last 2 months and some change thinking about some of this stuff to find clarity and re-center myself towards a new vision of progress in my life, I’d like to offer some things I think are worth keeping in mind in this semi-universal moment of instability and confusion.
1.) People and things eventually die or cease to function in the expected way. So what?
In my own experience, while I find it almost endlessly useful to attempt to learn from the passing of those people and things that we care about, there is perhaps a temptation to ascribe some hidden yet fundamental meaning to the ends of things. I like to remind myself that death is actually meaningless, but that doesn’t mean it has no value. There is no special reason why people and cherished things cease to be, they simply do, and there is no wisdom in letting them pass sooner than they should have to while maintaining quality of experience as far as I can tell. My experiences have taught me that one value death does have in some basic sense, beyond the stories we tell about it, is it’s life-wrenching nature. Death forces us, to some extent, to pause and reevaluate what the fuck we’re doing, and realign ourselves with what we most care about. It would be nice if we always remembered to meditate or not to develop bad habits, or neglect certain people or things that are important, but sometimes we need a kick in the ass to get us focused on the sauce.
2.) Make America or “x” great again? Be the change you want to see in the world.
Ok, I know it’s cliche and I don’t consider myself a motivational professional, but I think this is really important. I used to ponder all the time what the difference between me and successful people was in various domains and after years of stumbling trying to find the answer I think I figured out what was wrong. The difference between successful people and you or I is really the success. Before they were somebody, they were anybody just like the rest of us. We can all try to guess at how they might be “built different” or figure out what advantage or talent, or privilege they have that we don’t, but all of that is a distraction from actually trying to make positive change. Don’t just wave signs at strangers and call it good, go build something. Even if you fail, at least you learned something and gave it an effort, you can always try again or do something else. I try to do the same because at the end of the day, what else can you really do?
3.) The noise is the enemy of great
Cut the news, cut the magazines, subtract the creamer and sugar from the coffee. These things serve to hold us back not just in our ability to be healthy, but also in our ability to taste the coffee and hear or read the signal. Ask “. is this making me better, or bringing me joy?” If something isn’t making you smarter, more informed or at least entertained, it’s probably making you more deranged or more bored.
4.) Don’t follow the science, be a scientist
Instead of always listening to what the experts or talking heads tell us, maybe we should favor looking at the data, reading the studies and interacting with the source code directly. If a word or concept is foreign to you a quick search or library visit grants more wisdom than taking someone’s word for it. Even a lackluster understanding of what a study tells us is often better than an interpretation of an interpretation and so on.
Not meant to be preachy, just meant to serve as sort of a reminder to cut out the BS and help ourselves “bring it” to get more of what we actually want. As I’ve learned from various people and experiences, the ratio of noise to signal is the difference between bottom-of-class and world-class results generally speaking. I hope this was helpful and encourages you to eliminate some of the toxicity or BS from your life and I hope you will be better than well. Cheers!
Orion Aeneas Webster,
FourthEyeBlog author
FourthEye 
Leave a comment