by Jamesscotthenson | Dec 11, 2016 | Blog
If you cross this one street in our neighborhood it suddenly
gets pretty fancy, going from $80K-100K houses to $500K-800K homes. Our side of
the neighborhood is becoming more and more diverse, I figure one day they will
build a wall. There goes all the good trick-or-treating.
Over on the nicer side, there is this one double-lot
multi-million dollar monstrosity that someone built. It looks like a Miami drug
dealer’s house in the middle of all these 1950’s and 60’s single story houses.
The person who built it got thrown in jail before they finished it.
That story has nothing to do with anything.
Anyway, our State Representative lives over on that nice
side of the street, right on one of the main roads that take you out of the
neighborhood. As soon as he was elected they installed these obnoxious speed
humps. 4 sets of them. I guess to slow down all the traffic that would be
driving by to snap pictures of a political celebrity? To make assassination
attempts more difficult? Because he used his newfound political power to get
them installed because he loves his kids? I’m not sure.
Regardless of why, I try to take these speed humps
personally on a daily basis because they make me slow down and they aren’t good
for my truck. I am often absolutely sure they were installed against me. I
actually go one street further down to leave now, which is probably what they
wanted anyway.
Not me specifically, but to reduce traffic in general. I
actually drive pretty slowly these days.
The thing is, these speed humps have absolutely nothing to
do with me. They aren’t personal in any way. I want them to be, because they
affect my day, but they aren’t.
If we pay attention very few things, if any at all, are
actually personal.
I get a lot of pushback on this idea.
It’s not even mine either, this has been explored since
people were exploring ideas that made other people uncomfortable. Blame them.
Honestly though, if we really think about it, the things
people say and do to us usually have nothing to do with us.
Someone says you are ugly. Does this mean you are ugly, or
they simply perceive you as such? Their perspective tells you nothing about
yourself objectively.
A person has a rough day and calls you a jerkoff. What does
this tell you about you? What does it actually have to do with you?
I get that it is hard not to take things personally. We are
trained and socialized to think that we share some responsibility for what goes
on in other people’s heads. That their mental activity actually has something
to do with us.
It is even harder not to take things personally with people
we have a significant investment in.
“I told you not to do that!”
“I raised you better than this!”
“I thought we had talked about this!”
I.
I.
I.
How are another person’s decisions personal to us? I get
that sometimes the consequences might blow our direction or they may affect our
lives, but they did not make these decisions because of us, they made them
because of themselves.
Do you take the weather personally?
The decisions of people you don’t know?
What is the line for what you take personally?
What would change in your life if you refused to take
responsibility for someone else’s thoughts and emotions?
There is freedom in realizing that very few things actually
have anything to do with us.
by Jamesscotthenson | Dec 10, 2016 | Blog
I’m not really a poetry guy.
I like Rumi and Rilke and Whitman and Rimbaud. I’ve been
told those are poets for beginners, so maybe I’m just a novice at liking
poetry.
I don’t see myself ever going pro.
I love to read, but I am not sure I have the emotional
depth or nuance needed for poetry.
All that said, I don’t think I’ve ever read anything that
hit as close to home as this poem does.
The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
There is something about getting out into the world and
realizing that there are things far beyond us that will continue no matter what
happens to us.
I like to meditate on the fact that there are things that
were here long before me and will be here long after me. I like that there are
stars out there burning and planets out there spinning that never have and
never will care about me at all. We are not as important as we like to think we
are. There is a stability to the world and the universe whether we see it or
not.
A lot of the doomsday wailing and gnashing of teeth we hear
so much of these days goes out the window when we consider things on a larger
scale.
These tragedies and catastrophes are only such when we think
we are the center of things or that we are needed for everything to work as it
“should”. Nature always finds a way to survive and overcome, and I am not sure
it cares if we are there to witness it or not.
This makes me happy.
by Jamesscotthenson | Dec 9, 2016 | Blog
“If your religion doesn’t grow corn, I don’t want to hear
about it.”
Sun Bear
Internet quotes are super sketchy, but I like this one. I
don’t care if it’s real or not, it’s legit.
Here is my favorite made up quote, mostly because I see it
shared all the time:
For our purposes today, religion includes all the ideologies
and philosophies people live their lives by, because at the end of the day none
of them are that different in their function. So, Christianity, Islam,
Buddhism, Communism, Liberalism, Conservatism, Nihilism, Spiritualism, and
everything else. Even Stoicism and Mindfulness have to be evaluated.
So anyway, growing corn.
This is my litmus test for anything anyone tries to share
with me.
Does it grow corn?
How is their philosophy/ideology/religion affecting their
life?
Do they make wise decisions?
Do they have joy and peace? (happiness and contentment are
fleeting and useless)
How do they treat other people? All living beings?
How do they treat themselves?
How much fear is needed to sustain their belief system?
How much judgment does their belief system bring into their
life?
Our belief systems are the lens that everything passes
through before it gets to us.
They often help us make decisions before we even know the facts,
and decide what we think about people before we actually know them.
If we aren’t careful with our belief systems, they can lead
us to judge someone or a situation from a single fact or aspect about them or
it. They can cause us to miss experiences out of fear or subject ourselves to
abuse at the hands of others without questioning it. They can cause us to
reject all authority or submit ourselves to incompetent authority.
They are everything, and they matter.
Do your beliefs grow corn?
Are you willing to throw them out if they don’t?
by Jamesscotthenson | Dec 8, 2016 | Blog
I have tried to honestly document my being a bit of a loser
in this blog.
Just a bit of one.
A lot of the stuff I look back on makes me laugh, in a
genuine way. Maybe clueless is a better description of me.
Cutting my jeans to fit over my boots, and then sewing them
back up with green plastic string later because the cuts looked bad. The green
plastic swinging around looked great though.
Buying a cheap Zippo knockoff to look cool like the other
kids, it spilling everywhere and almost catching my car on fire.
Dressing in solid white (white shoes, white socks, white
cargo pants, white t-shirt) when I started TTU because I thought it looked
nice. I wore it every single day. When my brother finally told me it did not,
in fact, look nice, I went to the mall to get new clothes. I chose a store more
appropriate for going to the club in the early 2000s and wore sparkly shirts.
They buttoned up though. That made them nice.
As many of you have seen, bleaching my hair and letting the
roots come out looked really cool to me in my mind. There are still pictures
floating around.
There is a certain power in being a loser though.
People don’t expect much of you, and their expectations
don’t really mean as much. The consequences of things not going your way are
less threatening and less worrisome because you’re already a loser. You learn
that so many of the things they tell you mean a lot, really don’t. You learn
that what people think of you really only tells you about them, not about
yourself.
I am somewhat grateful that I got a lot of the humiliation
out of the way early on too, and that I don’t really have a fear of failure
because of it.
I have no business having a fear of failure, I’ve spent a
majority of my life being one. It’s like home to me, why be afraid of it? I talk
to a lot of people who have a desperate fear of failing, and it paralyzes them.
I don’t have a lot of the worry others have because I know
that I know how to work and be broke and have people make fun of me and be
embarrassed by something I said or did.
A lot of the things people have made fun of me for have
actually given me a good reserve of things I can do, and I don’t have fear of
doing them. I meet a lot of people who don’t encounter failure until too late
in life, and they shatter. Being a loser creates a certain flexibility in you
that allows you to adapt to the things around you.
So it’s not all bad. I still find ways I’m out of step with
everything around me, and sometimes it’s embarrassing. One day it might be
useful though.
by Jamesscotthenson | Dec 7, 2016 | Blog
I suppose it’s good to recognize the places where we are
failing.
I’ve been compiling all of these into a word file so that I
have them after genocidal AI shuts down the internet as the first step in its
war against us.
The first post
I did for this blog was about the goals I had for myself in the coming months.
I am pretty happy with most of what I’ve done.
My diet is better. Still not all paleo or keto, but much
less sugar and much more actual food.
My website is up and running, and I have the podcast
scheduled for January.
I am consistently learning to write more effectively. I am
not even in the top 10 best writers on my Facebook feed, but I like my writing
more than when I started.
Talking less still needs a lot of work, but I do notice I
catch myself when I am talking many times, and simply stop. I’ll call this one
a draw.
Being gentle though.
Like I said back in August, I think I am compassionate and I
really do care about people.
I think being honest and direct (authentic!) with people is
important, and shows them respect. I don’t think anything ever changes for the
better if we run around hugging and telling each other everything will be okay.
I confront because I care.
A large majority of my clients seem to appreciate and even
expect this, but I often wonder if there was a better way I could have said
something or if I pushed a little too hard.
I know my language could use some tidying up.
I would like to work on being direct and clear with people,
but doing so more gently and articulately. I am fortunate to have strong
clients who are really there to work, so I get away with a lot, but I know
there are ways I could do better.
So, today be mindful of how you speak to people. We’ve touched on it
before, but ask yourself three questions before speaking:
Is this true?
Is this kind?
Is this necessary?
I like to throw in an additional one for myself:
Is it necessary that this be said by me?
Have a great day.
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