The temperature is surprisingly cooler…
The noise is much quieter…
When we put our phones down.
Because politics are a human invention. And so is debt.
Nature didn’t create these things, we did.
It seems that nature doesn’t really care about what we think.
At least not on their own.
People do.
Act accordingly.
Being incessantly inundated with images and messages over time can change our wants, desires, and dreams. The shift is evident as a millennial. You didn’t grow up wanting to be a sellout. To become a millionaire. And over time, when we glamorize this, it becomes the next generation’s desires. Not everyone, of course. But enough to see the impact of a world of constant marketing. Feeling sad? Here’s a pill and a Louis Vuitton purse to get you through. After all, you deserve it. What I’m trying to point out here is that when we are free from this kind of disruption and distraction, we can actually think freely with our own thoughts and explore who it is we really are. Between smartphones, constant internet access, WiFi, billboards, and advertisements, there is no quiet. And quiet is how we turn down the noise. The culture—collectively—could use some quiet time to figure out who we are and what it is we want to become.
They are very similar but with key differences.
Rules are shared. They are agreed on how we will play the game (in a relationship).
Boundaries guide our own behavior.
Expectations are how we wish others would treat us.
We often conflate these terms. The biggest problem is that we play by different rules than the person we are in conflict with, and then expect others to play by our rules to protect invisible boundaries that we haven’t announced to the world.
No matter how many times we are knocked down, we have to get up at least once more.
If we are knocked down seven times, we need to get up eight.
Competition is one way to organize. And it is encoded in the culture’s DNA. The bias of money, debt, corporations, government…It’s all survival of the fittest, as they like to say. And we see how far competition has taken us. Some would argue quite far and point to numbers like GDP as evidence. But these are false proxies for measuring a species’s well-being. Since the advent of capitalism, a million plant and animal species have gone extinct.
Perhaps we can ask ourselves then, is this the best way to organize ourselves? What would happen if competition became co-operation? What if we picked a different number to measure progress?
When we think we are due for a miracle, we will keep persisting for a sign. And so, we wait and wait. And you could be waiting for a very long time for something that may never come. I say damn the lotto winners. What can be done today is action. That doesn’t need permission to go do the thing that must be done.
Each bee has a role. They perform the role they are supposed to be when they are born. The lifespan of a bee is short. There is no time or luxury to hem or ha. What is clear is that we have way more choices than bees. And that kind of power is scary for most. While we can be envious that the path is defined for worker bees, we can also feel like worker bees when we don’t exercise the thing that separates us from the other animals—agency.
No one grows up thinking they will be a sellout. You grow up wanting to become an astronaut cause space exploration seems like a cool thing to do. And then one day, you are something completely different from what we imagined. And while circumstances will dictate what kind of endeavor you think you deserve, you are also worth more than you think.
Circumstances determine so much of our behavior.
And behavior determines so much of our circumstances.
It’s tempting to draw a line and decide how much responsibility one should take.
But a better approach is to recognize that they are coupled.
Better circumstances lead to better decisions, which lead to better circumstances, and so on—an upward spiral.
The same is true for a downward spiral.
Josh Allred's Blog 