The sin of our comfort zones.
August 12, 2007 at 1:20 pm | Philosophy | 2 comments
With the vast majority of people, what they do is defined by what is easiest or most comfortable.
To expand, a comfort zone is the zone (unsurprisingly) in which people feel comfortable.
This zone may be emotional, skill based, locational or otherwise.
Outside this zone most people react by doing whatever they can to get back into their comfort zone.
For example, many people stay in the same job for years, decades on end simply because they are comfortable in this role and do not want to go through the ’stress’ of the unfamiliar new job process.
Equally people as they age become less and less likely to learn new skills. I recall reading a report which said that only around 20% of people over the age of 35 ever learnt any significant new skills, and though I loathe to cite statistics for ‘proof’ (especially unreferenced ones), it tallies with my personal experience.
We are defined by our comfort zones, they cause us to repeat the same daily patterns over and over again year in year out.
Infact, I would go so far as to say that comfort is akin to boredom.
If you are comfortable with a situation for too long, it will manifest itself as boredom.
Comfort is a lack of challenge, how can something that doesn’t challenge you be interesting?
Of course, you may perceive it as being interesting, but it’s actually the same as switching off your brain and coasting on auto pilot.
For an everyday example of this one need only look at television, which to me is virtually the same as sleeping, except with the caveat that you’re not refreshed afterwards!
It’s unreasonable to attempt to vary your day every day, but to at least limit it to cycles of a few months or a year perhaps is more achievable.
If you ask most people if doing the 9-5 every day and going out drinking once a week with a holiday once a year was ‘living’ they’d reply with a resounding no.
You can then ask them what would be living, and they’d reply in line with their interests and fantasies, be it hobnobbing with the rich and famous or going rock climbing and sky diving every day.
But doubtless if you ask the people that do these things day in day out whether they’d regard it as living the majority would reply no, and cite something completely different.
This could easily lead you into dismissing it as ‘The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence’, which is exactly what I’m saying, it is always greener, but the conclusion to draw from this is not the nihilistic ‘Be content with what you have’ that most people feel it is, but more the idea that we should keep hopping the fence to see what shade the grass is on the other side!
Because in life there are an unlimited number of fences, a person can never experiences all the facets of it in a single life time, but oh-so-few people even try it is criminal.
This leads me to my meaning of life, which is that it is to experience.
Experience what? Everything! Be a glutton of experiences, cram into your capacious maw all that life has to offer!
If you find yourself being presented with an opportunity and saying ‘no’ to it, you’re doing it wrong!
If you can find it within yourself to throw yourself into new situations constantly and land on your feet, and once these experiences are said and done draw upon them to deal with the next one, then you can truly say that you’ve lived your life and not coasted along the path of least resistance.
Failure Phobia
August 15, 2007 at 4:59 pm | Philosophy | No comment
Failing is good, or at the very least it’s not bad.
People are often scared of trying something new, learning a new skill or changing something in any way in case they or it fails.
Even if it does fail, it’s useful, every failure is an experience, every experience builds you as a person, gives you something to draw on and learn from.
Experience is the key to life, its very meaning if you haven’t experienced anything you can’t say you have lived, and if you’ve never failed then chances are you haven’t experienced very much.
“If you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough”.
Failure is a part of life, it’s not the failing that determines whether or not you’re competent or intelligent or made of stern stuff, it’s how you handle it.
If you handle failure by crawling into a corner and sobbing (literally or proverbially) then not only have you failed in the task you were trying to accomplish, you’ve failed to grow from the experience.
There are some people in life that seem naturally gifted at a subject or skill, that never lose a game of chess, or can’t be beaten at golf.
These people are the least experienced of all, it’s only through failing and our acceptence and above all appreciation of our failure that we can grow.
I feel I haven’t expressed myself well in this post, my point is to embrace all situations, be they positive or negative and view them as a good thing.
Choose your experiences, they define you.
August 20, 2007 at 5:59 am | Philosophy | No comment
Whoever you talk to, everyone can pretty much agree that people are vastly affected by their experiences, may they cause them to be cynical or naive, angry or calm, people are basically a product of their experiences.
The way our experiences affect us is linked to our subconcious, on a concious level we may be thinking one thing, but often as not we’re feeling another.
Our subconcious, our instinct, our ‘bones’, our heart, they all tell us the sum of our experiences even when we conciously choose to ignore them.
This is why when some-one trys to change themselves, to be mentally stronger, more confident, more outgoing, whatever; unless they make big moves in this direction the change is relatively short lived.
We are our subconciouses, we as humans are not truly concious beasts.
How much time have you spent honestly thinking at a concious level today?
Not a huge percentage I would wager, you leave most of daily life to your subconcious and occasionally it gives you a nudge and says ‘Hey, wake up, there’s a decision to be made!’.
So when we make a decision to change we conciously think “Right, I’m going to act this way now!” which is fine, when we’re thinking.
But as soon as we hand things over to auto-pilot we revert almost instantly to our old ways.
That is why when you make a decision to change, you have to go out and do something BIG, experience something that begeats the kind of personality you want to have.
Want to be mentally stronger? Throw yourself into a conflict!
Want to be more confident? Go out and pretend you’re confident until your subconcious believes it!
By choosing what experiences you throw yourself in to, you can choose who you are.
Is contentedness an illusion?
November 4, 2007 at 12:57 pm | Philosophy | No comment
A few months ago I was talking to a friend of mine about my plan to exit the country stage right.
He said to me that I would probably be missing the UK and rueing whatever country I was in after a few months.
I pondered on this for a little and realised that although it was almost certainly going to be true at times, that it was absolutely irrelevant!
Nothing, nowhere, no-one is ever perfect and whether you’re focusing on something’s faults or its virtues depends wholly upon your mood.
If you take my friend’s view, which appeared to all intents and purposes to be “Your life still won’t be perfect, so why bother?” then you will probably rationalise your current situation as “as good as it gets”.
It may even be partly true, you may have by a manner of metrics a fairly good life, but it’s all for nowt if your prevailing feeling is one of boredom or frustration.
As Winston Smith (1984) observed, if your mind screams out that a situation is unacceptable, that it is wrong, not the way things are supposed to be, then despite the insistance of those around you, you’re probably right.
I was proverbially twiddling my thumbs at my desk the other day, vainly trying to pass the hours while simultaneously attempting to look like I was doing work (even though I had none!) and thereby justifying the exorbitant salary they’re paying me to do fuck all, when I remarked upon this situation to a friend in a similar position.
He wasn’t a colleague, infact he was a Norweigan living in Ireland doing first line support for IBM, a good friend of mine and one of the ever dwindling number of people that I can talk to about things of this nature without being called a self-righteous posh git with more hot air than a collection of politicians on a publicity drive after a vindaloo.
He was experiencing the exact same thing, for each day was a mindless drive of mixture of interminable boredom and incessent frustration with the repition of our tasks.
This can’t be right? Can it?
We can’t be supposed to spend our lives waiting for our annual holiday, our weekend or even our evening (which are further filled with the endless maintenance required to live).
I’ve heard the phrase “If all you’re doing is the same old thing, then that’s exactly what’s going to happen to you”.
Which pointed at your average office worker will doubtless raise a chuckle or a murmur of agreement before they go back to ignoring it and finding excuses as to why they keep doing the same old thing in order to justify their unhappiness to themselves or to trick themselves into believing that they are infact “contented”.
There’s wisdom in the old adage that you can’t expect to be happy all the time.
Infact, I think the pursuit of happiness is a false pursuit.
Everyone wants to be happy, but we can’t all be happy all the time, it’s compeltely impossible.
Contentedness is merely coming to terms with repetition.
So what should we persue?
Interest!
We can’t be happy all the time, but we can be interested all the time.
Life is a fight against boredom for meaning.
What meaning we choose to strive for is our own choice (albeit influenced by those around us and a million other factors), but what we should not do is settle for safety.
Desensitised to life
March 20, 2008 at 8:57 pm | Philosophy | 1 comment
There are people who fall to pieces if their cornflakes go too soggy, and there are those that can have their entire life fall about their ears and still have a smile on their face and a positive outlook.
I like to think I’m in the second category, but how, and at what cost?
The way I deal with Anger/Sadness/Pain (ie; all mentally perceived negativity) is to ignore it, push it aside.
When I see people who don’t do this, who become incapacitated by their own emotions, I blithely tut to myself and think “Geez, just fuckin’ deal with it already”, probably because I assumed that’s what I was doing.
But… That’s not what I’m doing, that is in fact the exact opposite of what I’m doing; I’m avoiding the issue, dodging sideways and letting it pass me by.
Which I always thought was great! Absolutely fantastic! An enabler of my conscious, a way of vanquishing my inner demons and allowing me to get on and do things that I wanted to.
However, it’s have a profound effect on my ability to comprehend the significance of… anything…
The past week I’ve been trying desperately to summon forth some emotion about breaking up with Kim.
I’ve been trying to relive the last precious moments I spent with her, the smell of her hair, the tight clasp she had on my hand as I finally left.
But I can’t, all I can do is remember these anecdotal details and recount them as if I’d read them from a book.
Whenever I try and relive any point of significance that’s had any negative connotations from any point in my life I can’t. I simply bounce off the edge of the memory as if I’ve hit a rev limiter on an engine, and no matter how much I put my foot down I can’t break through.
Don’t mistake this for me wishing to dwell unnecessarily in the past; the very last thing I want to do is become obsessed by moments or people that I’ve lost.
But these events in my past deserve recognition, significance and above all the ability to remember them if I choose.
I originally developed my auto-repression technique (as I like to call it) in my late teens, when I was trying to become more socially adept.
The problem I always faced was worrying about making a fool of myself.
I couldn’t walk up to a girl without subconsciously and spontaneously thinking about all the ways in which I could fuck up the conversation, and how utterly dejected and self loathingly embarrassed I would feel afterwards.
When I even got as far as inevitably making a fool of myself I would obsess about it for weeks afterwards, I put myself through the humiliations so many times in my mind after they happened, I’d go to any length to avoid them in the future.
The only way I could think of to overcome this was by simply stopping being embarrassed about this, and this was achieved by not thinking about any embarrassments after they happened, which in turn was achieved by repressing the memories.
Unfortunately now, I’m repressing not only memories of bad events, but those of good events and even future hopes and expectations!
It’s been very nearly a year since I originally decided to quit my job and up sticks and move, but I have completely repressed any excitement or anticipation about it.
Less than a month remains until my departure date and I’m looking forward to it about as much as my evening meal, I’m completely indifferent to it.
This is stupid! I can’t go through life being indifferent to everything that happens to me.
Sure it might make me ‘stable’ or maybe even ‘capable’ but Christ it’s no way to live!
I need to taste the highs, feel the anticipation of plunging my feet in to the Mediterranean for the first time in over a decade, the fear of the unknown, the remorse of leaving behind everything I know and love.
Parteo-Parteo, where for art thou Parteo?
April 26, 2008 at 10:08 pm | Bike, Philosophy, Trip | No comment
No prizes for guessing that my part hasn’t turned up.
The tool did however and I’ve been able to get my clutch basket off (incidentally, 140nm is a LOT when the nut has nothing to stop it turning other than a tool on your knee) and inspect the bearings.
They look fine to me…
This made me somewhat upset (to the tune of a gin and tonic or three), however I was heartened by Midge’s post as that “release bearing” is one of the parts I have on order!
After chasing Motorworks and asking them the eta on my new bearings (middle of next week) I nipped down to my local bearings shop (who’d have thought there was a shop that just sold bearings?) and they measured the perpetrators with a micrometre and ordered some new ones in to arrive on Monday (seeing as it was Friday!).
Time since then has been spent reassembling my alternator, rewiring the cable of said alternator, new sealent-grommet as to get the grommet that’s made for my alternator cover would cost £350 (as it only comes with a new alternator from BMW!) and trying to figure out why I wake up angry each morning (very counterproductive, takes me until 2pm before I can do any work without throwing the first object that annoys me across the room!)
I also got a reply from BMW’s marketing department regarding my request for sponsorship, which was… declined.
Primarily based upon the content of this site I believe…
I don’t blame them in the slightest, with this blog I don’t exactly cut a very presentable front, certainly not the sort that I dare say BMW would be keen to back.
As stupid as it sounds I only applied to BMW in a fit of desperation as I don’t really want sponsors.
Sponsors feel far too much like a commitment, cutting into my feeling of “ultimate freedom” which is what this trip is all about.
A blog post I saw a few months back (alas I forget the link) summed it up for me in a way.
It went on about how nobody was alllowed to have an adventure anymore if it wasn’t for charity.
You’re not allowed to be a brash young man in another country after stories to tell the grandkids, you have to be politely tiptoeing through they various PC minefields, manitaining a good standing for your country and most importantly doing it for lukemia research.
I don’t want to do that, half the point of this trip is to find out who I am, and I’m not going to start that off by constraining myself with a load of guidelines set out by my sponsors.
It may seem like I’m being a bit of a dickhead to some people, but maybe that’s the point as well, this idea we as a society seem to have at the moment that we absolutely must go through our lives without offending anyone else in the slightest at all costs… It’s mad, and I don’t buy into it.
My view of chavs (or various other ne’er-do-wellers) remains unchanged and while these seemingly opposing views may seem unreconcileable to some people, I point to my recurring theme (in thought if not necessarily in this blog) of Balance.
It seems a popular misconception that you have to be for or against virtually every concept or principle in the universe, whereas I’m generally of the opinion that just about every concept and principle in the universe has its place in all its extremes, whether or not it affects you negatively.
.. But maybe this is a thought for another time…
Stopthink, Startthink
August 9, 2008 at 2:06 pm | Philosophy | No comment
Very Orwellian in style these two words sum up something I’ve been thinking about for a while.
Stopthink covers most things in life (slightly depressingly), TV, Movies, most Books, Drugs, even people!
Stopthink is anything that distracts you from thinking about what is pertinent to your current situation; may that be your next big decision in your career, your relationship, or simply aiding you in hiding from the realisation that you’ve made a mistake somewhere along the line that you need to face up to and correct.
Startthink is a rare and wonderful thing, it’s anything that brings you to inspiration, realisation or any epiphany or idea in general.
What acts as startthink varies from person to person and time to time, for me 3 books spring to mind, “1984″, “The Diceman” and “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles”, three people spring to mind, my father, Chris and Hedi, a wide panoply of places and no movies that I can think of.
Stopthink can be useful, don’t get me wrong, it’s not an entirely evil thing by any stretch of the imagination.
Distracting yourself from certain aspects of life, memories, people or events can be entirely beneficial when they become overwhelming.
But it’s far too easy to use stopthink as a crutch, as a magic carpet upon which you seem to escape your problems; its usefulness is always fleeting.
Reading people
September 23, 2008 at 5:26 pm | Personal, Philosophy | 2 comments
I am and always have been, notoriously bad at reading people, I don’t know what it is, if I believed in all this self-diagnosis bullshit people bandy around I’d say it was a mild case of aspergers, but as I don’t, I’ll say it’s probably simply one of those things I’m not good at.
Talking to my mate James (as opposed to my dad James, though he is in many ways my mate… I’m getting sidelined here..) he tells me how he’s constantly observing people, analysing what they say, how they say it.
Of course, I do this as well to a certain extent, but always at a very basic subconscious level (this ties right back into my big theme of conscious/subconscious but anyway), and although I can attempt to observe people like this at a conscious level, I’m very bad at it.
Maybe it’s a lack of practice, but the opportunity to practice is a rare beast to come by.
When engaged in conversation, especially more in depth ones that are likely to give revealing information I’m never thinking about the other person…
Their argument maybe, but usually I’m even more self absorbed than that, thinking about my argument, my responses…
In fact, that makes sense… I’m thinking about how the other person is likely to interpret my responses, and how best to express my opinions/feelings without being misunderstood.
Maybe I simple need to find a balance between reading myself as others see me and trying to read others.
Fine tuning ones mental priorities and thought processes is never an easy business, and my propensity to “unthought” (I love newspeak) makes it all the more difficult to change my patterns in the fleeting moments of clarity.
Take for example Melahat, the girl I spent quite a few days with over the past 10-11 days.
At various points during each day my subconscious would alert me to various actions on her part that could be interpreted as ‘interest’ or generally worthy of deeper analysis.
And, as is normal for me, I would take the sum total of these incidents and weigh them up against their negative counterparts, and try and decide what in fact she was thinking.
But really a logical approach generally fails miserably unless you have quite fantastic insight (which I clearly don’t), and I get the idea I should be ‘feeling’ things more.
A differing culture doesn’t help matters, and I was very interested to engage Melahat in a discussion about the Turkish dating scene.
The conversation stemmed from a discussion me and (I think, again James) were have about how most of the trepidation about ‘making a move’ comes not from fear of your own embarassment, but infact an unwillingness to put the other person in a socially awkward and embassing situation, and also the idea that subsequently the girl will then feel uncomfortable around the guy.
Our conclusion on the last effect was that this stemmed from a misapprehension on the part of most girls that after a guy has asked them out once, he will never cease hounding them, my mate agreed.
I mentioned this to Melahat.
“Oh no, not in Turkey!”
“No?”
“No, the guy will ask again and again, no matter how many times you say no!”
“Wow.. what a pain…”
We went on to discuss the dissimilarities in the subtle nature of the game.
“In Turkey, it’s quite common for a guy to ask a girl out on two or three dates, that are entirely platonic and then on the third or fourth date, say ‘I love you, what do you think about that?”
“Really? Wow, if I guy did that in England the girl would think he was completely mad!”
I got the impression that Turks were generally a lot more up front with their emotions, where further west we’re generally fear our own emotions and in some twisted subconscious way thinking that being in love with someone is a weakness, dependence is a weakness, to be strong you have to be independent, if you’re independent you don’t need anyone, if you don’t need anyone you can’t be in love.
I envy the Turks for that freedom and shall champion it whenever I can…
Still, I never did ‘make a move’ as I didn’t want to spoil the friendship Melahat and I had and from various comments I become convinced of the opinion that she felt the same way.
Excuses, will be the first thing running through your mind I should imagine, retroactively changing my feelings to protect myself, ‘Pfft, I didn’t want that anyway…’.
And that’s what I’ve told myself when I’ve felt that before, as I’ve had it drilled into me (by peers and media) that I should want every single attractive girl that I interact with, but… (even though I certainly wouldn’t be averse to such opportunities should they present themselves) I really don’t see the point most of the time, I’m simply happy to be around nice people.
I do fear that it’ll be something I regret in later life, but… Maybe by that point I’ll have matured enough to fully ignore the ‘notches on the bedpost’ mentality that seems to pervade male society at the moment….
Conflicting Opinions
September 23, 2008 at 6:04 pm | Philosophy | No comment
I’ve always thought of my trip as a ’search for significance’.
When I was working 9-5 for a living, I was always concerned by a lack of significance in daily life.
Repeating the same routines every single day worried me, it made the time pass too fast with nothing to remember one week from the next.
It affected everything, my choice of girlfriend, car, house; I’ve always been inspired by “The Diceman” and anybody who’s read the book will know that’s quite a scary thing to say.
But significance is such a fickle thing, such a subjective thing.
I’m 2/3rds the way through re-reading “Norwegian Wood” by Haruki Murakami and what’s struck me the second time around is how every single episode in the book seems to have the most incredible significance, even if the significance is that it’s… not significant.
How can I yearn for significance and at the same time idealise the notion of sitting somewhere just listening to music or sitting quietly in a café watching the world go? Are these moments significant?
Maybe it’s the dedication of doing just one thing, even if the one thing is less than significant.
Maybe significance is the wrong word.
This is the trouble with words, if you have a blinding flash of realisation, of clarity and can conceive a fantastic notion, you have to put it into words.
Woe betide you should you choose the wrong words, as later the words, rather than the moment of clarity, will define what you look for…
I chose the word significance, but it doesn’t encompass everything that I’m looking for.
I’m looking for a negative more than anything, I’m looking for a way to stop time rushing by, to fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run.
But channeling this idea into the concept of acheivement or worth or relative merit is a mistake I feel.
Perhaps as I’ve said before I simply need to think about what I’m doing more, to analyse what I’d like to do, rather than be content to sit in apathy.
Lack of action is fine, I have no problem with a lack of action.
What I have a problem with is a lack of honest decision.
If I decide to sit and listen, rapt, to music as the focus my attention, that seems a worthy goal to me.
If I simply sit and idly listen to music simply because it’s the easiest option, that I have an issue with.
Making the easiest decision… I mean this precisely.
As the easiest decision may be, and often is the hardest path.
For some-one whose parents are pressuring them to go to university, the easiest decision is to go to university, but the easiest path would simply to work in Tescos.
There is no inherent truth in the idea that the easiest decision is necessarily the worst, I am merely saying that I find apathy in decision making abhorrent…
Stars
January 20, 2009 at 3:19 am | Personal, Philosophy | 3 comments
I exhale gently and look at the stars.
I see so few now, before the sky was full of them.
That’s what I miss, the stars.
Kashmir, Baluchistan, anywhere where there wasn’t enough artificial light I could see them all.
People tell me the Milky Way in the norther hemisphere pales in comparison to what you can see in the southern hemisphere; it’s a shame I didn’t get to see it.
Identity is a fickle thing, drawn from what you do, but they say it’s who you are.
But, unless you keep doing the same thing you have to draw your identity from something within, otherwise your identity will keep changing.
A cliche, to travel to ‘find yourself’.
While you’re travelling you are a traveller, you talk to other travellers and often identify with them, but if you’re not someone who’s going to travel for the rest of their lives you’re just in a state of change.
Hopefully you come out of that state with some epiphany about who you are, what you want to do; from seeing so many different people gain some insight into yourself.
But I imagine that more often than not you’re simply left with more questions than you started with, completely failing to find the answers and fulfilment you were looking for.
Suddenly you’re thrown back into normality, it feels all the more unreal for it, what was once familiar seems alien, even exhilarating but at the same time frightening.
What do you do next?
The same choices you escaped from were waiting in the wings, they ask you the same questions for you to answer with even less conviction than before.
Of all the things I learned and experienced, the most important, the most like the epiphany I was seeking was that people are far more important than I believed.
I haven’t turned into a philanthropist all of a sudden.
Even though when I gave a small Pakistani girl a pen only for it to be snatched away by her father, ‘She has no need for a pen’, shocked me, it’s not my calling.
Most people you meet are inconsequential, but a few are very important.
They’re not even the people you might expect, many friends are like hobbies, a way to pass the time but ultimately meaningless.
Identifying the people that are important and dedicating them the consciousness they deserve is even more so.
Expecting your important people to present themselves to you is foolishness.
Though I am blessed enough to have met a few of my important people, most of them I couldn’t hang on to and a search for more is my next project.
What I find strange is how little effort is put into the people we meet, how much of a role serendipity plays in such an important part of our lives.
We choose what books with read with great care as to read a dull book would be a waste of time.
But we don’t take anywhere near as much care or put nearly as much thought into the people we spend our time with.
I’m sorry this post doesn’t make much sense if you’ve had no source of contact with me other than this blog, but if there’s one thing I’ve learnt in writing this blog it’s to write what I want to write about, rather than what’s most appropriate.
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