Michael LaRocca
© Copyright 2013
Contents
Chapter One – Who Can I Blame? Chapter Two – When Does Life Begin? Chapter Three – Learning Chapter Four – Programming Chapter Five – Why Is My Life So Boring? Chapter Six – Why Am I Here?
Chapter One Who Can I Blame?
You can blame anybody you want to, actually, but you’re probably lying. Are you shaped by nature or by nurture? It doesn’t matter, because you control neither of them. However, you can choose how to react to them. That’s how you get past fatalistic victim thinking and start living in earnest. Inertia may be (or seem) easier, but it’s never as satisfying. Whatever it is, own it. If you don’t own it, you can’t change it. Here’s something from The Chronicles of a Lost Soul, which I wrote over 30 years ago: All that we are is the result of what we have thought. Excuses such as religion, race, heredity and upbringing are exactly that – excuses. What we are comes from what we think. So we should learn how to think. The wise man will neither swallow everything blindly nor rebel for the mere sake of rebellion. He will strive to discriminate, to separate the wheat from the chaff, to decide for himself. MichaelEdits.com
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Obviously, there is a shortage of wise men. As a novelist, I’ve written more than one book around the subject of free will versus biochemical determinism. We want so much to believe in free will, but science finds more evidence every day that our feelings and our actions are just the result of our brain’s chemicals reacting to the physical environment. Damn convincing evidence, too. But if free will is naught but an illusion, damn if it ain’t a convincing one. I’m going to conclude that both are right. If light can be both a wave and a particle, we can be both free and predetermined. Act like you’re free, don’t use any sort of determinism as an excuse to keep making the same old mistakes, and go on about your business. In other words, quit blaming. Blaming yourself, your family, your biology, or your deity isn’t getting the job done. It isn’t changing anything. Whatever’s wrong with you is not your fault. However, it is your problem. It doesn’t matter how you got where you are now. Fix it. MichaelEdits.com
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A Chinese proverb states that it’s easier to light a candle than to curse the darkness. Even if you don’t always agree with “easier,” I guarantee you the candle’s more effective. And wow, I skipped a lot of emotions to string those fortune cookies together. I never said that it’s easy, but it is necessary.
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Chapter Two When Does Life Begin?
For a long time it seemed to me that life was about to begin – real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time to still be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.... So stop waiting; until you finish school, until you go back to school, until you lose ten pounds, until you gain ten pounds, until you have kids, until your kids leave the house, until you start work, until you retire, until you get married, until you get divorced, until Friday night, until Sunday morning, until you get a new car or home, until your car or home is paid off, until spring, until summer, until fall, until winter, until you are off welfare, until the first or fifteenth, until your song comes on, until you’ve had a drink, until you’ve sobered up, until you die, until you are born again to decide that there is no better time than right now to be MichaelEdits.com
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happy. Happiness is a journey, not a destination. Alfred D’Souza When you decide you need to do something, you want to do something, it’s time to do something, and then you don’t do it... In Stop Saying You’re Fine, Mel Robbins compares this to hitting the snooze button. You are going to do it, but not right this minute... I don’t think it’s always a crime to hit the snooze button. Just be aware that, if you do hit the snooze button, it means you’re not doing what you need to do to be where you want to be. Own that. Feelings are a guide. Listen to them. If you’re constantly hitting the snooze button, never starting on that new thing, maybe you don’t want to do that new thing. Or maybe you’re just lazy. Deciding what you want can be harder than obtaining it, and you are allowed to change your goals at any time. But if you don’t have any goals, you won’t achieve your goals. Logical, innit? MichaelEdits.com
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The key is to know when to listen to your feelings and when to overcome them and act anyway. The only way to get where you want to get is through action. To say otherwise is just clinging to a victim mentality that is not truthful. In order to change things, to improve things, to just figure out where you are and where you want to be and what the heck’s going on, you need feedback. You need information. Why would you want that information to be anything but accurate? Being authentic is easier than being any other way, and it’s also more satisfying. Lying to others is usually immoral, but lying to yourself is just plain stupid. If you don’t like where you are, get over your internal resistance and be somewhere else. Quit snoozing, quit coasting, quit letting your internal wimpiness hold you back. As Mr. Spock noted, there are always options. If you choose not to take them, I’m going to quote my Chronicles again. ...it takes no strength of will to resist temptation. It merely proves that the desire to resist is the strongest temptation. MichaelEdits.com
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Know what you really want, not what you think you want or you kinda sorta think it might be nice to have. Then take the action you need to take to get it. And by that, I’m not talking about new cars and houses and stuff. Let the “law of attraction” snake oil peddlers help you with that. I’m talking about changing who you are and how you live. That’s all that matters. It is never too late to become what you might have been. George Eliot
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Chapter Three Learning
Edmund Burke noted that reading without thinking is like eating without digesting. If you swallow a bunch of stupid stuff from mentors and peers, I don’t blame them. I blame you. But if fear of being brainwashed, or just plain stubbornness, means you don’t listen to peers and mentors, I’m gonna blame you for that too. Use your common sense. You do have it. All wisecracks aside, it’s called “common” for a reason. You can trust your gut. Examine it from time to time, since it ain’t perfect, but there are worse things to do than to trust it. One of the greatest things about being human is being able to learn from others. Those like you, those unlike you, those older than you, those younger than you, those who strike you as exceedingly stupid. What you read, what you hear, what you see, what you write. If you haven’t figured out the value of letting others screw up so you don’t have to, you have real problems. MichaelEdits.com
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Chapter Four Programming
The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company, a church, a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. Charles Swindoll
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Blaming current problems on childhood traumas drifts in and out of fashion, and the pendulum usually swings too far in one direction or the other. Unearthing every trauma you’ve ever suffered is a waste of time and energy, distracting you from the work that you need to be doing while providing the illusion of progress. However, unearthing the patterns and programming that have resulted from those traumas will give you the knowledge you need to change those patterns and that programming. Ineffective or inappropriate coping mechanisms and so forth. But dwelling on that stuff is not effective, efficient, useful, or fun. Program yourself to be positive. You are changed by all that you surround yourself with, so choose wisely. If you don’t program yourself, you’re letting others program you. Why? All experiences fire neurons. Repeated experiences cause groups of neurons to wire together more strongly. Over time, with repetition, especially when accompanied by emotional intensity, these neural MichaelEdits.com
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circuits develop a greater probability of firing, forming habitual responses to experiences. Any state of mind can become a trait of being with sufficient reinforcement. So, which state of mind will you program your mind to favor?
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Chapter Five Why Is My Life So Boring?
All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone. Blaise Pascal, Pensées What a terrible burden it is to have nothing to do! Nicolas Boileau-Despéraux If something in your life is causing you stress, and you cannot address the cause of that stress, it’s usually unpleasant enough to distract you from what you’d rather be doing. But at least it isn’t boring. Why do you do what you do? Are you enjoying yourself, or are you simply trying to fill the emptiness? Tolkien (and Chris Thile) reminded us that not all who wander are lost. But if you have no destination, and you’re not enjoying your wanderings, that may be why your life is so boring. I’m not saying everything you do has to be goaldriven. Being so compulsively driven is one way to get things done, and an effective one at that. For MichaelEdits.com
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some people, oh yeah, that’s the stuff. But others travel that path until they burn out and find themselves bored and empty again plus lethargic besides. Finding out which type of traveler you are is one of the joys of living your life rather than letting somebody else do it for you. But regardless of who you are, it helps to have goals. Vague and ongoing, small and easily reached, big and audacious and needing years or decades. Whatever suits you. But once you’ve got goals, chunk them down into a series of attainable steps. Make them measurable steps, because if you can’t measure it you can’t achieve it. Set a time frame. If circumstances later require you to change that time frame, we’re all too old to be surprised by that. But still, “someday” isn’t a time frame that will motivate you. Set a time frame that strikes you as realistic, and adjust as needed. Planning is a good thing. I’m guessing you’ve figured that out by failing to plan a few times.
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I’d have sworn that what I just wrote was common sense if I hadn’t seen so many life coaches stressing the importance of these simple statements. You’re on this river bank and you want to be on the other river bank. Would you rather take a big ol’ leap or jump from stepping stone to stepping stone? Those stones are the “chunks” of chunking things down, and your plan is how you ensure that the series of stones takes you to the other bank rather than to some other place. Prioritize. If everything is a rush job, then nothing is a rush job. I think we all know that, but just in case we don’t, we do now because I just wrote it. And doesn’t that make us all feel better? If something isn’t working immediately, stick with it. If it keeps failing, quit at the right time. Use failure as feedback. You won’t find your purpose if you don’t look for it. That’s what you want. Purpose and meaning. It’s what gets you past the boredom. Rest when you need it. Seek mindless non-driven pleasure when you need it. But if you’re just filling emptiness all the time because you have nothing to strive for, you will always be terminally bored and you will absolutely hate it. MichaelEdits.com
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Chapter Six Why Am I Here?
Two questions:
Have you found joy in this life? Have you given joy to others?
Have you learned that the second might be the best way to achieve the first? “Do no harm” isn’t just for the medical profession. Beyond that, all the various debates about morality and ethics are largely semantics. You know what’s right. Do it, or don’t do it, but don’t pretend you’re ignorant. Judging others is bad. It’s impossible to avoid, of course, for practical reasons if nothing else, but be aware that you’re doing it, and keep it to a minimum. Give more than you take. Serve as many as you can, as well as you can. Put others’ interests first because, in truth, that serves you as well because it makes you so gosh-darned happy.
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Mark Vonnegut said we’re here to get each other through this thing, whatever it is. And as his more famous father noted, that one’s a keeper. It is not selfish to care for yourself, if your life is one of service to others. If you’re an asset to others, then it only makes sense to care for yourself, so that you can be an effective asset. Being selfish isn’t always bad. If you do something you enjoy that doesn’t hurt anyone else, that’s selfish but not bad. If it hurts others, then it’s bad. If you help other people, for that really good feeling you get when you help other people, that’s selfish and it’s also good. This is the type of selfishness you can and should embrace. If you’ve never helped anybody, I feel sorry for you. Go try it now and you’ll see I’m right. You can have one of those epiphanies that the sentimental novelists and script writers get so much mileage out of. And then you’ll know why they get so much mileage out of that stuff. “Adding value” is a catch phrase that I actually have no problem with. But I think of it in the sense of adding value to the world. On a global scale we’re probably feeling a bit impotent. So add value to one person’s world, one animal’s world, even your own MichaelEdits.com
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world as a last resort. That adds value to the world, and won’t that make you feel good? Yes, it will. Have I told you anything you didn’t already know? Maybe not. Is it a lot easier to say all this stuff than it is to actually do it? Of course it is. Do it anyway. You know you’ll be glad you did. Have you found joy in this life? Have you given joy to others? It’s never too late to start. When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die. Eleanor Roosevelt
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