Zerebria

The greatest piece of advice I’ve found in the latest days comes from an interview with a business tycoon I found in YouTube. He is being asked for tips on how to act during the economic recession (depression?) we are going through. He shrugs his shoulders and says ‘So what? A manager must manage in both good and bad times. Just assume you’ll never get out of it, and do what you have to do. It is just the way it is’.

I think this advice is applicable to a lot of areas of life, and I do my best to remind it whenever I fall in a whiny state.

No more ‘I wish I were’, or ‘I wish things were’. No more ‘emergency mode’ day after day after day. No more nostalgia disguised as hope. Just assume you’ll never get out of it, and work from there. You live in an environment without intimacy? Most of your fellow countrymen seem more similar to apes than to men? You don’t find a job? Your body is cranky? Just assume you’ll never get out of it. Locate yourself on that new scenario and think what’s next.

Is this a negative idea, a romantic ‘loving failure’? I don’t think so. I tried the mental exercise of taking it to the extreme: let’s imagine that it turned out to be 100% true: nothing is going to change for better, everything I try will ever be a failure, etc… (impossible because such pure 100%s do not exist in reality, things are always relative, certain failures looking back become worthwhile lessons, etc… but let’s assume it for the sake of example).

Now: would it prevent me from trying to do things? Would knowing it mean that I simply stay in my sofa, waiting for disaster to come?

I don’t think so, and for one simple reason: doing such would be VERY boring. So, even knowing that I’m condemned to failure in every action and every aspect of my life, I’d still have do my stuff, follow my natural tendencies. What else is there to do? A pear tree gives pears, what the hell…

Acting from such an abyss-like perspective is very powerful, because the reward is no longer in the results, but in the activity itself. So one has to be grateful for being able to keep trying, and that’s all (maybe that’s what detachment from outcome is about, after all). Results, if any, would just be a bonus.

Assuming you’ll never get out of it, you start to live it from within. Paradoxically, it will help you to take more intelligent decisions and, who knows, maybe get better results (but assume you’ll never get out of it). On the other hand, failing to do so -and it is so easy to get distracted, oh my- condemns you to living inside a swing, with delusion on one extreme, and rude awakenings on the other. Well, I don’t know about you, but I prefer walking on ground, even if it feels a bit shaky most of the time. I’ll just assume how shaky it is, and that it will be shaky for ever, and get going. Happy walking to all.

Recently I realized

that most of the people around me (more…)

Unlike my previous quote, I cannot remember the source of this one; one reads so many things along the (more…)

The eternal matter: you get tired of so many people. People everywhere. And most of them difficult to handle.

When I’m in a good mood, I think they are (more…)

I am not the first to remark that technology usually evolves at a much higher rate than societies. It is particularly true in the case of information technology, where a 50 years course has taken us from ultra-expensive computers that filled a room (more…)

…it is a great sentence to add to your mental hygiene morning routine. The other day I was practicing it, when something strange happened: I felt a sudden impulse of hugging myself and, when I did so, I had a vision of my whole body as the 6*10 to the 13th power cells that compose it. (more…)

The other day I had an appointment, and I decided to leave home like 2 hours early, so I became a time millionaire. (more…)

Has it ever happened to you, maybe? I think of those kids (more…)

Here is a simple trick I find useful the times when I enter negativity cycles in the street. (more…)

The other day I was going back home from my parents’ when I suddenly remembered I had forgotten to bring with me something I needed. ‘Man, I’m an asshole!’, I said to myself. Then the thought came to me: (more…)