Throughout our lives we have many kinds of heroes. People we admire for many different reasons. Parents. Celebrities. Teachers. Entrepreneurs. Athletes. Service men or women. There is no great difficulty in finding someone to look up to and to try to emulate. There are so many people who are available to us that can help to shape the trajectory of our lives as we pursue our goals, virtues and successes. These are people we can relate to, who we believe have achieved what we would like to achieve.
But what is the value in finding our heroes and what do our heroes say about us?
What is a hero?
Our heroes are exemplars. They are the embodiment of some goal or attribute or virtue that we want to fold into our own lives. When we see people that are displaying a trait that we find virtuous or valuable we see it as an extension of the person with that trait. We see them as living example of that trait, so we form connections to them and seek to emulate their success. This focuses us. It drives us. It gives a face to the ethereal virtues we aspire to and is proof positive in our minds that certain things can be accomplished.
Heroes can be personal mentors that take an active role in our daily lives or they can be famous personalities that we can only see from a distance. Heroes can spring out of nowhere, figures presented in news stories or books, and grant us momentary inspiration, or they can linger long in our lives, constantly influencing us towards great achievements and goals.
Why do we need heroes?
Think about the things you value; the character traits that are meaningful to you. Now think about how you came to value those things. Was the value arrived at by careful and deliberate independent thought and reasoning or was it stealthily adopted as a side effect of the emotional connections to the people who embodied the idea of those traits? Our heroes.
What I mean to say is, we usually come to value a character trait because we see the positive effect it has when others apply it and we are pulled towards those people as our heroes because we also want that trait and the apparent residuals of it. We honor courage because we see the lives it saves when our hero applies it. We value wisdom because we see the equanimity it can give when our hero applies it. We value discipline because we see the long term rewards it can reap when our hero applies it.
We need heroes to remind us of what things are possible given the right amount of discipline, fortitude and sacrifice. They are the men and women we chase as we race through our lives, trying to accomplish everything we want to accomplish.
What do our heroes say about us?
People’s heroes give a glimpse of what they value. It says a lot about who that person aspires to become and speaks to what sort of things they might do to get there. If I tell you that there is one women who considers Kim Kardashian as her hero and another who considers Sheryl Sandberg as her hero, you are going to make some very different assumptions about these two women. And why not? These two people are saying very different things about themselves by who they are choosing as their heroes and we can assume very different things about what they value because of that. I am not suggesting that one hero is better than another. I am merely saying that we can confidently understand the values and aspirations of a person by the heroes they pursue.
There is the oft-repeated quote by Jim Rohn that says, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” This doesn’t just apply to the 5 people you physically spend the most time with. Many of us spend a lot of time with our distant heroes. Reading their books. Studying their lives. Keeping them in our minds in order to emulate their success. These sorts of heroes can have just as strong, if not stronger, influence on us than our close friends if we let them. There is an account by the famous Roman historian Plutarch that says Julius Cesar, upon reading about the life and accomplishments of Alexander the Great wept. Why? Because he had seen all the accomplishments of his hero Alexander and realized that he still had a long way to go to become as great. And he used the life of Alexander as the motivation to do just that.
Losing our heroes
Think back to when you were young. Your room a mess with posters of your heroes. You looked to those heroes as a future. They were a personification of your goals and aspirations; the things you wanted to accomplish. But as we age we seem to stop surrounding ourselves with heroes that imply future goals and instead we think only about what we are now, what we have already accomplished and we surround ourselves with the remnants of those things. We get rid of the forward push of our heroes and surround ourselves with the trappings of complacency.
I think it is important not to lose the respect and pursuit of heroes. No matter your age, your level of expertise or your level of success, I guarantee that you can still find and benefit from seeking out a hero that embodies some trait or aspect of life that you are struggling with or you want to adopt. You can be the highest performing individual in business. Pulling down hundreds of millions of dollars a year and you can still have heroes. People who motivate you and drive you to do more. These are not people who you envy. Where you merely want what they have. No. These are people that you want to learn from. That you want to emulate in such a way that you can embody the very nature and strength of their character.
Sure, we occasionally outgrow our heroes. Our aspirations change, our values are shifted. We come to honor new responsibilities and in doing so we shift our focus on what we want and how to get there. But with this shift of focus should come with new heroes. New lessons to learn about how to embody the new virtues that we value. We should always be looking for real life examples of people successfully navigating the treacherous waters that we want to navigate. It doesn’t guarantee a smooth ride or success but it does offer a direction and sometimes, that can make all the difference in getting to where we want to go.
Be an individual
No matter how closely you try to align yourself with your hero you need to always remain true to yourself. You need to make sure that your individual stamp is on everything you learn from your heroes, because the real gift of the virtues and successes that you aspire to is your own personal application of them in the lives of people around you. The point of having heroes is to know what direction you want to head in and some of the vague landmarks you need to follow. The specifics of the journey are up to you and how you actually get there will be the compelling narrative of your story. The part that makes it memorable, unique and important. The part that makes you into a future hero for someone else.
Conclusion
A hero is a compass. A navigation tool that can help us to find and approach the virtues, successes and goals we want out of life. When we are presented with situations to which we have no reasonable orientation, or to which we are already predisposed towards a negative reaction, it is useful to consider what our hero would do in that situation. We don’t have to rely only on the reflections of past experiences in our own memories to categorize the ways and means to success. We can reach more broadly towards the experiences and lessons of our heroes, until they become the natural expressions of our own experience and we become the heroes ourselves.
As we grow older we have to find new heroes; new exemplars that embody the virtues that we want to adopt as we mature and shift our focus to new goals and a new life. We are never too old or too accomplished to find a new hero.
And even if our exemplars are exposed for some grave character defect and lose their luster for us, we can still seek to embody the virtues and successes we saw in them. Pursuing the effort in our own personal way, and by doing so become heroes ourselves.
“Our lives aren’t a product of predetermination, they’re simply a collection of probabilities.” – Zor
Is the mind different from the brain? Is there a collective consciousness to which we all have access? What can quantum physics tell us about our emotional place in this world? How can science live beside philosophy and spirituality as a holistic means of understanding the universe?
Once an idealistic youth growing up in the tumultuous and free-spirited times of the 60’s and 70’s, Jonathan Brewster ditches his dream of joining the peace corp and finds himself returning to the confines of his wealthy, pampered and mind numbing existence as an investment banker but all of that changes when runs into a Haitian Dwarf named Zor…
Like a snowball rolling down a mountain collecting everything in it’s path, Zor: Philosophy, Spirituality and Science, gains size, speed and power by bringing together ideas from neuroscience, philosophy, spirituality, meditation, neuroscience and quantum physics, to name but a few.
In Zor, we are introduced to Jonathan Brewster and his chance meeting with a Haitian dwarf named Zor. Accepting that the universe conspired to put them together through attracting energies, Jonathan and Zor proceed to have random encounters, usually over a glass of scotch, where Jonathan relates the troubles of his life and Zor unfolds his theories about why his life is that way and how he can improve it.
Like any good rationalist, Jonathan is skeptical, until he starts putting into practice the things Zor is saying. We get to watch as Jonathan’s life is dramatically changed by the conversations and applications of Zor’s wisdom. From his business, to his relationships, to the very way he sees the world, a revolution of insight, upheaval and the occasional sadness brings to light the concepts that Zor presents and makes personal and tangible the ephemeral concepts that underly our quest for happiness.
With a heartbreaking ending that will have you questioning the trajectory of your own life and your relationship to the people in it, Zor is a wonderful, quick and thought-provoking read that never loses it identify within the enormity of the subject matters it attempts to bring together.
There may be more spirituality than science for some people, but I see Zor as a stepping stone for deeper investigation into many of the philosophical, spiritual and scientific concepts that are explored in the book. It is a primer, not an exhaustive analysis. Keep what you like, discard what you don’t, but make sure you give this book your attention, because subtle ideas can slip through the cracks if your are not vigilant.
Does the book completely coalesce the ideas of philosophy, spirituality and science? No. Does it establish a foundation for further personal reflection and investigation into how these different subjects can be brought together to help us better understand the universe and our place in it? Absolutely! It will bring many ah ha moments and will take you down a scenic, winding road of introspection and insight. And because of that I highly recommend you check it out because there is always something more we can learn about how to live.
As Zor says, “You have built a life that is better than it could be, but not as good as it should be.”
Body, Mind & Spirit
Createspace Independent Pub
November 9, 2010
264
Jonathan is a money manager for his father's company and observes Zor in the street one day. Curious about Zor's calmness when taunted by two teenagers, he begins a conversation which eventually guides his way of looking at and living in his world.
I think the hardest part of self-improvement is the slow creep of self-doubt; the ease of giving up gradually stretching its tentacles into the goals we set. That first time we skip going to the gym makes skipping the next time that much easier. The only reason we start going in the first place is usually willpower and let’s be honest; willpower falters quickly. In the modern world, we are no longer required to be strong to survive. We now have to choose to be strong, to test our limits, to push ourselves in physical and mental ways, and many of us–a growing majority–choose not to. Even those of us that choose to push the limits of our physical endurance with marathons or mud runs–or any of the other self-imposed challenges we pay for today–rarely discover our true limits in such ventures. We can still walk part of that run, we can still decide not to finish – when we haven’t trained or our knees have been bugging us – we can still forgo that $50 entry fee and go out for pizza instead. The conveniences and comforts of the modern world have diminished the importance of survival of the fittest. We can survive just fine by barely lifting a finger and have whatever we need is delivered straight to our door or to our minds.
So how do we test our limits? And perhaps more importantly why? Well, I happened upon my own limits five years ago, purely by accident. I had no intention of seeking out my limits on that day, but I found them and it changed my life forever.
Before that day my limitations were self-imposed. I joined the gym but found only minimal success in the fact that I would go 3-5 times per week. So I overcame the desire to stay home and sit on my ass, but I never left the gym feeling like I had nothing left. I started running, but again small incremental improvements in speed or distance were not even approaching the outer boundaries of my physical abilities. If a lame, but determined wolf were chasing me I’m sure I could have run a marathon, but when I felt winded 3 miles in or the instant I felt a twinge in my foot I backed off. I have friends that seem to have limitless mental fortitude to push themselves to the next level, but I was born without that ability. What I can do well is rationalize quitting – when I can’t catch my breath over the course of a few minutes and my throat begins to heat up I just can’t go any further or any faster, I’m not a runner by nature. When my foot shoots a tiny jolt of pain up my spine I think I must have a minor injury and probably should take the next day off. By having a natural tendency to think this way, I often impose limits that are well short of my capabilities.
Despite my acceptance of those self-imposed limits, I found myself at the Grand Canyon and on my first backpacking trip. I had hiked before, but only during the day – carrying the necessary water and food I would need, but nothing else. This time I would be hiking down into the Grand Canyon–accompanied by my girlfriend–and we’d be carrying everything we’d need for those four-day on our backs – food, shelter, everything. We made a lot of mistakes in packing, that we’ve since learned from, and our packs rounded out to between 40 and 50 pounds each. The plan was to hike down seven miles into the canyon and camp then hike down another seven miles and camp at the bottom of the Canyon, next to the Colorado River. We planned to then reverse back the same route, breaking the return trip into the same two seven mile days we did coming down.
The first half went as planned and, despite our inexperience and poor packing, the hiking we’d done before had us feeling great and enjoying every second of the day. Then, upon arriving at the mighty Colorado, we were told a storm system was blowing in over the next few days with the likelihood of lightning increasing each day. We were 14 miles and one vertical mile of elevation gain from safety and our only option was to see if we could hike those 14 miles as quickly as possible and beat the worst of the storm.
So just before sunrise, we got up and quickly packed everything into our backpacks. We were on the trail before the sun touched the distant, towering tops of the canyon walls that loomed above and despite the fact that our first section of trail–called the box because it’s known for holding heat–would reach well over 100 degrees that afternoon, it was in the 30s and it took a mile or so to shake off the shivers and warm our taught, cold muscles into stretching and contracting normally. But we hobbled as quickly as we could. The sky was a brilliant blue, the storm yet making its presence known, and so far things were looking good.
The sun slowly crawled down into the abyss of the grandest canyon of them all and as it did we shed layers of clothing and slathered ourselves with sunscreen. We were both thankful for the weather and a bit spiteful, so far the skies were clear except for a few fluffy clouds, pure white, light and non-threatening. As we cleared the first seven miles we seriously considered stopping. We weren’t tired, but if the weather wasn’t going to hit we had no reason to push on, but we decided things could change pretty quickly and the small window of sky we could see from deep in the chasm was only a piece of what might be going on in any direction. So we passed the camp and continued.
Like the church bells ringing just after you ponder the time, as we considered the weather a low and distant rumble of thunder rolled through the maze of canyon walls and warned us of what was just out of sight. We hiked on and the thunder continued. It gradually got louder and closer, but we had yet to see lightning. We continued up. The temperature began to drop and our bright blue sky was swallowed whole by the mountainous, ashen clouds of a big storm. Then came the lightning. The depths of the canyon offer no shelter from lightning and the walls only echo and reverberate the thunder until it becomes a deafening roar that rattles your insides and sets off ancient alarms of distress that you didn’t know existed in your brain.
I have never felt such lingering and intense fear. Besides a few close calls in traffic, where just for a split second I thought this might be it, I’ve never been scared for my life. There was no escaping this clear and present danger. We scanned the area for somewhere to hide, but there was nothing. Not a tree, not a shrub, not a cave, or an overhanging rock, nothing. We walked on. The rain began, the lightning and thunder continued, we walked on. We walked on and on and on, up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up–and just when you thought it was getting absurd, we walked up some more. And up and up and up and up and up and up–and now you’re like “we get it already, it was a long way up, you walked for a long time,” but you probably don’t get it. We had already hiked for 4 hours and we were roughly half way. So consider this when you’re sitting at work on Monday – we walked from when you arrived straight through to lunch without stopping. The rest of your day will be the rest of this story and we will still be hiking up when you leave. Non-stop, scared shitless by the weather, wet, cold and hungry we walked up.
I have never wanted to give up so much in my entire life. I have never wanted to click my heels and magically be transported home this bad. I would have paid $10,000 at that moment for a helicopter to come and whisk us away from all of our troubles, but this was not an option. So, repeatedly, I simply put one foot in front of the other and inched closer to safety, closer to warmth, closer to the end of my misery.
Eventually, the storm seemed to pass; at least the visible lightning. The thunder still rolled in the distance and the rain came down harder than ever, but the lightning that was striking less than a half a mile from where we walked passed over. But we were not out of the weather yet. At about the 12 mile mark we passed through a spot called Supai Tunnel – a short hole in a big rock – we stopped for the first time all day and devoured a couple of granola bars out of the rain, but stopping reminded us of how cold it was and so the relief of getting off our feet and taking our packs off was short-lived.
We quickly re-saddled ourselves with our fully saturated packs–that by now had probably soaked up ten pounds of water weight–and continued up. Besides the tunnel this area has another wonderful feature we were quickly reminded of as it continued to pour – this two-mile section of trail is used about six times a day, by teams of twelve mules or more to carry those not willing to hike down into the canyon a short distance in and back out. These beasts of burden are well fed and watered before each trip and the remains of their food and water are deposited all throughout the trail. With the heavy rain seeking out the easiest channel to drain the trail became a literal piss and shit river that flowed ankle-deep all the way up to the top.
I didn’t care. I was zen. I was nothing. Piss, shit, rain, thunder, lightning, my pack rubbing my fully soaked skin raw, my feet screaming bloody murder, covered in blisters, my legs burning, cramping and threatening to buckle with every step – it all simply faded away in these last two miles. I was reduced to a machine. My inner dialog, my fear, my pain, my past, my future, all of it was gone. I was the shore of the ocean; waves crashing and receding in a lulling, destructive rhythm. My movements were automatic, my mind was silent for the first time ever. I have not felt this way since because it is one of those feelings – like love or guilt – that never feels the same way the second time, but I will never forget how I felt that day.
Eventually, we made it to the top. Eventually, we stripped off all of our wet clothes and cranked the heater and curled up in a blanket. Eventually, we gorged ourselves on mac and cheese and indulged in distilled spirits to alleviate our pains. Eventually, the trials of the day faded and the glory of what we accomplished glowed from every pore of our body like the bright sun of a clear dawn. And upon reflection, I realized I had approached my limits. For the first time in my life, I was not afforded the option of quitting. Without that storm, without putting myself in that situation in the first place, I would never have attempted such a feat. I would have never had the faith in my ability to do so. But now, now I know my boundaries are farther than I can see. They reside somewhere on the horizon, out of my view, and further than I could have ever imagined. So when I find myself challenged by life–physically or mentally–I always remember that moment of pure suffering and how grand it was to overcome it and it puts my current challenges in perspective.
Surprisingly, I still crave and seek out these moments. I prefer to avoid the life-threatening nature of that day, but I often find myself bounding out towards the fringe of my limits, seeing if I might ever reach the edge to peer over and see what lies beyond. And when I feel like I’m getting close, and that last mile feels like the worst and longest mile of them all, I question whether I could go two miles more if I had to, or ten miles more if I had to. And I know I could. I now know that all the limitations I think I see far out on the horizon are just mirages and the will to live and experience is much stronger than any self-imposed willpower I can muster on my own. And so I try to put myself in places where I have to go beyond my self-conceived limitations and continue towards my will to live at the outer reaches of what I think I can accomplish, because that is where my strength will grow. That is where everyones strength grows.
Men have become the tools of their tools.
-Henry David Thoreau
Technology is an amazing thing. It has brought us so much and changed the cultural and social landscape of the world in so many profound ways. We have gained healing powers beyond our imagination, we are globally connected, we have an infinite dearth of knowledge right at our fingertips. There is so much convenience and beauty and connection in technology, but there also evolves a darker side to our convenience. The erosion of the subtle virtues that require deep and focused development.
Synaptic pruning
The old adage of “use it or lose it” is very much supported by the neuroscience idea of synaptic pruning. Synaptic pruning is exactly what is sounds like. Basically, the brain is constantly trimming up the neural networks of synapses that are spread throughout it in order to speed up the processing power and make it more efficient. Synapses that are frequently fired in the brain are retained, while those that have seen little or no use are pruned off the neural network. You don’t lose the ability for that thing, you just lose the connection to it. Like a town being skipped over by a highway. All the structures remain but getting there is difficult.
Our overuse of technology has dramatically rerouted the neural landscape of our minds. We have pruned off so many connections to the more deliberate skills we once had. Those skills that required focused attention and endurance – both mental and physical – to master. I think this pruning, due to our reliance on technological devices, has made shallow the once deep well of truly valuable skills we had that, not only helped us to survive, but brought us closer together through shared toil and service.
We still retain an image of the skills we had but they are shallow reflections. There is no depth to them and the depth of them is what makes them enjoyable and meaningful and valuable. The depth makes them stick and makes them indelible impressions of the very core of who we are as humans.
What value is deep memory and deep knowledge in a world where everything can be recalled by a simple web search? What value is deep friendship when we have the ability to have a million virtual friends? What value is deep work when we can automate nearly everything in our worlds.
Device Paradigm
Albert Borgmann is a modern day philosopher of technology who has explored the ways in which technology has impacted our lives. Borgmann introduced the concept of device paradigm to look at how technological devices are perceived and consumed in the modern world.
Borgmann argues that most of the technological devices that we use on a daily basis have a certain nature and power that have worked to remove us from the possibility of a meaningful, enjoyable, deeply connected existence. They are devices that have provided us with “safe, easy, instantaneous and ubiquitous” enrichment to our lives, but they come at a cost. We have become so closely aligned with these technological devices that they have severed the connections we have to those deeper and more meaningful activities and pursuits that make our life worth living. Borgmann refers to these meaningful activities and pursuits as focal things and practices.
What are focal things and practices?
Focal things and practices are those things that have a superior gravitas and meaning in the world. Things that connect us to nature, or the spirit, or humanity, in a deeper context. They are the things that sharpen our virtue and excellence in deep and meaningful ways by forcing us to deliberate and focused attention, not necessarily to the thing, but to the process and results of the thing. Musical instruments. Books. Cooking. Gardening. Working out. These things and practices are made great because they force us to slow down, reconnect and experiences a deeper, more meaningful process of existing through shared, creative and physical connections.
Technology has a way of disconnecting us from focal things. As greater technology has been introduced it has made it easier for us to forgo the disciplined accumulation of skills and knowledge because these technological devices do not require the same learning curve or depth of knowledge to be used. I do not need to know how my central heating actually works in order to use it. I just press the buttons on the thermostat and I get heat. It has all the attributes of something that is technologically available but it does not offer anything else. Contrast this with Borgmann’s example of a wood burning stove.
A wood burning stove provides something much deeper in it’s use. It requires forethought of how much wood you might need, the practiced cutting of that wood, the knowledge and ability to properly start a fire and some vigilance over the continuous burning of the stove. It also gives off a more social experience with the opportunity to sit around the fire with others.
Using the wood burning stove fosters a growth of many different skills and knowledges that insist upon a deeper relationship with it as a “thing”. It is something we use in order to get to a deeper result, while the central heating unit is a self persisting, encapsulated “device”. It is technologically available but it produces no further depth afterwards.
How do I reintroduce focal things and practices?
It’s not nearly as hard as you might imagine. In fact, I bet you dream about it every day. That vacation that takes you away from all the stress of modern life. You feel it pulling you. The time to read and think and pursue your hobbies. How happy could you be in a world where you could step away from your devices and return to yourself? Well we can do that daily in order to improve the quality of our lives and to reconnect with the depth of skills we are all capable of.
Find a focal hobby.
It is so important to have a hobby, and most hobbies are naturally focal things and practices. Gardening; the joy of growing your own food. The feeling of the dark, cool soil on your hands. The research of the proper seeds and growing seasons, when to prune and when to pick. Or learning a musical instrument; the practiced pursuit of creating music. Learning the different tones and physical feeling of playing. The social aspect of playing a musical instrument with others or for the joy of others. There are so many hobbies that can help to reconnect us with the natural, simple joys of life. Find one that suits you and pursue it often and with the same intensity that you pursue Twitter or facebook followers.
Technology fasting
At some point we have all probably had the realization that we spend too much goddamn time on our technological devices. That moment when you realize that you have just spent two mind numbing hours scrolling through your facebook feed like a zombie or when you have been staring at the television, wasting away through a binge watching of House of Cards. Whenever that moment was for you, it is almost always followed by a desire to go do something more “productive”. And something productive almost always seem to take the form of some sort of focal practice.
You would be surprised how little technology you actually need and how empowering and enlightening it can be to return to the analog days of your ancestors. Think of the joyful memories of camping. The smells of the crackling fire shooting brilliant orange sparks into the sky. Cooking smores and telling stories. Long hikes in the woods. It’s funny how our vacations always seem to include getting away from technology to distant destinations where we won’t be disturbed. Well we can recreate those moments of imagined serenity right here and now but taking hours or days to step away from the technology and reconnect with the deeper things in life. I promise it will all be there when you get back.
Consciously Simplify
Make a conscious effort to make your life more simple. Perhaps that means digging up a bit of the backyard for a small garden to grow some of your own food. Or maybe that means making sure to take a few days a week to make a nice meal for yourself. Maybe you start making those Christmas presents or birthday presents instead of buying them. Self reliance, and the confidence that comes from it, is an amazing byproduct of pursuing simplicity. Make it a habit and you will find that your mind naturally goes to simplicity and you are no longer ruled by the convenience of devices.
Conclusion
I am obviously not saying that technology is a bad thing. I work as a software engineer and enjoy the many benefits that technology affords me. But we do need to balance the cost vs. the benefit, and realize that overconsumption or misappropriation of technology does have many negative affects. Our connections to technologies has severed our connections to the deeper things in our world; those things that we wish we had more time for and those things that pull at our heart strings when we realize that we have become too connected to our devices. Focal things and practices beckon us to participate more deeply in our world and create opportunities for us to connect with things, ourselves and humanity in a more meaningful way.
We need to put down the devices and find the hobbies that move us. We need to reconnect with nature and resurrect the practices that helped to fuel our social connections and our sense of self reliance, self confidence and self respect. These virtues are eroded by the overuse of the technological devices that have, all at once, made our world great, while making ourselves less. If we can find the balance we can find the depth of ourselves in an increasingly technologically sterile, device driven world.
Hardly a day passes where I don’t curse someone’s good luck, while cursing my own bad luck. I look around and see good people who get shit on and bad people who seem to have it all. I look at my life and I wonder why I put in so much effort and discipline into trying to achieve things when it seems like reward and punishment is arbitrary and I am never getting what I feel like I deserve.
I think we all want to reside in a world that conforms to a standard, uniform disbursement of the good and the bad. We want natural justice meted out in a way that seems logical and proportionate to the actions, effort, and goodness of each person. We want all of our effort, discipline, sacrifice, and goodness to bring measurable rewards and we want the lack of these things in others to produce measurable impediments to success. In short, we want a fair world. Not necessarily because we want some people punished and others rewarded but because it would make it easier for us to know if we are headed in the right direction. We could stack our rewards and look at what we have earned through our labor, just like a runner hanging medals on his wall for distances conquered.
But life is not like that. The world is not fair and it never will be. Some undeserving people will have it all and some amazing souls will be left with nothing and I have realized that it doesn’t matter one bit. And as soon as I realized that, I was able to free myself of committing to actions because I thought that the world or time or people would reward me and I began to commit to them because I knew they were right and I knew the world would be a better place if others adopted similar actions.
Hidden bargains with others and the world.
It doesn’t matter if you believe you are bargaining with God, karma, nature, other people, whatever; we all make hidden bargains with ourselves and the world. We think that if we just love someone enough that they will eventually come to love us. If I am the perfect child my parents will stop fighting. If I work my ass off day and night at this job I will eventually get recognized and promoted. We think that if we just do enough good stuff that we are accumulating the currency to later trade in and cancel out the bad stuff. Well, shit doesn’t work that way.
You can love someone with all your heart and they may still lie and cheat. You can be a perfect child and your parents may still be at each other’s throat and you can work yourself to an early grave and never get an inch closer to a promotion or recognition and you know why? Because life isn’t fucking fair sometimes and we need to stop believing that it is because that belief is preventing a lot of forward movement in our lives.
The desire for justice as a cause of anxiety.
When we feel like we should be treated fairly, and we are not, we develop an animosity towards the world. A constant feeling of, “what’s the point?”. We see other people getting what they want, and we believe they don’t deserve, and we rage against the fates and say, “Why the hell can’t I get the things that I want? I work so hard! This isn’t fair!”. Resentment grows in us. A resentment for the people we see getting what they want. A resentment for the world and its ability to randomly throw shade or sun. A resentment on the effort it takes to make a change and to build a meaningful life.
All of this resentment leaks out daily and the sewage of it contaminates every interaction we have. We compare ourselves, and our lot in life, with others and we are disappointed if we feel like we have exerted ourselves more and have less. The problem is, we think that the good or difficult things we do now are to get better things later on and that is obviously not true.
Believing that good actions will produce good results.
There is no equation of what actions will produce what results. There is no way of saying how much love exactly you must give to have that perfect relationship or how much personal “goodness” exactly is required to get your parents to stop fighting. We do know that doing positive actions, in and of themselves, produce generally positive moods, but that is about as close as we can get to formulating an equation about the relationship of good actions and good results. But that fact alone does not satisfy us.
We want a specific math of how much good stuff we have to add to other good stuff to get to future better stuff. Or, we want to know how much good stuff we have to do to cancel the bad stuff we did to get future better stuff. We want to feel like the universe is fairly distributing its gifts and penalties because we have convinced ourselves that is the best system of distribution. We want good people to receive good things and bad people to receive bad things because that is the democratic arrangement of reward and punishment that we have decided makes the most sense and that we have implemented in our world.
The problem with this is, nature doesn’t deal in morality. It doesn’t have a perspective on our subjective ideas about what is good or bad or reward or punishment. All nature does is deliver things and then leaves it up to us to decide if those things are good or a bad for us. And those things exist in the nuances of perspective. Some things that are good for some are bad for others and depending upon where you stand you will cry or rejoice accordingly. It is not at all that life is unfair or fair. The truth is, we THINK we deserve something in this world when we actually deserve absolutely nothing and anything that we do get has no intrinsic value outside of our desire to quantify and then qualify it in terms of its worth to us in the given moment.
Change your idea of fairness
Life is completely fair in so much that its rewards and punishments are delivered with total randomness to all people. The neighbor we see with the perfect wife and the perfect car and the perfect job could lose it all in a heartbeat and be left broken and destroyed. And a destitute family living on the brink of survival could be suddenly thrown into amazing wealth by an inheritance or a lottery win. The fairness in all of that is that anything can happen to anyone at anytime.
When you rest your awareness in the knowledge that everyone is subject to the laws of randomness as to what they are thrown in life you may begin to slip down to the depths of some sort of existential or nihilistic rabbit hole. It’s not hard to make the leap from, “life isn’t fair” to “what does it matter what I do?”
But accepting that life isn’t fair gives us a new kind of freedom. We don’t have to weigh and measure and compare our efforts and rewards and punishments against others. All we have to do is what is good and right for us in the moment and not concern ourselves with what future results may or may not come from that. The good action alone is reward enough. So how do we even know how to act in this random, unfair world?
Acting in a random world
In his work, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, philosopher Immanuel Kant takes on the lofty task of establishing a clear understanding of moral principles and natural justice based upon reason. Being a moral objectivist, Kant has some very strong ideas about the reasons and necessity for doing things. I do not have the luxury of delving deep into the entirety of his very dense philosophical claims in this post, but what I can do is talk about one intuitively essential piece of information that can be distilled from Kant’s moral philosophies that may help us better handle the lack of fairness in life and take a more objective approach to our actions in regard to those things we know we should do, despite the outcome. The idea that Kant puts forward is called the Categorical Imperative.
The Categorical Imperative can be simply stated as such;
“Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”
What does this mean?
It means that we should constantly strive to act in a way that, if the entire world would adopt that action, we would be comfortable living in that world. Let’s say an activist blows up an abortion clinic because he wants to stop the killing of unborn fetuses. In his mind that action of blowing up that clinic was morally acceptable and good because the result of that action will produce less dead fetuses, but if I asked that same person if they wanted to live in a world where everyone was allowed to blow up anything they didn’t agree with, I have to imagine that they would say that would be a terrible world to live in. The perspective of the man, that the results of his action justify the means, is not in keeping with his desire to live in a world that is free of such actions and that would suggest that his actions are not truly good.
As another example, if I give a starving man a loaf of bread and that man happens to go off and bomb an abortion clinic, the fact that the man blew up an abortion clinic has nothing to do with the good act of me giving the loaf of bread. I would always want to live in a world where people give starving people food to eat and survive. It is a good action that I would love to see others adopt, despite the eventual result that came of it, in this example.
The fact is, we shouldn’t do things because we think that they will produce some beneficial or negative karmic response later in the future. We should do things because we know they are good and right, no matter if we are rewarded or punished for them. We should do things that we would want others to do for us if we were in the same position as them. And we should refrain from doing things that we would not want others to do to us if we were in their position. It is not an ethic of reciprocity, bargained out with a nature that we insist must be fair, but an ethic of logic in understanding what would be the most adoptable course of action for the world, despite the difficulty of or lack of accolade for adopting it.
Conclusion
Our ideas of fairness in this world can be an impediment to positive, personal action when we do not see results coming from those actions. We can become disillusioned with the prospects for the eventual fruit of our discipline, effort, goodness, and sacrifice. We tie our personal development perspectives into mathematical ideas of; “If I do this, then I will get that”, and when the sum is not delivered in full we find someone or something to blame, cursing those that seem to have more than us despite their lack of effort.
When you fall into this trap, and you are struggling to find the reasons to continue a personal development journey because you are not seeing the rewards, remember that the arbitrary nature of fairness exists for all people and doing good, meaningful and important things in your life because you expect a future reward is not the reason to do them. You do those things, you walk the hard road and you approach life with a zeal for good living because you want to live in a world where everyone approaches life in that way, for better or for worse, fair or not. A world like that is one worth living in.
Words have power. They make us feel and think and move and act. They can make us laugh and make us cry. The can motivate us or they can crush us. They can take us to distant lands and lead us through emotional times. They have the potential to be many things and we should think hard about the words we use every day because they matter; to ourselves and to others.
How we talk to the world is usually how we think about the world and the things we say to other’s are usually the things we say to ourselves. And while there are many things we say to ourselves and others that have the power to cut deeply, I wanted to take the time to remind us all about the things we can say that can heal nearly all of those wounds that we occasionally create.
These are the things that we should say, not only to those people we love and care about but also to ourselves.
I am sorry.
What phrase more humbling? What liquid words more apt to extinguish the consuming flames of anger? If I were anything in this world I would be a sorry. If for no other reason than to be the soothing balm that heals the wounds that words and actions so often cause. So few sorries in this world and so many to-blames. There is no shame in being sorry – in admitting your guilt and taking responsibility for the pain you have caused someone else. There is only bold courage in facing your faults and in reaching out to truly make heartfelt amends to someone you have wronged. Learning from that action and resolving to never hurt someone like that again is your reward for a meaningful, I’m sorry.
I forgive you.
In these words is an implicit vow. You are saying: I will not carry with me the injuries you have caused. I refuse to hold onto the hot coals of the hurt or anger or betrayal you have thrown at me and I will not burn myself further, waiting for a chance to throw them back at you. I release myself by forgiving you.
No words more prone to settle a creeping, crawling animosity and resentment than those uttered in forgiving. Forgiveness is a strength disguised as weakness in an utterly unforgiving world. But know that we lose nothing by forgiving. It is not giving in. It is not accepting a wrong. It is merely having the wisdom to see that mistakes have been made and forgiving is the best way to release ourselves from the weight of those pasts.
You are beautiful.
Every single person in this world can have ownership of these three words. And why? Because everyone truly is beautiful. Not because they embody some mutating standard of what is temporarily attractive in this world, but because everyone is unique and original and they are the only one of them there is. There is an undeniable attraction we feel towards exclusivity and everyone you see is a rare, original work of art. Spread the word. Tell everyone you meet. You can see their beauty and you would like to know more about how it came to be.
I miss you.
In French, they do not say I miss you. They say, “tu me manques”, which means, “You are missing from me.” And I think that is closer to the truth of the feeling of longing. If only I could say more often when I feel that someone is missing from me. If only I had the strength to admit that I feel just a bit more empty when the people I love and desire to be with are parted from my side.
But if for longing’s sake I can not put into words how much I miss you, I can at least spread my arms as wide as they go and say I miss you this much. Because everyone knows that is the universal sign for I miss you to infinity. And that is how much I miss you when we are apart.
I love you.
These are words so powerful and expansive that they say all the other things above. They bundle up the sorries and forgivings, beauties and loss, and they create a whole, entire, wonderful world in which to live. We should not dive lightly into these vulnerable and beautiful words, but when they are right to say, we must say them bold and say them often, with all the passion and honesty we can muster.
To a child, to a sibling, to a parent, to a friend; to a lover, to a stranger, to ourselves and back again. The more you say I love, from the depths of your heart to the expanse of people who mean that to you, the more you will realize that words can change your world.
But words are not enough…
Though words are powerful, it is action that does the carving of these words into the rock of our souls. It is action that proves you mean the words you say. It is action that matters most of all. The words are just a reminder. A promise to follow-up. Use them as bookmarks to remember how you feel and how you think but when the chance comes show these words to the people you love, and to yourself. It will make all the difference in how you see the world and ho the world sees you.
Look around. The world needs saving. Everyday we see and hear the awful, sad truths of where the world is headed and we hear all the terrible stories about the people making it worse. There are so many takers in the world. So many destroyers. So many villains. What the world needs now is more people to defend it. More givers. More creators. More superheroes.
But where do we find these modern-day superheroes in a world that is producing more villains than heroes? You need look no further than in a mirror. We all have the potential to be what the world needs now. We don’t have to be multi-billionaire playboys/girls or be bit by radioactive spiders or born on another planet with supernatural powers to take up the call of the superheroes life. None of those things are requisites to being a superhero in the world today.
We can work our meaningless jobs in faceless corporations, sometimes barely scraping by, and when the world needs a powerful champion, with unquestionable super powers, to lend a hand we can slip into a phone booth, take of our glasses and work clothes, change into our colorful unitards of fucking awesomeness and save the world.
So, how do we manage to gain modern-day superpowers? Well, we start by doing some of the things below.
Filter Your Media
“If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.” – Mark Twain
There is something so soul sucking and mind numbing about the nature of today’s media; social and mainstream. I don’t care what side of the political fence you are on. Liberal. Conservative. Independent. Bi-Liberal. Trans-conservative. Independently Conservatively Liberal. Whatever. You have to agree that the media is filled with countless, sensationalized shit storms of sadness, heartache and destruction. Sure, maybe the world has completely devolved into this spreading, hellish landscape of terror, but I don’t think it has, and the fact that the media chooses to cover all this crap in the way it does makes it a prime candidate for something I choose to mostly ignore.
I am not telling you to bury your head in the sand and ignore the world. I am not ignorant of current events or the power of the media to bring light to otherwise buried atrocities or important issues. I am saying the opposite. Go out there and formulate your own educated opinions about things based upon experience, deep, researched facts and honest, evolved intuition. Don’t just blindly trust a source because some talking head puked it out on your favorite morning news station or you read it in the local tabloid gazette.
Question everything, always, and by doing so you gain the superhero power of telling the truth from the lies and an even stronger power of seeing through other people’s bullshit. This goes a long way towards knowing what to concern yourself with, what are the real issues we need to face and where you should spend your precious superhero time lending a hand.
Super Power Gained: Enhanced Bullshit Detection
Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There!
“To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.” – Oscar Wilde
One of the best ways that people can save the world is just to stop doing things. Stop buying so much shit. Stop consuming so much shit. Stop drinking so much shit. Stop eating so much shit. Stop producing so much shit. Stop thinking about so much shit. Just stop! We have a knack for introducing and embracing needless excess and complexity into our lives, and it all builds up into this great lumbering snowball of shit we have to push up the steep mountains of our lives, like Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill.
Meditation is such a powerful way that we can just sit there and do nothing while also creating a stronger mind and a more balanced connection to our emotions. It has been stated by so many people in so many ways, but the benefits of meditation are consistently ignored because we think we don’t have time to just sit there with ourselves. We think doing more means we are being more; that somehow we are contributing more. The only time you are being or contributing more is if you are being and contributing with the right intention and awareness, for the right reasons and effects, and that means taking some time to truly get to know yourself and the world around you by taking some moments each day to reflect on these things.
Making time to meditate will create the superhero power of supreme focus and an unflappable mental resilience that is never violated by other people’s minds games. It will also make you a more compassionate and emotionally balanced person and those two things alone are among the rarest of human superpowers.
Super Power Gained: Impenetrable Mental Armor
Love Yourself
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” – Leo Tolstoy
The world needs each and every one of us to feel whole, healthy and loved. The sad part is everyone is out there wandering around looking for someone to give them that. Well, you are the only person who can give yourself those things because the indomitable, lasting strength of them comes internally. Sometimes this means saying no to people who say they need you, because you know they really don’t. Sometimes that means cutting out some toxic relationships. Sometimes that means curling up on a Friday night with a book, some tea and your phone on silent, because you just can’t deal with all the crazy bullshit that sometimes blows up in your life or you don’t want to sit through another booze fueled marathon of shitty dance music and meaningless conversation. It’s ok if you are selfish like that sometimes, if it means that later on you can give more of yourself, because you are mentally, physically and emotionally capable of being present, patient and helpful to the world.
There are so many moments in our lives where we could be spared so much sadness and heartache, and we could be of better service to the world, if we just took better care of ourselves in a seemingly selfish way. Even a superhero needs to recover from the damage of life and being self nurturing is an ancient, miraculous medicine. Like the old proverb says, “Physician, heal thyself!”
Taking the time to know, enjoy and love yourself offers the super power of personal healing and limitless confidence. You can quicker recover from the mental or physical wounds of life like a superhero by taking the time to find the center of yourself and enhancing the love you have there. Yes. It’s hard and it can mean some solitude while you explore the beauty of who you are and what you want out of life, but sometimes being a superhero is lonely work.
Super Power Gained: Unlimited Self-Regeneration
Get Rid Of Your Baggage
“Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough.” ― Charles Dudley Warner
Mental, physical and emotional baggage is a drain on every super hero’s life and dragging it around everywhere you go makes you generally ineffective in the world. You need to unload some of your crap and realize the true speed and agility you are capable of. Give away material things that you don’t use, or need, to charity. Talk to a friend or professional about things that are bothering you about life and let those mental burdens fall off your shoulders. Get your body in shape, dumping those extra pounds, so you feel more comfortable in your own skin. Drop a relationship that has become toxic. I guarantee you know what things are weighing you down and you just need a reason to get rid of them, or at the very least, set them down for a while. The reason is: if you find a way to simplify your life – everything in your life – you become capable of quickly traversing the pitfalls and setbacks. You become incapable of being held down by anyone or anything and you will find it is just so easy to spring back up the mountain of life when you take a little fall.
Yes, cutting some of these things out of your life might seem hard at first, but once you start giving, to others and yourself, and start ridding yourself of all the personal and mental garbage, you will find it becomes harder and harder to pick any of it back up because you get used to the feeling of being lighter and you get used to traveling with only the necessities for an amazing journey through life.
And like a superhero dodging bullets you are quick enough to dodge the desire to accumulate needless crap, to dodge other people’s negativity and to dodge the constant pull of life’s troubles. Most importantly, you can redirect all the extra emotional energy and agility that you wasted on carrying those things around towards giving to others, and to yourself, in more valuable ways with a quickness you never had before, and that is what being a superhero is all about.
Super Power Gained: Supernatural Emotional Agility
Conclusion
I suppose you can see the general theme of my message here; if you want to change the world, if you really want to be a fucking superhero with superpowers, you have to start with yourself. It all starts there. There is no saving the world if you can’t save ourself. Each one of us needs to develop our own superpowers and only can we begin to save the world.
Changing yourself and becoming a person who knows how to cut through bullshit, who knows how to manage the stress and the strain of everyday life, who knows when to say no and who knows how to get rid of their baggage, is what the world needs right now. Those are the real superheroes of the modern age, because they are so few and far between and their presence changes the world. The world is always going to consider well adjusted, emotionally resilient, compassionate people as superheroes because the things they can accomplish are amazing and beyond understanding sometimes.
People like that can spend a lot of time helping others and never feel like they are spread too thin. People like that can do battle with the negative forces of this world – the villains and destroyers – and begin to right the wrongs and renew hope in the world; just like a superhero does. So go buy that colorful unitard, go invest in a pair of identity concealing glasses and go save the fucking world!
