“Adventure is a path. Real adventure – self-determined, self-motivated, often risky – forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind – and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white.” – Mark Jenkins When you begin, nothing is certain save the drive to create something worth the effort. The more certain you are of the answer or the outcome in advance, the more likely it is to have been done already—to be derivative—and the less anyone will care, including you. Anything certain has already been done.
But the possibility of loss is also a signpost that what you’re doing really matters, that you’re vested in both the process and the outcome. Knowing that fuels a deeper commitment to action and to striving not just to create something, but to create something amazing. Risk of loss has to be there. You cannot create genius without having skin in the game. Kill the risk of loss and you destroy meaning and one of the core motivations for action Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance by Jonathan Fields Do not be an Institutional Man.
I have been thinking often lately of the movie The Shawshank Redemption, which is a great movie that the people around me get upset when it comes on because I will always want to watch it, or at least watch two specific scenes in the film that never fail to move me and or to make me think.. The first scene is the scene where Tim Robbins talks to Morgan Freeman in the prison yard, late in the movie, after spending years in prison for a crime he did not commit. In that scene Robbins tells Freeman that there comes a time in your life when you either get busy living or get busy dying ( a paraphrase on my part and also a crib from Dylan), and that phrase gets me each time because it is always completely true. It also motivates me every time. Each moment you have in life you need to choose whether to grow and learn, you take risks, and you improve, or you don’t. If you don’t, then you become a smaller person each day as time goes. It is always time to get busy living. Always. The other scene is the one where Red (Morgan Freeman) is paroled and he goes out into the world that he doesn’t understand, and in the voice over he discusses being an Institutional Man. An Institutional Man is someone who is no longer independent, and who has lived so long as part of “the system” and under rules that they can no longer make their own decisions. They can no longer think for themselves, and they live not as themselves, but as shadows. This one always hits home for me. It is something I don’t ever want to be, someone who cannot think or fend for himself. I think it is some of what affects the United States today. We have become an Institutional Population, a nation of people who always wait for others to solve their problems, and who meekly follow the yellow lines on the floor unthinkingly. The world is an amazing place, full of potential and options, and the worse thing we can do is believe we do not have control. We always have options and we always have the choice of control and the more chances we take in life, the better our results, the better our life. Waiting for change is a loser’s game. Making the change is how you live, and it is how you win, and it is how you avoid being an institutional man. The world is simply too big and bright for any other way to be. D “You at least are willing to work hard,” Komatsu said cautiously. “As far as I can tell, you don’t cut corners. You’re very modest when it comes to the act of writing. And why? Because you like to write. I value that in you. It’s the single most important quality for somebody who wants to be a writer.” “But not, in itself, enough.” “No, of course, not in itself enough. There also has to be that ‘special something,’ an indefinable quality, something I can’t quite put my finger on. That’s the part of fiction I value more highly than anything else. Stuff I understand perfectly doesn’t interest me. Obviously. It’s very simple.” 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami “For me the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must assume responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous desert, in this marvelous time. I want to convince you that you must learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it.”
“Life in itself is sufficient, self-explanatory and complete.” ― Carlos Castaneda Watching the rain come down in Southern California, I hear the rain drops hit the roof and watch as they fall off the rough edge of the shingles to the ground.
Tiny drops, each individual, fall from the cloud--full sky, and then come together near the Earth to form larger drops, and then steady streams of water droplets fall together in the form of ribbons of water. The drops form steady streams of water that fall and then hit the ground to form puddles. The puddles come together across the world to build streams, and then rivers, and then finally giant complex oceans of water. The rain makes a drop of water and that drop of water will make a river, and the rivers merge to create oceans. Your actions are like water drops falling from the sky. Each action is individual and seemingly separate, but over time each action will form consistent streams of combined actions, and will continue until it forms the river that is your life. Every drop matters, every action matters, each is needed to make the whole. D “If you are a warrior, decency means that you are not cheating anybody at all. You are not even about to cheat anybody. There is a sense of straightforwardness and simplicity. With setting-sun vision, or vision based on cowardice, straightforwardness is always a problem. If people have some story or news to tell somebody else, first of all they are either excited or disappointed. Then they begin to figure out how to tell their news. They develop a plan, which leads them completely away from simply telling it. By the time a person hears the news, it is not news at all, but opinion. It becomes a message of some kind, rather than fresh, straightforward news. Decency is the absence of strategy. It is of utmost importance to realize that the warrior’s approach should be simple-minded sometimes, very simple and straightforward. That makes it very beautiful: you having nothing up your sleeve; therefore a sense of genuineness comes through. That is decency.”
― Chögyam Trungpa |
Click to set custom HTML
Categories
All
Disclosure of Material Connection:
Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” |