See Clear

I chimed in on a friend's Facebook post regarding some grief that he was catching for maintaining his exercise regimen on a holiday and his commitment to stay the course, which, personally, I applaud, subject to the following: The most elite athletes train every day all day, but part of their training entails recovery and relaxation. They cast *everything* as training, so there is always perfect perceptual alignment. This is as opposed to seeing exercise as training and everything else as not-training, thereby creating a conflict. To that end, I came up with an acronym to capture the precedence of things in my life: SEE CLeaR. Sleep, Eat, Exercise, Career, Love and Recovery (e.g. relax, recharge, etc). Love, the most important thing in life, is 5th in line, because without its predecessors, it cannot be enjoyed. One should not feel guilty for doing what one needs to do to enjoy the rest of their life, but should also take care to leave room for the rest of their life. Anyone who takes care of others to the detriment of their own self-care should remember this, as should anyone who takes care of themselves to the detriment of others.

Mind Your Hydrodynamics

Like a ship that leaves the shore, even the slightest tilt of the rudder upon departure can lead one to a significantly different destination than one was otherwise destined to reach. The doubt that we are capable of actually doing what we love, as children, students or working adults. The hope that we are the best at what we do, again, as children, students or working adults. This is partly self-doubt, partly self-confidence, and partly external influence. As we are passengers on each other's ships, it is incumbent upon us to mind each other's tillers, taking care not to cast dispersion on an inner most dream, or taking care to steer the ship against adverse waves when the people we love are adrift in the inevitable challenges that accompany chasing a dream. It is this essential, mutual support that inspires me, and makes me chuckle a bit whenever I hear about the 'self-made' man or woman. No one is self-made. Even the strongest mind can be cut down by a cruel teacher, or built up by a mindful parent. So... Mind your hydrodynamics!

Enlightened Living

So simple? A pupil asks an elder monk who was thought to be enlightened, "what does an enlightened being do?" The elder responded, "I wake, I eat, I work, I play and I sleep." The pupil was surprised by this answer, and said "but I wake, eat, work, play and sleep too." ... "Yes", said the elder, "but when I eat, I eat; when I work, I work; when I play, I play; and when I sleep, I sleep." Insofar as meditation is practice for life, life can and should be practice for meditation. With sufficiently narrow attention, even 30 minutes on the treadmill can be truly liberating. Try it!

The Astronomy of Relationships

It is not often that astronomy offers salient analogies for relationships, probably half as often for anyone to even notice, but, in reading about solar systems in our galaxy and beyond, I found a few: More than four-fifths of the single points of light we observe in the night sky are actually two or more stars orbiting together. The most common of the multiple star systems are binary stars, systems of two companion stars. Some people even think that our sun is part of a binary system, with an as yet to be observed companion. There are 'wide binaries', consisting of two stars whose orbits are spread apart from one another, leaving them to evolve separately; 'close binaries', consisting of two stars that orbit one another so closely that one might actually transfer mass to the other or be pulled into the other completely; and everything in between, including categorizations that have more to do with how we perceive these stars: 'visual binaries', which can be distinguished visually through a telescope; 'spectroscopic binaries', which can only be distinguished by the wavelengths of the light that each one emits; 'eclipsing binaries', whose angle with the earth and our line of sight, so to speak, makes it so that we see these stars in alternating eclipses; 'astrometric binaries', where a visible star appears to be dancing around empty space, when, in reality, it is dancing with an unobservable companion; and 'double stars', which are two stars that appear to be binary stars, based on our angle of observation, but, in reality, are nowhere near one another. I think that we can all attest to either living through or observing relationships that align with these categorizations, and, perhaps, some of us are clear about how we want our heart to orbit another heart. The beautiful break from these analogies is that we create our own gravity. You can pull the heart you love straight to yours, if you choose to, or you can tether it at a distance and risk it being pulled away by other gravitational fields. My take, pull with everything you have, and don't be afraid to spin so closely as to become one, bright, shiny star. 

The Simpler-Better Past

Plato (428-346 BC) criticized the practice of writing (i.e. the written word) as something that would erode one's mental faculties (he called it a recipe for reminder not memory) and depersonalize human interaction, as the need for face-to-face communication would no longer be required to exchange ideas. Although we can all speak to the benefits of the written word, we can also acknowledge that Plato's assertions were still, for the most part, correct. Between Plato's time and our time, there have been many generations, each with its own introduction and adoption of new technologies and practices, with pros and cons relative to both generations past and generations future, and too much complexity and variability in how things will evolve to say for sure what will be beneficial or detrimental. As one generation longs for a simpler-better past, we can be sure that the generation before longed for the same, and we can be sure that, to a varying degree, each generation was partially right and partially wrong. My point is, if Plato's nostalgia for a simpler-better past (i.e. one without the written word) prompted the next generation to forgo the written word, then we would likely not even know who he was or what he thought, as surely as I would not be able to recount it here. The next time you find yourself feeling nostalgic about the past and perplexed by the next generation, you might want to reflect on how you perplexed the generation that preceded yours!

Love in Action

Two people in love. When one says to the other, “I love you”, they mean “I want to enjoy every moment of life with you; I want to grow up and grow old with you; I want to make a life with you; I will take care of you when you are sick; I will sit with you if you are dying”. In short, they mean “you will never be unloved or alone”. When the other responds in kind, what does he or she mean? There is no shared definition for the term “love”. I have heard stories of one person trading in their life to save the one they love. I have heard stories of one person leaving the one they love upon learning of a terminal cancer diagnosis. And yet, each person uttered the words: “I love you”. To the extent that, even if you ask, you cannot necessarily rely on the words behind the word, you can only rely on the love you are shown, as surely someone else can only rely on the love you show them in kind. Love defined is love in action, so… act now <3

Warranted Intolerance

In 'The Open Society and It's Enemies', Karl Popper asserted that we are warranted in refusing to tolerate intolerance. Just think about it. What if a society was 100% tolerant? The intolerant would be tolerated. They would act accordingly, marginalizing others and accruing power, until, finally, tolerance itself would be obliterated under their reign. Justice itself relies on intolerance: murder is illegal, because we are not tolerant of it, for good reason. It is only when we pass the threshold of clear, negative externalities (i.e. one person's actions causing material harm to another person) that the question of tolerance vs warranted intolerance becomes more difficult, and I can see how large the struggle looms in the minds of Americans, as we seek to embrace fellow Americans whose beliefs have been erroneously conflated with evil, with a seemingly endless supply of recruits willing to reinforce this bias by committing acts of evil. Aside from exacting huge, asymmetric financial costs on the U.S. economy, I think that part of the goal of terrorism is to skew our collective minds towards unwarranted intolerance and drive a wedge between us. That is what we have to counter at every turn, or else play right into this goal. 

Work the Love

In the 1990s, I worked for a start up and ran a group of Oracle PL/SQL developers and DBAs. One day, one of my DBAs, a very shy and soft spoken woman from China, slowly shuffled into my office in tears. I stood up and asked, "what's wrong?". She answered, "I deleted the database". I attempted to qualify: "You deleted some data?" ... "No" ... "You dropped a table?" ... "No" ... "You dropped a schema?" ... "No" ... "You dropped a tablespace?" ... "No" ... "Then what?" At this point, the tears accelerated, as she said, "I deleted the database file on Unix". Indeed, she had nuked the database, our eCommerce site was down, restoring our archived backup was not going to be straight forward, due to the manual cleanup we would need to perform first, so getting things back online was going to take 8 to 12 hours and the database would be out of sync from the get-go. One of the founders told us that "we just drove a spear through the heart of this business", while the other founder immediately left to buy a gallon of ice cream, in keeping with his habit of stress eating. Meanwhile, my shy, teary-eyed DBA stood at my side, paralyzed. I turned to her and asked: "Did anyone die?" ... "No" ... "Did anyone get physically injured?" ... "No" ... "If we both get fired, do you think we'll find new jobs?" .... "Yes" ... "Then cheer up! and go delete the rest of those database files so we have a clean slate to restore." The relief on her face and near-joy in her step as she made her way back to her desk was enough to make me fully satisfied in the job ;-) I would venture a guess that, for most of us, job satisfaction transcends the job and is rooted more in the empathy and assistance that we are able to deliver to our fellow travelers, so while I do believe that it is important to love the work that you do, I would say that it is equally important to 'work the love', and this can be done across a variety of jobs.

Scary-Movie-Scene-Moments

We've all experienced them in our lives from time to time. I had one yesterday. I was under the weather, 100% sure that I had a sinus infection, therefore my usual strategy of waiting things out was contraindicated, so I opted to go to the doctor's. While in the waiting room, I sat across from a woman wearing a leg brace who was abjectly unable to prevent whatever she was thinking or feeling from being verbally uttered on an ongoing and immediate basis. For 45 minutes straight, all I heard was "my back hurts", "my phone's battery is low", followed by, "does anybody have an iPhone charger?", "wow, that is a low co-pay", after over hearing someone's $5 co-pay amount, "I can't believe that", referring to ABC's 'Divorce Court' on the TV, etc. They finally called her back, so I enjoyed 15 minutes of peace until they called me back. After my time with the doctor, I headed to the check out desk. To my dismay, there she was, fully engaged in arguing with the receptionist about how they should be able to Google information that she was being asked to provide, occasionally looking back at me to say "unbelievable". She was rather bossy, and a bit manipulative in an addict kind of way - i.e. no sense of limits, as in "hey, can you hand me your baby so I can sell it for $100 and score some smack?". This is going to sound a bit cruel, but it looked like she might have been attractive a few thousand cigarettes, beers, and whatever else ago, so I imagine (perhaps, just my imagination) that she may have grown accustomed to a wide domain of manipulation and control. Finally, and thankfully, all issues were resolved and she left the premises. I signed some forms, paid my bill and headed to my car. Halfway from the office to my car, I hear "hey!", "yo!", "wait up!". It was her, furiously hobbling towards me, presumably to ask for a ride. Now, anyone who knows me, knows that I am the first to offer a helping hand to someone in need, but her? No! And this, my friends, was my scary-movie-scene-moment. As I pretended not to hear her, I accelerated the pace to my car, thanked God for my hands free door locks (else it would have been doubly scary, as I would have surely been hard pressed to align my key and unlock the door in time), thanked God for my push button start (for the very same reason), didn't even put my seat belt on, contemplated not even disengaging my emergency brake, though the engineer in me overruled that one, slammed it in drive, thanking God yet again that I backed into my spot, and narrowly escaped before she reached me. Typically, I would make two left turns to get back to the main road, but I could see her in my rear view mirror, already hobbling toward that route to cut me off at the pass, so I continued forward, ready to take the long way home at whatever cost. Does this make me a bad person, or simply someone with an uncanny zest for life. I think it's the latter :-)

The Most Addicting Thing

I heard a podcast today, where the thematic question was 'what is the most addictive thing in the world', where 'addiction' was duly defined as something that you cannot get enough of, but that continually requires larger doses to provide the same satisfying effect. There were many guesses - crack/cocaine, heroin, opium, alcohol, cigarettes, chocolate - but, in the end, the researchers found, after extensive surveying, that the answer was 'other people', or, to put it another way, 'love'. Yes. Love. The thing that people go crazy over, change their lives for, do anything and everything to protect. And yet, how many relationships end? Is it truly the case that the more we have it, the less we feel it's effects, the more we need of it to feel truly satisfied, leading to a point where one or both parties simply cannot give enough to ensure its survival? Does one need to create scarcity in one's relationships to balance out supply and demand and stop the viscous cycle? Deep down inside, I don't believe this to be true, based on my belief that true love transcends the logistics and dynamics of life. Perhaps this is foolish of me, but, for whatever reason, I would rather foolishly believe this than wisely live a life half-muted. This may even be, perhaps, true wisdom. I don't know. 

Know How

If you gave Isaac Newton the keys to your car and instructed him to go from point A to point B, he would have no clue. What does it mean? Intelligence does not bestow know how, and sometimes know how is essential. By that same token, know how is not an indication of intelligence, nor should it foster arrogance. This is precisely what scares me about allowing anyone with a license to drive, especially when they have no concept of the implication of F=MA.

Surprising Coincidence, Accidental Strategy and the Value of Noticing

For the past 4 days, I've been commuting from South Jersey to New York City by car, and I've been providing my borderline OCD mind with a bit of relief by keeping track of some key travel markers, which revealed a surprisingly consistent timeline, as follows:

From South Jersey

15 minutes to the NJ Turnpike Entrance
15 minutes to exit 8
15 minutes to exit 10
15 minutes to exit 14
15 minutes to Holland Tunnel entrance
15 minutes to get through the tunnel and park

I've consistently achieved this 90 minute timetable, leaving a 15 minute buffer for traffic, but often - inexplicably and unexpectedly - making up time if/when I do run into unusual traffic. To me, this is incredible, especially since the rough 15 minute intervals are so closely coincident with the markers listed. This is also something of a lesson in accidental strategy. Without knowing any better, I decided to leave at 8:15am to bypass traffic. This just happens to deposit me at exit 10 at or slightly after 9am, thereby allowing me to occupy the HOV lane, since the HOV constraint ends at 9am. This also just happens to provide a natural offset for any traffic that I run into after exit 10, since the Holland Tunnel traffic starts to trail off after 9am, thereby expediting my travel to and through the tunnel. My only contribution to this 'happenstance' is noticing, but noticing is valuable.

So now I am wondering...

What other surprising coincidences and accidental strategies currently exist in my life? What is the value of noticing? What is the opportunity cost be of not noticing? These are good questions, I think.

The Reality of Perception

It is one thing to say "I am only going to do things that are fun" and quite another to say "I am going to have fun doing everything". The former demonstrates a lack of understanding that 'fun' is an internally generated, externally germinated phenomenon. The latter relies on the acceptance of the world as it is, and an appreciation that the world is fundamentally good in its natural state. This is akin to the 'three vinegar tasters' in Chinese religious paintings, where the three founders of China's major religions react to the taste of vinegar: Confucius (Confucianism) has a sour expression, as he saw life as sour and in need of rules to mitigate this; Buddha (Buddhism) has a bitter expression, as he saw life as a bitter journey of pain and suffering; Laozi (Taoism) has a sweet expression, as he saw life as fundamentally good 'as it is', as surely as the vinegar tasted as it was supposed to taste. One could argue that one's experience of the world is highly correlated with one's view of the world, but I would argue that one's view of the world is the causal factor in one's experience of it.

Flight Risks

It seems like FAA officials are going to have to step up their game-theory perspectives as we grapple with the cascading effects of flight risks and counter-measures. There is no way to make self-reporting more attractive to pilots when risk-aversion would have any issue lead to grounding; there is no way to lock out the bad guys from the cockpit without also running the risk of locking out the good guys; there is no way to address the asymmetrical risk of armed pilots without arming the rest of the flight crew, thereby creating the distributed risk of firearms on aircraft; and, ultimately, there is no way to balance the risk between actors if two or more of them are in collusion. Ultimately, we have to accept that we put our lives in the hands of others, and no amount of screening or monitoring or other, clever counter-measures can replace an instilled sense of morality that would have caused Andreas Lubitz to overdose on sleeping pills to end his suffering rather than taking the lives of 150 people along with his. This apparent, growing trend of murder-suicide (sometimes, killing to be killed) is quite disturbing. It is as if people want to be remembered, no matter how.

Fundamentally Similar, Systematically Different

Every time I spend time with a curious mind in an outdoor setting, I eventually point out how people, monkeys, dogs, cats, mice, etc, are basically the same pattern with different implementations - i.e. same skeletal structure, same organs, same major functions, implemented at different scales with other, systematic differences that are essential for the survival of the mammal in question. The similarities extend down to the most fundamental building blocks of life, DNA, where humans have a 100% overlap amongst themselves, with differences only in the sequence of genes, a 98% overlap with chimpanzees, a 92% overlap with mice, and, at the further end of the spectrum, an 18% overlap with the common garden weed! The similarities extend down to the very building blocks of matter, where the only difference between elements in the periodic table is the number and configuration of subatomic particles (protons, neutrons and electrons) in their atoms, where these subatomic particles can be broken down into sub-particles (quarks, leptons, etc), and where, I would imagine, these sub-particles can be broken down into even smaller particles - where does it end?!?! Very nearly all of the elements in the universe owe their existence to the nuclear transmutation of hydrogen and helium by different types of stars, where helium and hydrogen originated from the big bang and account for 98% of the mass of ordinary matter in the universe today. How is that for common? We can all easily conceptualize how 2 identical computers, made of identical components, running identical operating systems, can play uniquely different roles in the world based on their software, but the analogy is a bit more perplexing once it is extended to human beings versus the rest of the animal kingdom, and sometimes versus other human beings - i.e. if not for the single, lethal bit set in Jeffrey Dahmer's software, he was, otherwise, just like the rest of us. But the reality is that, from the smallest particles of matter, to the fundamental building blocks of life, to more observable manifestations, most everything is fundamentally similar and only systematically different, and this is true across a wide range of more abstract instincts, behaviors, ecosystems and organizations. This should not detract from one's assessment of their uniqueness in the world, because it is the soul over the software over the hardware that makes all living things unique: the spark of life that turns elements into compounds into a living being; the ethereal force that cannot be decomposed into particles. Understanding our non-uniqueness at an atomic, chemical and biological level is, indeed, the most salient way to grasp our uniqueness at a more fundamental level beyond the purview of science. This is precisely why philosophy embraces science and spirituality: the former can only take you so far, and the good news is that the latter is completely up to you in terms of choice, interpretation and positivity. 

Teachers

They say “those who cannot do, teach”, but, on the flip side, when the expert (or prodigy) is unable to teach their field of expertise to someone, it may be due to the very thing that makes them the expert to begin with: they have assimilated the foundation to the point where they no longer need to think about it, and, therefore, are unable to decompose it into its original, teachable parts. You may experience this if you ever have to teach or write about your own expertise, and you may experience this is a more negative way if you ever have to learn from an expert that has not grappled with this beforehand. So we could say “those who cannot teach, do”, which sounds unfair, very much like the first quote.

Marking the Passage of Time

I recently had dinner with a good friend of mine, who just purchased a fitness watch of sorts that tracks his daily activity (number of steps, sedentary time, etc). He told me that, according to his perception, when he is engrossed in one activity or another, the watch beeps every 15 minutes to remind him to get up and move around, whereas, in reality, the watch is actually beeping every hour. I can relate to this perceived versus actual passage of time, and it occurs to me that the difference can be very useful, in terms of maximizing or minimizing the passage of time, all depending on the objective. For example, during the day, when I am working, I take a sip of water every 15 minutes to create an awareness of the passage of time, thereby maximizing my use of it. On the other hand, at the gym, on the treadmill, I take a sip of water every 5 minutes to convert my own internal accounting of time from seconds or minutes to 5 minute intervals to minimize how long it 'feels' like I am walking. This is just a restatement of several old adages - specifically, preserving time, as in "time lost is never found" from Benjamin Franklin, and preserving experience, as in "the time you enjoyed wasting is not wasted time" by Bertrand Russell - but I wonder how many of us actually devise appropriate, self-directed units of time to either slow things down or speed things up. You can be present in the moment to savor every second, or you can track broader milestones to fold the time in between. In The Thin Red Line, Private Witt (Jim Caviezel's character) lives in the second-by-second beauty of nature (flowers, birds, etc) that surrounds him on the battlefield; in Cast Away, Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks' character) lives in the day-by-day activity required to feed his body and stay alive; in The Shawshank Redemption, Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins' character) lives in the month-by-month activity to feed his soul and truly live. There is a case for savoring every second no matter what your circumstance, so I am not suggesting an outright folding of time, ala the movie Click, where Michael Newman (Adam Sandler's character) transports himself into the future through a magical remote control, and ends up missing the majority of his life. That being said, being aware of and influencing your perception of time can be a great way to be savor beautiful seconds or withstand challenging moments, which can offer a modicum of comfort where there is none.

Incredible, Simultaneous, Reciprocity

Unless you are a Physicist, and a Quantum Physicist at that, you are probably unfamiliar with 'entangled particles', which are particles that remain connected so that actions performed on one affect the other, even when separated by great distances. As one particle enters a downward spin, the other particle enters an upward swing, and this is said to occur at 10,000 times the speed of light (i.e. instantaneously) regardless of the distance. I believe this behavior extends beyond particles to the hearts and minds and souls of two people. When one is about to send a message and is preemptively messaged; when one is about to call and is preemptively called; when one is about to express an inner-most thought that is preemptively expressed; when one is about to kiss and is preemptively kissed; when one falls in love and is preemptively loved. To the extent that entangled particles defy our understanding of the world, I see no reason to doubt the existence of entangled souls: Two souls that spin for each other and maintain a balance in the universe that goes beyond the purview of the world we see, into the world we feel. Look for it in your life. It might already be there.