Light Up Your Life

One of the great experiences of my youth was going to the Buhl Planetarium in Pittsburgh.  Among many other things, I was fascinated by the bicycle in the main lobby they had rigged to generate electricity.  The faster you peddled the bike, the more wattage you could create and the more light bulbs you could light up.  We all competed to see who could light up the most lights for the longest time.  I’m sure I didn’t win, but I remember getting a reasonable enough number of lights glowing to give a decent account of myself!   

Many years later, I’ve settled into the notion that life is pretty much like riding a “rigged” bicycle and seeing how many lights we can light up for how long.  Most importantly: As soon as you stop peddling and pushing, the lights go out.  Darkness.  Nada!   

Light travels at a speed of 186,000 miles per second.  It’s here and it’s gone.  If the sun wasn’t pumping out megatons of energy every second, we’d be but flashes in the pan.   

But that’s how the universe works.  It takes a constant, uninterrupted stream of energy to keep the whole lot from collapsing into a black hole – or complete randomness.  Iron rusts, water runs downhill, dust balls accumulate, bread and cookies get stale, paint tarnishes, etc.  That’s the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  It’s the LAW!  

It applies to people and projects just as it does to the most basic elements and working systems: If we aren’t properly “rigged” and don’t keep pushing forward, the lights go out. 

The bad news is that everything eventually degenerates and decays.  The good news is that there is enough energy in the universe – if we effectively harness and apply it – to create magnificence above and beyond all that degenerates and decays!   

So it now seems the main point of an amply lived and fulfilled life is to see how much LIGHT we can generate – and keep generating for the duration.  

Imagine:

What would happen if all the FITNESS CLUBS and WELLNESS CENTERS in the universe rigged their exercise equipment with electricity-generating systems – and then the electric companies offered subsidized rates for whatever amount we generated? 

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We are all like bicycles with the potential to light up the world.  Except that we need to become equipped with the appropriate “rigging” – else we’re simply “spinning our wheels” in the dark.   

Let’s get “rigged” for great things, start turning on some lights, and put some serious wattage on the scoreboard!  Quartermaster 

“Do not go gentle into that good night, …
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Dylan Thomas

 

Battle Cry

What is your Battle Cry … your “Call to the Post” … your absolute imperative … your “Call to Action” … when important stuff needs to get done?  What gets you off the dime and into serviceable action?  What turns your “motor” on?  What “Battle Cry” gets your heart pounding, your circulation going, and your neurons firing? 

In the thick of things – or in the thin of way too little – we tend to lose focus, momentum and initiative and often have to get “jarred” into accountable action.  The mind moves the body, but the mind is often preoccupied and the body recalcitrant until imposed upon by the irresistible force of necessity.   

How about any or all of the following:  

“We can DO this!”

“Look out world, here I come!”

“Damn the torpedoes!”

“Give me liberty or give me death!”

“Let’s DOIT!”

“All hands on deck!”

“Code Blue!”

“Get crackin’!”

“Bust some Butt!”

“We’re burnin’ daylight!”

“Mayday!!” 

 

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“When Jacob learned there was grain in Egypt, he said to his sons, ‘Why do you just keep looking at each other?  I have heard that there is grain in Egypt.  Go down there [NOW!] and buy some for us, so that we may live and not die.’”  Genesis 42: 1-2 

* * * * * * * * *

I was just wondering …

What do basketball players say to each other when they huddle after a foul …

and what do football players say to each other in the huddle after a quarterback sack? 

* * * * * * * * *  

Perhaps there are times when you need to invoke the “Devil’s Alternative”:

Either clean the shower or go run 5 miles!

Your choice!!

You WIN either way!!! 

Bottom Line: Some things just need to be tackled and done so we can move on without tripping over ourselves, stressing out over all that’s undone, and always playing from behind the eight ball.  

Choose the “Battle Cry” that’s most appropriate for you and your situation.  And watch it turn at least part of your world to diamonds!! 

All else aside, just DOIT – even when you “don’t feel like it”! 

Quartermaster

 

Be A Warrior

“ ... he took to business as if it were war."
Cornelius Vanderbilt: Bare-Knuckled Capitalism

The Economist (London, UK) Apr 16, 2009

In the unperturbed moment, it’s easy to lose focus … to take your eyes off the goal … to let things slide … to become caught up in trivia and machinations ... to lose traction … to lose points … to lose a game.  Nothing focuses our attention like confronting an overt threat to our wellbeing!  Unfortunately, many are not sufficiently aware or close enough to the action to visualize the risk and never see it coming. 

Point to Ponder

If you don’t understand or accept a “War” metaphor for life,

you may not have been to the front lines or anywhere near the mainstream.

 

Alternative Views

If you understand “Capitalism” and the importance of being “competitive”, you may prefer a sports metaphor. 

 

If you subscribe to more nouveau corporate templates, you may prefer to think in terms of “teamwork”; but someone has to lead, and one of any account at all can’t forever be a “follower”. 

 

If you prefer the sports metaphor, consider what the end-game score might have to be if you are to win.  The difference between that score and where you are now is the number of points DOWN you are … never mind what the other team has on the board.  To get to the endpoint on your ledger, you only have whatever time there is left in the game to make up the difference; and you have only the skills and experience now to do what you can do NOW.  The only things standing between you and the goal are the opposition, your own limitations and the clock. 

 

Can you compete?  Are YOU a worthy competitor?  What is your “Edge”?

 

 “Life is a game, and if you aren’t in it to win, what the heck are you still doing here?”

Linus Torvalds

Finally, it helps to know what “league” you’re in.  One can’t forever be a “sandlot” player.  Civilization has tried to equip you to achieve your full potential.  One dares to ask: “What did I do with the awesome opportunities I’ve had to this point?”

But the WAR metaphor for life becomes more compelling as the stakes get higher, as we move beyond our cocooned beginnings into the mainstream, and as we strive or are pushed closer to the edge.  There IS an EDGE!

To be sure, the war metaphor has its dark side and encrypted limitations:

“War makes the world understandable, a black and white tableau of ‘them’ and ‘us’. It suspends thought, especially self-critical thought. All bow before the supreme effort. We are one. Most of us willingly accept war as long as we can fold it into a belief system that paints the ensuing suffering as necessary for a higher good, for human beings seek not only happiness but meaning. And, tragically, war [i.e., winning and/or sacrificing all for a perceived “greater good”] is sometimes the most powerful way in human society to achieve meaning.”

Chris Hedges

in

Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence

Karen Armstrong, Alfred Knopf, 2014

But let’s turn the kaleidoscope ever so deliberately upward until, first, we find something tied to a legitimate belief system with tractionable meaning – e.g., a mission … a passion … a Dream – and then declare war on whatever stands in the way of making it happen.  That includes injustice, prejudice, small-mindedness, parochialism, excuses, rationalizations and blind obeisance.  It also includes our own frailties, flusterings, blusterings and bullheadedness! 

Then, and only then, can we become a Top Dog warrior in the most positive and life-affirming sense.  The fight for our truest Destiny is one we can’t afford to lose.  Let’s DOIT!  Quartermaster  

[Precipitating reference: Take Command Lessons in Leadership by Jake Wood (former member of the elite Marine Scout Sniper Platoon) Crown Business, October 14, 2014]

Pre-Clinical Conditions

Many metabolic, physiologic and endocrine abnormalities are “silent”; i.e., they show no warning signs before (“pre-“) one’s life or wellbeing are tangibly threatened (“clinical”).   

Great numbers of such “pre-clinical” conditions can be identified in formative stages via simple tests, including heart rate, blood pressure, and a standard “blood panel”.  For this reason, physicians uniformly recommend regular check-ups, with the frequency and type of testing dependent on age and other risk factors.   

It’s unfortunate that we don’t have similar periodic testing for “pre-clinical” psychological, social, functional or productivity-associated abnormalities – the likes of which affect a much greater segment of society much more frequently.   

Some such “conditions” are not all that occult and don’t require any sophisticated technology to diagnose; viz., bad attitude, narcissism, bullying, prejudice, selfishness, insensitivity, and all the usual vices.    

Flying further under the radar are short-sightedness, unrealistic expectations, unfounded assumptions, and claims of unwarranted entitlements.   

But, buried to a point near oblivion, is our teleologic development – our overall “maturation” – which often falls far short of its potential in both substance and actualization.   

Standard practice is to consider these ancillary “pre-clinical conditions” as largely self-limiting.  Thus, it is expected that any deficiencies will be “made right” in due course by usual and customary personal development and editing processes … self-evaluation, supervisory intervention, social/marketplace pressure, overall enlightenment, experience, personal and professional development interventions, etc.  

Otherwise:

“You make your own bed, you sleep in it!”

Maternal Axiom

However, such “benign” interventions do not generally have a compelling urgency or standard of “completion”/”cure”, certification or accountability, and are often pursued only to a point of keeping trains from running completely off the tracks.   

So most “Pre-Clinical Conditions” persist with varying degrees of covert debilitation and are benignly tolerated, with the result that “normal” becomes a dumbed-down caricature of our true blueprint possibilities and a slip-shod “average” becomes the “New Normal”.   

While there is little hope of ever finding a “cure-all” for such a diverse assortment of such deeply imbedded “pre-clinical conditions”, we have to do as much as possible to minimize debilitating consequences.  Keeping our vision tied to higher purposes and greater goals, and continually capacitizing ourselves for sustainable engagement has the collateral effect of lifting us above mere mortal impingements – even in the face of severe “post-clinical” circumstances [viz., Stephen Hawking http://www.hawking.org.uk/ ].   

Let’s get our Visioning, Vectoring and Voyaging adjusted, accordingly!  Quartermaster