by Jamesscotthenson | Jan 26, 2017 | Blog
Brothers will fight
and kill each other,
sisters’ children
will defile kinship.
It is harsh in the world,
whoredom rife
—an axe age, a sword age
—shields are riven—
a wind age, a wolf age—
before the world goes headlong.
No man will have
mercy on another.
I like mythology in general, and one of my favorite stories
comes from the Norse Prose Edda, Ragnarok. It generally translates to “the fate
of the Gods” or “Twilight of the Gods”, something like that. Essentially, it’s
when almost all of the Gods die fighting and various cataclysmic horrors befall
everyone and everything. Pretty fun.
There a few worthwhile things to pull from Ragnarok in
regard to living a mindful, meaningful life, and you don’t have to literally
believe in it to do this.
We’ll look at them this week, starting with the
understanding of death we can find in Ragnarok.
My favorite aspect of Norse mythology and Raganrok is the
idea of these Gods living their lives knowing they are going to die. In fact,
each knows how they will die: Thor dies fighting the serpent Jormungandr, Loki
and Heimdallr kill each other and Odin is devoured by the wolf, Fenrir, just to
name a few.
Apart from not knowing how we will die, our lives are
really no different. In fact, I think the Gods of Asgard get a little bit
of an advantage in knowing how they are going to die and a general idea of
when. We only know that we will die at some point in the future. Maybe today,
maybe tomorrow, maybe years down the line. It can be nerve-wracking, especially
if we aren’t living our lives in a worthwhile manner.
The entire purpose of this blog and much of my work as a
counselor and meditation teacher is to help people come into this moment, right
now, because it is all we have. We live on this thin edge between the immediate
past and the immediate future, and the present is the only thing we have ever
actually experienced.
We have a clock on us, yet we act like we are going to live
forever.
Seneca explores this idea better than anyone in his essay
“On the Shortness of Life” (click here
for a great version with bolded passages). Essentially, he talks about how we
wouldn’t let someone take our money, even though there is always more money,
but we give away our time, even though there is never more time. Throughout
Norse mythology you see stories of God who know their time is coming, and they
make the most of life.
You have your own Ragnarok, a time you will die, and there
is nothing you can do about it.
You can eat healthy, wear your seatbelt, never smoke or
drink and always double check the stove, but you are still going to die
someday. Dress yourself in bubble wrap or live in a bacteria free dome and you
will still die. You may not know when or how, but it will happen.
What would your life look like if you let this understanding
permeate your choices?
What would be truly important, what would you allow to fall
to the wayside?
Who would you give more time, and who would get less of your
time?
How much time would you really want to spend in the past or
the future, when the present is all that ever really exists?
These are the questions I find make my life better, and
shift how I treat people and situations.
As always, thank you for reading.
by Jamesscotthenson | Jan 25, 2017 | Blog
Cool things from this week:
This video
about just how prescient George Orwell was, and about his work apart from the
things he is most well known for.
This song has
always been one of my favorites, and got played a lot this week.
“You are a little soul carrying about a corpse.” Epictetus.
Let’s keep things in perspective.
This book.
Habits are everything, we are little more than the sum total of them. The Power
of Habit looks at their formation and maintenance and how to change them from a
neurological/scientific perspective. Also a troubling look into just how
predictable we are as a species and how effectively advertisers and major
corporations exploit this.
We survived the inauguration. Satan did not escape from
hell, bringing death and pestilence in his wake, but a ray of light and a dove
did not descend from heaven and anoint Trump the new Son of God either, so
everyone was a little disappointed. Gravity still works, little has changed.
This photo
gallery of all the cool shit we are and do as humans. It’s easy to
hate people and focus on all the bad stuff we do, but we are really pretty
awesome. Read Sapiens
if you don’t believe me. We aren’t perfect, we aren’t even decent sometimes,
but for a species that can’t fly or even keep our own hair from falling out,
we’ve taken over the planet and gone into space. There are just too many cool
things in this world and we are one of them.
Putting my phone down. I’ve cut my engagement with my phone
by 78% this last week and it has greatly increased my happiness. I am hell bent
on Max not becoming a zombie, so him not seeing me with my phone all the time
is imperative. Get the Moment app if you have an iPhone or Quality Time for
others, you’ll want to throw up when you see how much time your phone takes
from your life.
I found out there is a John Wick 2 coming out soon.
Cool things coming up next week:
A new featured day on Dying Daily, “I Was Wrong Wednesday”,
where I will look at all the things I have been absolutely dead-wrong about in
my life, even though I just knew I was right at the time. Wednesdays may
become my dad’s favorite day of the week.
Recorded mediations, very rough edition. I’ve had people ask
me to record guided meditations for a while now and I finally got it done. I am
not a techy guy, so they are very rough, but please get in touch if you would
like to be one of the guinea pigs and give me feedback.
Have a great week, love your life and all the people in it.
by Jamesscotthenson | Jan 24, 2017 | Blog
Don’t demand that things happen as you wish, but wish that
they happen as they do happen, and you will go on well.
Epictetus
This is the key to everything.
Not changing situations, but changing your perspective on
them.
Not changing your environment, but changing your perspective
on it.
What would happen if you chose to believe that everything
that happens, happens for your benefit in some way?
You do not even have to believe that God or the
Universe or anything else is always making sure you best interests are met, but
you can choose to believe that no matter what, you can take whatever is in
front of you and make it yours.
“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati:
that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all
eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it… but love
it.”
Neitzsche
We can rarely control our circumstances, but we can always
control our thoughts about those circumstances. We can always choose our
perspective. This idea is nothing new, and it’s not mine, but it is one that
people have intuitively arrived at generation after generation, and it has
served them well.
If your marriage is falling apart, it can be a debilitating
slide into misery or it can be an opportunity for you to be a better spouse or
to develop your own interests and hobbies or to learn acceptance and peace.
If your kid is making terrible choices and screwing up their
life, it can be a soul-crushing descent into misery and self-pity, or it can be
an opportunity to show them a better way to live and how to be the person you
would like them to be. It can be an opportunity to take the things you could do
better and do them better. It’s an opportunity to join with them, to figure out
what is going wrong and help them make it better.
If you get fired it is an opportunity to start something
better. A bad boss is an opportunity to move on or to learn to be content in
difficult circumstances. Toxic people are opportunities to learn to draw
boundaries, illness is an opportunity to show yourself compassion or to work on
doing what you need to do even when you feel bad. Chronic pain is an
opportunity to learn nonjudgment.
These are chosen perspectives, and our chosen perspective is
all that matters.
This doesn’t mean you won’t have moments of sadness or
despair, life will throw things at you that your aren’t ready for.
But, the second you become conscious of your ability to
choose your perspective everything can change.
Every situation has the potential for growth and evolution
as a human being if we are willing to dig for it.
Finding the right perspective even gets easier and easier
over time, until it becomes almost automatic.
Rejecting what is beyond our control is suffering.
Embracing what is beyond our control turns struggle into
contentment and suffering into growth.
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last
of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of
circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
by Jamesscotthenson | Jan 23, 2017 | Blog
“There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease
worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.”
― Epictetus
Expectations lead us to suffering because we have no control
over whether or not they will be met a majority of the time. Worry leads us to
suffering because by its very nature we only worry about things we cannot
control. This is why too much news is one of the most toxic things you can do
to yourself.
Talking about thoughts has to lead us to talking about
worry, because worry seems to be the predominate form thoughts take for many
people.
There is always something to worry about.
What if my child is in a car wreck because they were texting
and driving?
What if my spouse leaves me?
What if I get fired?
What if my house burns down while I’m at work getting fired?
What if the guy they are swearing in today runs civilization
off a cliff?
What if the guy getting sworn in today only gets 4 years to
fix this mess the other guy made?
What if my dog runs away?
What if I have cancer?
What if all this worrying is giving me an ulcer that turns
into cancer?
Every single one of these things is beyond our control, no
matter what our brains tell us. Sure, there are things we can do to make them
less likely, but it doesn’t always matter.
One of the truest things about life is that we can do
everything right, and things will still go wrong.
We can tell our kids about the dangers of texting and
driving or drinking and driving or just driving at all, but they will still
make their own choices.
We can be the best spouse, employee and dog owner possible,
and yet they may all decide they don’t need us or that the grass is greener
somewhere else.
We can be responsible voters and volunteer to get the word
out and post lengthy opinion pieces on Facebook, and our candidate might still
lose. We can think we know our candidate and they do an about face on us once
they get into office. Our candidate might have to deal with something
overwhelming that is beyond their control that affects their agenda.
We can be smart about how we live and still get a
debilitating disease.
So, the question becomes one of why we are allowing our
mental energy to be directed to things we cannot control.
Why do we give these things space in our head?
Right now, take a second and think of something you are
worried about that is beyond your control. Take the next minute, and think
about it really hard. Think about every facet of this issue, think about how
much it sucks and how much you hate it. Think about all the things you wish you
could do about it, all the solutions you would apply if you were omnipotent or
just a little more important.
Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Did you do it?
What is different now?
Is the problem any better?
How do you feel now?
What did all the worry do for you?
My guess is that the problem is exactly as it was, while
you, if you actually did the exercise, feel worse now.
The problem is untouched, you are less happy,
The power of worry.
by Jamesscotthenson | Jan 22, 2017 | Blog
Expectations are resentments under construction.
Anne Lamont
Expectations are difficult things.
We think we have a right to place a burden on reality, and
that reality is required to behave accordingly. In regard to other people the
burden usually takes the form of certain behaviors, often ones that benefit us
or that we have grown to see as “right”. We expect our animals to use the
bathroom outside, our kids to make good choices and our cars to start when we
want them to.
Some expectations are more reasonable than others. This
makes them more likely to be met, but it doesn’t guarantee that it will happen.
If we clean our house we can expect it to stay that way for
a while, but an earthquake or a set of missing keys or living with a toddler
may prevent this from happening.
We can expect our internet to work, but power outages or
having the wrong provider or CIA conspiracies may cause it to be offline.
Just because an expectation is matter of life and death
doesn’t mean it is more likely to be met either. It is a very reasonable
expectation that our spouse make it home from work alive, but there are
thousands of people every day who don’t. It is a reasonable expectation that
our children not text while they are driving, but it seems that a majority of
people I see on the road are doing just that. Evidence backs the expectation
that we wake up after going to sleep each evening, but sometimes this doesn’t
happen.
Expectations are resentments waiting to happen.
Macklemore
Oftentimes, our suffering in a situation doesn’t come from
the situation itself, but from our expectations, or, as we’ve been talking
about, our thoughts about it. Losing a loved one is terrible, but it is also
part of the natural order of birth and death. To expect someone to live forever
is insane.
Other situations are less dire, and easier to see where our
expectations are off. The internet not connecting and cars not starting are
just hiccups in the natural world, not good or bad. It is our expectation or
assumption that they will “work” that makes them so. Had we expected them not
to work, we would not suffer. Order moves toward disorder, houses get messy. To
expect otherwise is going against nature.
The next time you are unhappy or angry or frustrated, stop
and ask yourself what expectations are not being met.
Are these expectations reasonable?
Are these expectations fair?
What requires that your expectations be met?
What would the situation be like without your expectations
of it?
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