Month: May 2023

Mindfulness is not just about focusing on the task at hand but also being in the moment. We can remember to come back to the here and now by following our breath. We can also sit back and observe what is happening. Observing our thought and actions. I am surprised by how much my thoughts wander on a minute-by-minute basis. They say the days are long and the years are short. That’s because our brains are wired to create a predictable future. We, therefore, make predictions and choices that architects a foreseeable outcome. It isn’t a crystal ball but we can really agonize over it. Missing the moment in front of us to just get to the next.

“If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present.” – Lao Tzu

One of the most rebellious choices one can make in this day and age is joy. Joy is a revolutionary act. Too much of our culture gives the spotlight to those who are miserable and we can all sense the discontent in the air. It’s a shame that the world works overtime to squash out our humanity and tries to make us cogs in a machine.

If you are going to say yes to joy, it may also mean you have to say no to something else–feeling sorry for yourself.

You might feel like you’re done, but the truth is you’re not. Not yet anyway. Don’t let the culture change the fact that life while a struggle is also beautiful too.

We are all unreliable narrators of our own stories.

How we experience something differs from person to person.

What we choose to focus on is what we see.

What we are taught informs so much of what we learn going forward.

Citizen Kane is regarded as one of the best films of all time. Directed by the great Orson Welles, one of the things that this film is prized for is how many “rules” it broke during filming. As Welles put it, it was just, “sheer dumbness.” He didn’t know what he didn’t know and confessed that the basics can be learned in simply a day and a half.

While it is important to understand how to use the tools we do not need to be bound by them. How much training do you really to start making art? Or are you just finding another excuse to begin?

Isabel Wilkerson in her brilliant and essential book, Caste, explains that America has a history of social stratification based on race. That those who see the world, most of the time ignorantly, with this racist lens, often confess a sense of losing power and that the world is being morphed into something against them. What’s going on here?

It’s a “us versus them” under-siege mentality. Hence why free speech is such a hot topic right now or why “cancel culture” is a thing. Many are left with the feeling that they don’t have the capacity to speak, that no one is listening, and that they are told to be silent. The things they have always believed in (ideals, institutions, systems) are now “verboten” to the point that they are feeling culturally dismissed. This a difficult pill to swallow. As people age and think that they should have more power, not less. That they should see the world with more clarity, not less. That they should have more choices, not fewer. Which causes this sense of losing hegemony.

To many who fall into this cultural trap, they see the ground shrinking beneath their feet. They feel lost and as a result, look for someone or something to blame. Hence the targets of minorities such as LGBTQIA+, immigrants, and race. But it also spills into policy and how tax money is spent on social programs.

Ultimately, this all leads to a constant sense of disorientation. This change is experienced much differently across social and economic lines. But as a whole, the false promise that aligns these groups is to resolve this disorientation–to make sense of the world and to restore it to how things used to be.

“At its core is a nostalgic promise that you won’t have to feel like your own country has changed in a way you don’t recognize it and it doesn’t recognize you.” – Ezra Klein

Shout out to Ezra Klein on this one. Something that I have been seeing in our culture for a while but could not find a word for it.

“This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.” – George Bernard Shaw

I have found this quote so comforting. So much of what we do, we think doesn’t carry any weight. But when you rewrite the story as the human race, then everyone has a job to do.

Something so universally accepted at this point today. But can you imagine how Galileo Galilei must have felt when he had the proof and no one would listen? How frustrated he must have felt being thrown into house arrest for the rest of his life for challenging the Church?

It’s a story of caution. Just cause we don’t like what we hear doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

Your work is never complete. It is just another iteration until you are ready to be done.

It will certainly look different with more polishing from before. And since everyone sees the world differently, it may not even be seen as better with more time.

The good news, when you are ready to move on you can now go work on the next thing.

It is said that the board game, Go, has more moves and variations than there are atoms in the universe. Even if that is a bit of an exaggeration, the number of possible moves is wild. It makes chess look like checkers. Go is the oldest and most popular board game in human history.

It should be no surprise to discover that AI was built to see if it could beat humans. And in 2016, it succeeded beating Go Master, Lee Sedol, in four out of five matches. But the thing that surprised the world more than AI beating a human at Go was what happened on Move 37.

Move 37 has been described as the moment in this particular match where the opponent must decide whether they are going to play offense or defense. Instead, AlphaGo played a surprise move that no human would ever play. In fact, it would have been a 1 in 10,000 chance a human would pick this strategy. It shocked so many viewers that many wondered if it was a mistake or a bad move. Lee Sedol was taken aback that he had to leave the room and go take a walk. It was a never before seen type of move in the Go world.

We don’t feel comfortable with the idea that AI can be creative. That has been one of human’s greatest strengths. The difference is humans can only draw from their own experience while AI can draw from the collective.

The lesson is clear: AI doesn’t have a narrative. When built correctly, it will follow the data. It isn’t constrained to play the game as we have been taught. As a result, opens new possibilities that we can’t possibly see because of our biases and prejudices that get in the way. In other words, it doesn’t play the game as we see it.

Most of us believe that you gain the courage and then you go do something that scares you. But it is the other way around. Do the thing you are scared to do first and then the courage follows.

It feels counter-intuitive. But you are much more likely to create art, stand on a TED stage, or leave a toxic job if you can do the action first before waiting to get in the mood.