Saturday, January 23, 2010
Concision: Feeling Good
Feeling good does not make life worth living, but it does make life much easier to live.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Spirals
Life is not made of adventures.
It's fine to enjoy travel and excitement and sleep in new places and drink with new people, and all these things are a part of life as they are of stories, but by and large life does not move in straight lines from here to there or back again. It moves in spirals, or even in circles, and tomorrow, by and large, will look like today. Next week will look like this week, though perhaps a little warmer and with the days a little longer, and next winter it will be dark and cold again, and there will probably be about as much skiing.
Change may be drastic and sudden at times, but for the most part it is gradual. You do not become stronger all at once, but by repeated exercise, from day to day, spiraling steadily upwards. You do not become fatter all at once, but from day to day, with tomorrow’s morning pastry as much as today’s. The problem, then, is not to avoid routine: we are creatures of routine and routine will have us whether we will or no. The rut we wear may be lined with crowded parties and expensive alcohol and interesting strangers but it will be a rut nonetheless, and it will go somewhere. No, the trick is not to avoid routine, but to create a routine that will take you in the direction in which you wish to go.
We must travel, for the most part, in spirals: circling from day to day, from week to week, from year to year, returning to almost the same ground. It is up to you whether those spirals go up, or down.
So much for the artistic expression of it. What does this mean, practically?
First, we ought not to be constantly seeking thrills and excitement. Personally I like to think about what sort of life I would live if I were rich. I doubt I’m the only one. Of course, at first I get vague ideas about throwing lots of parties for all my friends and anyone interesting who happens to be around, and all the good food I’ll eat and all the expensive clothes I’ll wear and all of the daily chores I’ll be able to hire other people to do. But I’ve been at college for two and a half years now, without a job to speak of, and I know better than that. If there’s a better approximation of the easy life than a slacker’s semester at UMass I don’t know of it. Food is cooked for you, bills are paid for you (or at least they were for me) and there’s no shortage of parties on the weekends. Maybe having to do your own laundry is not quite so good as having no chores at all; maybe having to do a few hours a week of homework is not quite so good as having to do no work at all; maybe the Hiltons and the Kennedys of the world have softer beds and more comfortable clothes and better tasting booze, but the essence is the same and I do not believe that a party becomes a different sort of a thing by costing more. My point is: I KNOW that the pursuit of excitement turns into a routine. Attend party, nurse hangover, play videogames, attend party. And that routine is CRUSHING. The desire to never, ever be bored or uncomfortable for an instant leads, inevitably, to a life that is both monotonous and miserable. And that, of course, makes us crave excitement even more. But this is the lifestyle that many, many people work mind-numbing jobs to do their best imitation of affording. It is the love of this lifestyle that leads many misguided adults to the belief that college is the best time of your life.
This brings us to point two: cultivate habits. Accept that every day is going to look more or less like the day before. Accept that each week will look more or less like the week before. Saturday and Sunday may not look much like Monday, but Thursday and Friday will, and I’m willing to bet each of those days will look an awful lot like the one that came around a week ago. Forewarned and forearmed, decide: what do you want your life to look like?
Maybe my perspective is playing tricks on me. It might be no coincidence that what I think is the most important battle we come up against in life is the battle I’m fighting now, but whatever the reason, it looms large in my mind that our main task here is to make a day that we are willing to live over, and over, and over again, because that is the day that we WILL live over and over and over again. There is noise, there are distortions, there are changes both sudden and gradual, but those are all decisions for the moment: we are formed by our habits, and if they are to take us where we want to go we must point them in the right direction, and above all we must KEEP them there.
It's fine to enjoy travel and excitement and sleep in new places and drink with new people, and all these things are a part of life as they are of stories, but by and large life does not move in straight lines from here to there or back again. It moves in spirals, or even in circles, and tomorrow, by and large, will look like today. Next week will look like this week, though perhaps a little warmer and with the days a little longer, and next winter it will be dark and cold again, and there will probably be about as much skiing.
Change may be drastic and sudden at times, but for the most part it is gradual. You do not become stronger all at once, but by repeated exercise, from day to day, spiraling steadily upwards. You do not become fatter all at once, but from day to day, with tomorrow’s morning pastry as much as today’s. The problem, then, is not to avoid routine: we are creatures of routine and routine will have us whether we will or no. The rut we wear may be lined with crowded parties and expensive alcohol and interesting strangers but it will be a rut nonetheless, and it will go somewhere. No, the trick is not to avoid routine, but to create a routine that will take you in the direction in which you wish to go.
We must travel, for the most part, in spirals: circling from day to day, from week to week, from year to year, returning to almost the same ground. It is up to you whether those spirals go up, or down.
So much for the artistic expression of it. What does this mean, practically?
First, we ought not to be constantly seeking thrills and excitement. Personally I like to think about what sort of life I would live if I were rich. I doubt I’m the only one. Of course, at first I get vague ideas about throwing lots of parties for all my friends and anyone interesting who happens to be around, and all the good food I’ll eat and all the expensive clothes I’ll wear and all of the daily chores I’ll be able to hire other people to do. But I’ve been at college for two and a half years now, without a job to speak of, and I know better than that. If there’s a better approximation of the easy life than a slacker’s semester at UMass I don’t know of it. Food is cooked for you, bills are paid for you (or at least they were for me) and there’s no shortage of parties on the weekends. Maybe having to do your own laundry is not quite so good as having no chores at all; maybe having to do a few hours a week of homework is not quite so good as having to do no work at all; maybe the Hiltons and the Kennedys of the world have softer beds and more comfortable clothes and better tasting booze, but the essence is the same and I do not believe that a party becomes a different sort of a thing by costing more. My point is: I KNOW that the pursuit of excitement turns into a routine. Attend party, nurse hangover, play videogames, attend party. And that routine is CRUSHING. The desire to never, ever be bored or uncomfortable for an instant leads, inevitably, to a life that is both monotonous and miserable. And that, of course, makes us crave excitement even more. But this is the lifestyle that many, many people work mind-numbing jobs to do their best imitation of affording. It is the love of this lifestyle that leads many misguided adults to the belief that college is the best time of your life.
I’m a pretty introverted sort of a person, so maybe these things strike me differently than most people. But from where I’m standing, it seems to me that if THIS is the best life has to offer, then life is not worth living.
This brings us to point two: cultivate habits. Accept that every day is going to look more or less like the day before. Accept that each week will look more or less like the week before. Saturday and Sunday may not look much like Monday, but Thursday and Friday will, and I’m willing to bet each of those days will look an awful lot like the one that came around a week ago. Forewarned and forearmed, decide: what do you want your life to look like?
Maybe my perspective is playing tricks on me. It might be no coincidence that what I think is the most important battle we come up against in life is the battle I’m fighting now, but whatever the reason, it looms large in my mind that our main task here is to make a day that we are willing to live over, and over, and over again, because that is the day that we WILL live over and over and over again. There is noise, there are distortions, there are changes both sudden and gradual, but those are all decisions for the moment: we are formed by our habits, and if they are to take us where we want to go we must point them in the right direction, and above all we must KEEP them there.
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