Life'sTOUGH

There’s no getting around it: LIFE’S TOUGH … perhaps excepting for a lucky few who have had the good fortune to benefit from the grit and grind of others – but, even then, it’s often only temporary. 

The bliss and ecstasy of marrying someone, who, we fully expect, will selflessly look after our personal welfare for the entire remainder of our lives, generally ends after a honeymoon of two weeks to seven years and concludes in divorce approximately 40% of the time.   

And the mundane realities of everyday life not only don’t disappear, they can become more burdensome: 

• ·         Allowances disappear
• ·         “Discretionary” income disappears
• ·         Bills have to be paid
• ·         Jobs have to be acquired
• ·         Money has to be earned
• ·         Promotions have to be attained
• ·         Unconditional Love becomes increasingly “Conditional”
• ·         Respect has to be earned
• ·         Relationships have to be cultivated
• ·         Children, pets, careers and other dependents have to be tended
• ·         Indiscretions have to be accounted for
• ·         Misfortunes abound
• ·         Taxes have to be paid
• ·         Debts have to be covered
• ·         Equity has to grow
• ·         Savings and investments need to expand
• ·         NOTE: “Super Powers” exist only in figments and fantasies
• ·         Health and wellbeing become more challenging with time
• ·         Excuses and explanations become less tenable
• ·         Delayed Ramification becomes increasingly expensive
• ·         “Discretionary Time” disappears
• ·         Defiance of Authority carries increasing consequences
• ·         Defiance of REALITY carries increasing consequences
• ·         Opportunities disappear
• ·         “Eventualities” don’t disappear
• ·         Dreams untended become less and less attainable
• ·         Things you “couldn’t live without” become millstones

 And all that stuff you were going to do “some day” eventually has to be done – IF it still CAN be ... with added “interest” to be paid. 

And the list goes on …

People fail … Teams lose … Disappointments materialize … Regret is only a missed deadline away … Depression is hiding behind every misstep and lost opportunity … People get “passed over” for promotions … Companies downsize … Technology and skills need to be UPGRADED  … Inflation happens … Plumbing gives out … Roofs leak … Weeds grow … Politics gets ugly … Ants, termites and bed bugs invade … and the Competition has nothing better to do than be better than we are. 

 So.  Now.  Who’s up for going on a shopping spree, playing video games, doing some social media, binge-watching Star Wars, surfing the web, or going out for banana splits? 

Whatever happened to Carpe Diem!?!

“Let me repeat, things that go downward will run themselves [downward, of course].  Things that go upward have to be pushed.  Going upward is overcoming.  Notice that churches, schools, businesses – things that go upward – never run themselves.  They must be pushed all the time.  And so it is with our lives.  Real living is the conscious effort to go upward to larger life.  If you are making no effort in your life, if you are moving in the line of least resistance, depend upon it … you are going downward.  Look out for the bumps!”  Ralph Parlette in “The University of Hard Knocks” (Brownlow, Inc., p. 17)

So, to get the very BEST out of life, it’s either PUSH or BE PUSHED!  … which seems unconscionably strident, stringent, severe and completely beyond reasonability. 

And so it is for the uber-unsung … the underachievers … the lost … the foundering … the ne’er-do-wells … the self-victimized …

But there’s an interesting revelation to be discovered here:  All of the above is simply a GIVEN.  It’s not nefariously superimposed on an otherwise completely fabricated idyllic existence.  It’s just the way things ARE! 

All we have to do is accept the way things are, run with them – not against them, and we’re suddenly in the game for BETTER rather than for WORSE! 

It’s all in the expectations and strategic choices.  If we expect life to be a bowl of cherries and find out it’s really a bowl of dirt, we can either eat dirt or plant cherry seeds.  [http://lifemasterymusings.blogspot.com/2016/02/bowl-of-dirt-parable.html]

Don’t be surprised if you don’t bat 0.400.  Keep swinging!

ad impossibile nemo tenetur

[“nobody is held to the impossible”] 

We simply need to stop making it even MORE impossible with unfounded assumptions and unrealistic expectations, defiance of authority, defiance of reality and all the rest!  Run with what life gives you, keep swinging and planting cherry seeds, and you will be amazed what you can do and become!  Truth is, you’re just as TOUGH as life.  Let’s hike up our shorts, put on our “By God Armorall Vests”, eat a frog or two, and see if we can hit one out of the park before the day’s over!  Quartermaster

The GAP

One of the hardest things to decipher in life is what it’s going to take to get from where we are NOW to where we want/deserve/need to go and be – eventually … i.e., how to fill that GAP.  

It’s a HUGE GAP of many proportions, and the “End Game” seems so indeterminately far away. 

Besides the problem of NOW, we have the problem of everything that went BEFORE now, and then the problem of a fictitiously idealized future – wherein everything we want / need / neglect / postpone / defer suddenly gets done or fortuitously becomes either unimportant / irrelevant or unnecessary. 

Then there’s the problem of the foreboding REALITY CHECK:  If we somehow presciently suspected how much we would actually have to hustle and how much we would have to give up to get what we want – or think we “Deserve” – it would seem overwhelming. 

Let’s start with NOW.  The problem with NOW is this:

NOW … just happens to lie completely unscripted between everything else. 

It lies between rising and retiring ... 

            … Between meals … 

            … Between phone calls ... 

            … Between crises ... 

            … Between cups of coffee ... 

            … Between … well, almost everything. 

And more often than we would care to admit or have brought to our attention, we treat it as a “floating” period … something just to be filled by “BEING” before the next “happening” or other intervention on our radar.  Anything not pressing or distressing can wait an indeterminate time – at least for NOW – until it becomes otherwise. 

We just happen to be otherwisely “BUSY” – NOW!  (In truth, some of our “busyness” involves scheming about ways to avoid the imposition of purposeful engagement!)

NOW is no big deal.  We’ve been here before … just us, and here and NOW … and survived.  There’s no sense of urgency, no continuity of momentum, and very little “regenerative” or re-energizing activity.  THAT’s the problem with NOW!

The problem with everything that went BEFORE now is that many of us came from “squishy soft” beginnings – from the protective “womb” of First-World civilization with doting parents, generous “allowances”, self-esteem-building engagements and trophies, television, video games, entertainment of all sorts, heavily subsidized support systems, caring parents, teachers and coaches, and a hard-to-resist expectation that all of these amenities would continue indefinitely into the future.  (Gen X / Y / Z ?)

Unfortunately, Delayed Ramification Reality brings with it a variety of sobering “lessons” that just keep on coming … like you can’t get more out of the system than you invest ... and don’t mess with Gravity!

Which brings us to the problem with the FUTURE:  The future seems so inextricably tied to the past and the present, as though we simply pass unobtrusively from one through one to the other and keep on going … in whatever way Fate would have it.  [What GAP?]  Zig Ziglar was fond of saying: “If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep on getting what you’ve always got.”  Unfortunately, “it ain’t necessarily so”!  What got us through kindergarten (with all due respect to Robert Fulghum) really won’t carry us through high school, college, job searches, promotions, divorce, bankruptcy, and a whole lot more.  Kindergarten was heavily subsidized and filled with unconditional love.  The rest of life definitely is NOT! 

Technically, time does run everything together chronologically … the past, the present and the future … but not necessarily in any teleological progression.  The “natural order” of things only progresses with a whole lot of unrecoverable energy invested. (Check out ENTROPY and Thermodynamics: The Second Law)  Where we are NOW is not where we are going to WANT or NEED to be in that glorious place called the future (check out Maslow’s Pyramid), and time, alone, is not going to make us “all that we can be”. 

“Time is only God’s way of keeping everything from happening at once!”

Attribution Unknown

So what’s the “Take Home” message here?  What can we do to close the GAP?  First of all, we need to understand and acknowledge that the GAP exists.

Second, keep building infrastructure, putting bricks in your own “Yellow Brick Road”.  Increase your education at every opportunity.

Use “unscheduled time” as though your life depended on it – 

it DOES!.

Third, and finally (but maybe even before First!), find and relentlessly pursue your Passion and Purpose in life.  Passion and Purpose will not only fill any GAP, they will serve a “Slingshot Accelerators” to TOP DOG vistas.  Surprise yourself and amaze your family and friends.  The sheer wonder of YOU is waiting in the wings to FINALLY be realized!  Quartermaster  

Scripting

While we may profusely object to any analogy linking human behavior to robotics, our daily activities do draw heavily from a background “Script” running in our heads … like “Tapes” in continuous “Play” mode. 

In fact, we operate at a base level very similar to a computer, liberally using “If …, then …” statement processing against whatever background reference program we have on board. 

The challenge is to get the background reference scripting right so that the “If …, then … “ processing doesn’t track us to places we don’t “belong” or don’t want to end up!  Compare the following scripts:

“If I go to the mall with my friends …

            … then I will become better connected to my friends …

                        … then my friends will like me more …

                                    … then my friends will ‘have my back’ when I get into trouble.”
            [… as though “getting into trouble” were de rigueur for “happening coolness”!]

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *Alternatively * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

“If I go to the mall with my friends …

            … then I will miss doing my homework …

                        … then I will get grades less than I am capable of getting …

                                    … then I will risk losing out on scholarships for college.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *or … Alternatively * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

“If I do my homework …

            … then I will get better grades …

                        … then my friends who are worth having (who also do their homework) will respect me more …

                                    … then, together, we will become eligible for more scholarships and better jobs.”

The good news is that we come with some species-preservation hard-scripting already on board that we really don’t need to think about.  We get hungry, we look for something to eat.  We get cold, we seek warmth.  We get alarmed or threatened, we go into “Fight or Flight” mode. Etc.  The bad news is that we’re also “hard-scripted” for all the VICES! 

As life has evolved, our options for “Becoming all that we can be” have tremendously expanded, but we have become increasingly dependent on continuously advancing the scripting – both editing and adding layers of “soft-scripting” – that will get us there.   

Points to Ponder

Habits arise from background scripts. 

Attitudes are directly derived from background scripts. 

Our “inclinations” and directionality (i.e., “Vectoring”)

are closely integrated with our background scripts.

“Self Talk” is a means of overtly engaging our scripting to keep momentum going when things get tough. 

Meditation (rather than medication!) can be extremely useful in getting our soft-scripting aligned with priorities, goals and Dreams.  Mindful meditation (an excellent device for unhinged script editing) has, in fact, been implicated as an effective accessory in advanced brain remodeling: 

“According to MRI scans, the hippocampus – the part of the brain in charge of learning and memory – thickens after only a couple of months of mindful meditation.  Brain-cell density also decreases in the amygdala (responsible for fear, anxiety, and stress).” [Reader’s Digest 05-2016, p. 62]

Quakers used the term “Centering Down”, which they appeared to apply to considerable advantage. 

Long walks are also an excellent means for script development and editing.

Mozart picked up his early scripting from his family’s immersion in music.  His personal narrative began as early as age 3, and his first original compositions were emerging by age 5.   

Where are you getting YOUR scripting?

• ·         Family/Tribe
• ·         School
• ·         Job/Career/Professional Association
• ·         The library
• ·         People Magazine
• ·         The Internet / Social Media
• ·         Talk shows/Sit-Coms/Country Music
• ·         The Daily Show/CNN/Today Show …
• ·         Political Party
• ·         Religious Organizations/Associations
• ·         Sports
• ·         Brute force experience

At any one time, we may have more than one script lurking in the background.  Different circumstances may call out different scripts.  We need to practice and perfect the art of LICENSING the particular scripts that will get us the best outcomes for those circumstances. 

Our DEFAULT SCRIPTING is extremely important.  In facing a block of “unscheduled time”, for example, we might “default” to a script of watching television or playing video games, but we might better “license” ourselves to dig out the script for meditation, exercise or planting seeds for the next big project.

LISTS are extremely important accessories in life-scripting, and can be particularly helpful in capitalizing on the unscheduled moment.    

At some point, we do well to ask: “Whose script am I following?”  And “Does this script make sense for ME and for where I’m going?”  And the “If …, then … “ components of script reference background need to be consistent with fundamental goals, values and principles.  We can hard-script certain maintenance activities via “rituals” and routines to gain efficiency and preserve sanity.  But let’s get the higher-order scripting right … or ELSE … the narrative will end ajumble! 

Finally, Scripting doesn’t need to be complicated.  Simply defining and “owning” (i.e., “Being True” to) who you are and want to be sets the stage for everything you do and how you do it.  Consider the fact that Abraham Lincoln did not become “presidential” after he was elected President; he had developed a “Presidential” script early in life and stayed true to that script throughout.  Quartermaster