Remember the Alamo - #72

Dear Readers,

Motion City Soundtrack sang best into my high-school ears with their song "The Future Freaks Me Out".

There is a compelling train of thought that every second we crawl closer toward it, the future is in our decisions. The advice of any personal development coach would be to believe it and you can become it. Hell, the idea of visualizing the future is the reason we have all this amazing stuff around us. But there is a sliver of this belief that becomes a bit too controlling, too convenient and too freaky. There is no guarantee that any single human can predict the future. Not one psychic, not one dreamer.

It can be a bit hard to swallow. We conveniently forget that no matter our goals or whenever or not they're achieved, the future will arrive in its own style. British writer Stephen Fry challenged me with a video entitled What I Wish I'd Known When I Was 18 when he said, "The worst thing you can ever do in life is set yourself goals." The idea behind this is either you melt into failure for an untold number of reasons or you achieve goals without satisfaction or reflection, marching onto the next. 

The danger is looking to the future for an end. Even if you conquered the world, you would still need to keep it. And then conquer breakfast. 

I'm currently halfway through Tony Robbins' 30-Day Personal Power II CD set (whew, what a title!). Goal-setting has become a much more potential reality if only because it is transforming who I am daily. While I'm currently all about the Brooklyn apartment with a balcony, Honda cruiser motorcycle, and a debt-free blogging career, it is much more about the personal transformation I need to acquire these goals. How do I know I want all that in the future? I don't. And you don't know either. For all we can guess, we may not want the trophy at the end of the race, but we can always say we ran it. 

It's the kind of present thought that had me smiling and without regret after getting a knee planted on my neck during my last jiu-jitsu tournament. (After the tournament, I was smiling, not during the chokehold. I'm not that masochistic.) If anything, it sculpted my ambition, my body, and my identity even better to throw caution to the wind and fight. 

If the future can't be predicted and we're moving toward it, whether we like it or not, the most logical thing I think we can do is build today for tomorrow. Dreaming too wild can be like fishing with grenades. There is an acknowledgement that we are not in a place we want to be and often our deepest flaws are revealed as holding us back. Hurting yourself to be someone else is the most masochistic. There is some pleasure in there but mostly you're left with scars at square one.

Ira Glass, host of NPR's This American Life, exhibits this clearly in an old interview he did for CurrentTV when he defines taste as the barometer for creative people. Your taste is the reason you want to create something of your own and it is the reason you know your own stuff is not that good when you begin. It is nothing like the pros, the experts, the famous. The success comes with the goal and fulfillment of bridging that gap and realizing your taste is on the same level with your work. This, Glass said, is what he wished someone would have told him when he was starting in broadcasting.

The simple truth is the present is all we have. You can argue the past makes us better today, you can argue that humans are uniquely capable of striving to their futures. What remains is that two very successful storytellers and thinkers, Stephen Fry and Ira Glass, used the present to throwback lessons to their teenage years. Whether you have goals or not, young or old, we're here to do stuff and sometimes it hurts to know we don't know everything. In the end, Steven Johnson may have exhibited best with this idea: "'The adjacent possible is a shadow future, a map of all the ways the present can re-invent itself".

The future is now. Make it happen, as best you can.

Until next time...

I explode into space.

-dan

Explode into Space #59 - How to be Like Water

Dear Readers,

Whether you're a fighting fan or not, you'll be blown out of the water by the highlight reel of the brothers Kade and Tye Ruotolo at the BJJ Abu Dhabi trials in San Diego. They're not even teenagers and they are incredible on the mats, so fast, so dangerous. It is amazing to see someone so young be so dedicated and advanced in a sport I consider to require an enormous amount of strength and skill. You can learn jiu-jitsu but to practice it to the standards of these twins, much less fighters my age, you need to put in some serious time and effort.

And therein lies the rub. It had me thinking about my own game. Slowly I've been putting the time and the reps in to map my own plan of attack and what I've lacked was speed. What so inspired me about the Ruotolo was their quickness, like little vipers. In the back of my mind, I always knew jiu-jitsu was not necessarily meant to be a smash-and-grab method like most meatheads might have you believe MMA is all about. In Brazilian jiu-jitsu, there is an enormous amount of calculated explosion, though. Sure, there are chokes and throws and special moves, but the victory is in the details. Bruce Lee said it best and I adopt the idea more and more every time I cross it: "Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless - like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend."

Off the mats, it's easy for people to focus on the power of the crashing wave. What we forget is how water can be powerful and fluid. We're a culture of push, though. We're a culture of Go, and Mine. We recklessly attack screaming, rarely pulling back to calculate and defend. It is Entrepreneurial Selfishness when we're too distracted and concerned with furiously building our own story, we forget to write some other characters and plot points down. More than achieving goals, life is about embodying a philosophy that warrants more than crossing off bullet points and racking up medals. Your mind makes up everything around you and when you push too hard against the Universe, mindlessly carving a singular path for yourself, you're bound to get swept on your ass. It's like trying to hurt the ocean. Dropkick it all you want, the saltwater can't shed a tear.

Stephen Cope's Yoga and the Quest for the True Self has a story about The Buddha that goes along with this idea. The Buddha said, "The boat is not the opposite shore-it is just the vehicle we use to get there." Cope followed, "When we're in midstream, we must cling to it as if our lives depended upon it. When we get to the other shore, however, it can be completely relinquished." It's similar to the idea of a child's security blanket. We attach ourselves to things that define our identity, time and space. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, it's natural. False identity comes when we cling to the wrong vehicle and strangle it for too long. Like the Ruotolo twins, crash when it matters, flow when you can.

Let's channel the Matrix for a second. If you take into account everything you've ever been told, it makes total sense that the idea of being Better would result in a bigger home, bigger salary, trophy spouse and a big, fat, stupid grin on your face, content in your power and freedom. You think that's air you're breathing now? Why? Cause that's what you've been told. You fight tooth and nail to go further down your own personal rabbit hole, rarely slowing to check your surroundings. We're nothing without questions and perspective. We're nothing without our boats. Now, more than ever, I'm finding myself sailing to understand what Better means. What is self-improvement? Is it putting in extra hours for my shifts to run smoother? Is it drilling dive passes in jiu-jitsu until they are second-nature? Is it doing everything I can to make the people around me closer to Better? There is a world of knowing and learning right outside the circuits of that computer in your head. It's not only about you, but you are the only one that can do what you can.

The irony is in the great Bukowski quote, "The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.” It seems pessimistic to pin the tail on the intelligent and doubtful although I believe the real point is that we all can honestly know nothing. It's all relative and the sentiment goes for the concept of Better. What can be done, though, is to best define your own idea of Better. Is it health? Is it a eulogy that reads like a resume or the X-Games? Is it a dozen children or a dozen cats? Is it land? Orgies? God?

Get clear on how you can be like water. Find the balance. Life demands you crash and flow.

Until next time...
I explode into space.

-dan

Explode into Space #57 - Don't Dive Alone

Dear Readers,

I did a bad thing. I went to Starbucks to write nothing specific. And I went too deep. 

Usually there is meditation in writing for me (says the fella who writes you every week). There was finally time to breathe when I sat down with my coffee. Work had been so chaotic the last week I'd been handling customer complaints in my dreams. Counter that with training the majority of the week, earning my keep as a freshly-awarded Blue Belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. To sit and breathe and think was a treasure. So, naturally, I took it too far.

Somehow the aroma of coffee beans and banana walnut bread turned my therapeutic writing into a case study in futility. What I wanted to nail down, and always want to nail down, was an overarching theme to the activities of my life. Before this, I'd found Truth in The Butterfly Effect, or the fact that our actions cause ripples around us. You can kill a fruit fly and have an effect on the world, albeit a very small, inconceivable one. Better yet would be to make a difference in the lives of people, build better relationships, encourage progress, and be happy. What could be bad about that? 

It just didn't feel true and complete. It could be my youth. Without responsibility to children or a spouse, it's easy to fall deeply. You wonder what's the point and the point becomes multi-dimensional. You see all the angles and none make sense to choose. 

The next day I visited my therapist, Mr. T. No, not the A-Team, pity the fool Mr. T., but Peter Tuccino, the Mr. T who built Dragon Spirit Martial Arts from the ground up. We talked, as we do, for hours and he returned all of my serves with equal force. More than those my age, Mr. T can put me at ease to say everything is fine thinking the way I do because I'm young. I'm doing this with my whole life in front of me. Take a breathe and slow down because worrying about finding meaning will never lead to discovery.

Slowly but surely, I exhaled and found Truth bleeding from our talk. Bouncing my attempts at meaning-making off him, Mr. T. helped me fly closer to it all with the following ideas:

There is no Life without Death. Considering the Day of Your Funeral can be a great exercise. Morbidity aside, we can't see death coming but we can live knowing it. We like to think that within the grasp of Death, we'd be reckless and live without abandon. I doubt we'd really enjoy that. Sorry to say it, life goes on when you don't. Whatever you do with that life, legacy becomes the stuff of meaning without you. 

Giving starts the receiving process. Jim Rohn said it and Darren Hardy, publisher of Success magazine, echoes the sentiment. (See his breakdown here.) The wording is important. Giving only starts the receiving process, it is not the only part. I had this thought, examining my current goals the other day. If I want to be a better grappler, my goal should be to help others become better grapplers and in so I'd learn. If I want to be a better writer, I better be a better reader. And find a new word to replace "better". 

If you want the Meaning of Life don't be so shallow to think it is only going to come from within you. It is one of the most biting of Joe Rogan's comedy bits in Shiny Happy Jihad when he says, "If I leave you in the woods with a hatchet, how long before you can send me an email?" We can't figure things out on our own. It is not genius, it is remix. 

And as if Fate was the mailman, Kirby Ferguson was delivered to my life. Following the Rabbit Hole from PBS's digital series Idea Channel to Everything is a Remix, Ferguson made it crystal-clear for me that it is other people that make life worth living, doing whatever you're doing. In the four-part video series, Ferguson presents Everything is a Remix as a way to understand the fertile progress of working together to create and influence works of art and works of invention. We are One and it's sometimes hard to work like that. Ferguson summed it up saying, "We have a strong predisposition towards protecting what we feel is ours; we have no such aversion towards copying what other people have.”

Even better, like Henry Ford said, "I invented nothing new." Explode into Space is full of sources and reference material, the juice that fuels my days, on purpose. I have no qualms admitting this is only an original work for the tweak I put on the words outside the quotation marks. It's even more essential to remember this when the world tells us to drop-kick our goals and be exactly the person we are meant to be that we remember we'd be no one without everyone else. 

Without Death, there is no life. Without giving, there is no receiving. Without others, there is no us. 

Until next time...
I explode into space.

-dan