Greg Proffit Writing

Category: Lifestyle

  • Listening To The Grateful Dead Will Teach You Everything You Need To Know — But You Must Also Dance

    Listening To The Grateful Dead Will Teach You Everything You Need To Know — But You Must Also Dance

    listening to the Grateful Dead
    Photo by Jay Blakesberg

    # 99 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: You can learn everything you need to know in life from listening to the Grateful Dead — but you must also dance.

    The Godfather is the i-Ching, I beg to differ

    My tip is a derivative of this Godfather scene in You’ve Got Mail, the 1998 rom-com starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. In the classic scene, Hanks answers Ryans questions with references to the Godfather, assuring her it is the “answer to every question,” the “i-Ching,” and “the sum of all wisdom.” It is a brilliant scene Hanks pulls off with aplomb, throwing in some impromptu Brando imitations for emphasis.

    I love the scene, but beg to differ. My go-to source is the Grateful Dead. Within their musical catalogue is everything you need to know. Non DeadHeads don’t understand (and don’t want to know) how their music infiltrates, penetrates, and saturates a Dead fan’s mindset to the last brain cell. 

    “For the truly Deadicated, theMusic Never Stops” 

    My someday book

    I plan to write a book in which every chapter will be a life-topic with related song titles — like this sampler:

    • Love — They Love Each Other, Sugar Magnolia, Not Fade Away, Comes A Time
    • God — Hell in A Bucket, Lay Down My Brother, Wharf Rat
    • Family — Me & My Uncle, Brother Esau, Mama Tried
    • Relationships — Row Jimmy, He’s Gone, Cold Rain & Snow
    • Politics — Throwing Stones, Standing On The Moon
    • Philosophy — Terrapin Station, St. Stephen, Eyes of the World, Box of Rain
    • Justice — Dupree’s Diamond Blues, Stagger Lee, Viola Lee Blues
    • Economics — Deal, Loser, Easy Wind, Big Boss Man
    • Psychology— China Cat Sunflower, Brown-Eyed Women, The Other One
    • Death— Death Don’t Have No Mercy, To Lay Me Down, Brokedown Palace, Black Peter

    This partial, non-exhaustive listing is exemplary of how songs in their extensive repertoire have application to every aspect of life. Like I said above, you can learn everything you need to know from listening to the Grateful Dead.

    Discovering all these connections made the music the soundtrack of my life; and one of my favorite lyrics serves up advice for all life’s uncertainties:

    “If you get confused, listen to the music play”

    ~Grateful Dead: Franklin’s Tower

    One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest

    As a young adult, I got lost for several years in the hippy lifestyle (including the drug use part). I travelled cross-country following the band from show to show. The community was like none I’ve experienced since. The traveling kaleidoscope of clowns was family — a home on the road. 

    On my journey in 1985, I met Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, himself instrumental in the hey-day of what is known as the 60’s movement, and equally pivotal in the Dead’s beginnings as the house band for the infamous San Francisco Acid Tests so marvelously chronicled in Tom Wolfe’s seminal volume, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. 

    I went to dozens and dozens of shows became more and more lost in the mysticism and mythology and mis-application of truths and nearly lost my physical and mental health in the melee. 

    A year later, I met someone even more famous than Kesey. At a show in March of 1986, I met Jesus. My life forever changed, though the music has remained the soundtrack of it. The accoutrements of drugs and touring, I left behind. They aren’t necessary. They really never were. The music itself is a healing gift. One I’m Grateful to God to still enjoy. 

    Dance as if your life depends on it

    So many Grateful Dead songs are about impending mortality. The idea is in their very name. A fellow writer on Medium wrote this beautiful essay Accepting Your Mortality is the Beginning of Living Well. I heartily concur. The Grateful Dead’s music helps remind me. And it reminds me that the only effective antidote against an encroaching death is to live, to sing, and by God, to dance.

    Is there anything more celebratory, more filled with life and joy, the kind of life-celebration powerful enough to mock death — than dancing in the face of it?

    I think often of the story in the Old Testamanet, when the Ark of The Covenant was restored to Israel and Jerusalem after spending months and years outside the city, a young King David danced in such ecstatic jubilation, he danced right out of his clothes. 

    I still dance that way — celebrating life — warding off death. Now, I spin and whirl and shake my bones in the privacy of my home. Almighty God is the recipient of my Gratitude as He watches the overflow of my pent-up life. Nothing expresses exultation for the joy of living the way dancing does. As I dance before my God, the band playing is “Jehovah’s favorite choir“, the Grateful Dead.

    Everything you need to know—Just remember to dance

    So yes, I’m quite convinced, you can learn everything you need to know in life from listening to the Grateful Dead… but you must also dance.

    “Sometimes the songs that we hear are just songs of our own.”

    ~ Grateful Dead: Eyes Of The World
  • You Can Sip Tequila — How to Savor and Enjoy It Without Training Wheels

    You Can Sip Tequila — How to Savor and Enjoy It Without Training Wheels

    you can sip tequila
    Photo by Garreth Paul on Unsplash

    # 26 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: Tequila can be sipped, savored, and enjoyed like a fine scotch or bourbon if you get an Añejo. Save the blancos and reposados for mixing.

    When I was coming of legal drinking age, tequila meant shots, usually with a salt and a wedge of lime. Bartenders refer to these accompaniments to a tequila shot as “training wheels” or simply, “wheels”. The drinker carefully wets the back of the web between thumb and forefinger with the lime, sprinkles on salt, which sticks to the lime juice moistened skin, sucks the salt off, quickly slams the tequila down in a squint-eyed, unpleasant gulp, trying hard not to taste it, then bites hard on the lime to ease the burn. What you taste is salt, fire, and lime.

    This ritual, called tequila cruda in Spanish, is what many picture when they think of “drinking” tequila. But you can sip, savor, and enjoy Tequila without all that fuss if you know a thing or two. Aficionados and connoisseurs enjoy fine tequilas this way, not only in Mexico, but the world over. High end tequilas are a cultured luxury equal to the best whiskeys.

    Curiously, an article titled, Millenials Are Show-Offs When Buying Spirits, from thespiritsbusiness.com, had this to say about about millennial brand loyalty and tequila:

    “At home, Tequila had the most loyal drinkers with nearly nine out of 10 respondents confessing they have a brand preference.”

    ~ thespiritsbusiness.com here and above

    Only the respondents know whether they sip these brands to which they are loyal, or slam the tequila back with wheels. 

    5 Classifications

    Tequila masters bottle three distinct grades in 5 classifications. Check this article for further reading.

    The least filtered, least aged are the Blancos and Jovens. Usually clear, these may have added colorants or sweeteners to give them a gold tone. These are good for mixing… only. True tequila comes from the heart of the blue agave plant. Only spirits distilled at a minimum of 51% blue agave qualify. Look for this when buying a bottle or ordering a drink.

    Reposados age longer, are usually golden, the color derived from the barrels used in aging, and make fine tequila in mixed drinks.

    Añejo (pronounced “On-Yay-Ho”), and Extra Añejos are the highest graded, longest aged tequilas. These spirits have distinct flavor profiles and complexity. Sip, savor, and enjoy these like a fine bourbon or scotch. They are complex, flavorful spirits to be imbibed neat or with a cube or two of ice. Like other well-known liquors, especially scotch, both altitude and soil composition affect the characteristics and flavor of the Añejos. Anyone who has tasted the difference between a crisp Highland and a smokey, peaty Islay scotch whiskey will appreciate the differences between fine, aged Añejos. No wheels required, nor desired. Enjoy!

  • The Magic of Ritual & Why You Should Buy A Burr Coffee Grinder—With a Childhood Story Added to Boot

    The Magic of Ritual & Why You Should Buy A Burr Coffee Grinder—With a Childhood Story Added to Boot

    buy a burr coffee grinder
    KitchenAid burr grinder like mine. (Image from KitchenAid website)

    # 15 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: Buy yourself a good burr coffee grinder when you can afford one. This is the one I’ve used for 20+ years. Use whole beans. You’re welcome.

    My first encounter with coffee

    I’ve been a coffee drinker since I was little—maybe 4 years old. I remember being at a family gathering at my maternal grandfather’s brother’s home in Podunk, SC. The name of the town is 96. Which has always seemed odd to me. It is nearby North, South Carolina, and even closer to Ware Shoals, which the locals pronounce as War Shoals, so I was scared to visit there as a youngster, not knowing when a battle might break out.

    Anyway, at this reunion of sorts, my grandfather’s brother, who I called Uncle James, and who was an old-school, handsaw carpenter with forearms like Popeye’s, was serving coffee. I don’t mean to give the impression he was carrying around a pot and refilling cups like a waitress at Waffle House. Just that coffee was available for self-serve all day. All. Day.

    At 4, I liked sugar, but my mom limited me to one piece of cake or pie. To my amazement, there was no limit on coffee. And there, right beside the coffeepot, sat a large cardboard tube of Dixie Crystals sugar with its own pour spout. All. Day. I probably had 8 or 10 cups of coffee-flavored syrup during the hours we spent listening to our relatives speak slow. (My mom was born in SC, near this gathering place, but she grew up and went to school in the Midwest where I was born, in Davenport, Iowa. So we spoke differently) By late afternoon, the combination of caffeine and sugar made me a nuisance, and my mom turned me outdoors to race and wrestle the dogs out back.

    But this is about burr coffee grinders isn’t it? It’s not about Southern Drawls.

    My love affair with coffee matures

    To the point. Coffee is ritualistic. It is good food. Sure. To my mind, it is the breakfast of champions. But there is something about making coffee, similar to making a cup of tea, that invites the coffee lover into the magic of ritual.

    When I was a younger man, I used to spoon Taster’s Choice or Folger’s into a cup, pour in boiling water, add milk (I stopped with the sugar), and think I was drinking coffee. That was fine on those mornings I when I’d gotten little to no sleep and the boss was in his pickup blowing the horn for me to come out and go to work. Speed was of the essence. A jar of pre-ground black dust in a jar was fast, if nothing else.

    Later, I discovered the finer things. First, I got a blade grinder and started buying whole beans. It was cheap and plastic, except for the thin metal blade that spun around to dice the beans. I learned somewhere, probably from my habitual reading and accumulation of unrelated facts, that coffee was better if you ground the beans just before brewing. I did this a while, but it wasn’t until I met a real coffee-man, a barista in a fancy coffee shop in the local mall, that I learned about burr grinders. His knowledge inspired me to buy a burr coffee grinder. I’m paying it forward.

    Burr beats blades

    Burr grinders use opposing, spinning pinwheels of ridges to crush and grind whole beans. Whereas a blade grinder will heat the beans, enough to change their composition—tainting their flavor, burr grinders don’t. Blade grinders also chop and dice uneven shapes. The grind is not consistent. Burr grinders are the slow and gentle approach to coffee bean perfection. There is a dial-in setting on burr grinders to match the grind to your coffee maker and taste preference. The grounds are uniform and perfectly alike.

    I have had the same Kitchen Aid grinder for at least 30 years. A workhorse, it has outlived 5 computers and as many televisions. It sits on my counter beside my Cuisinart coffee maker. My grinder is integral to my morning ritual.

    The Magic of Ritual

    Each morning, I empty the prior days grounds from the Cuisinart into the trash (I’m not currently composting, though I have in the past). I fill the tank with water, then I reach down my tub of beans and one Melita bamboo, unbleached #4 filter from the box I’ve cut open to expose the filters in the cupboard. Using a scoop I keep in with the beans, I shovel 7 scoops into the top of my grinder. 

    My kids recently pointed out that I use a peculiar cadence when scooping—it’s quick scoop, slow pour… quick scoop, slow pour… If they’ve been awake, they’ve heard me do this every morning for their entire lives. My grinder is older than all but 1 of my kids. So they know the peculiar rhythm of my coffee ritual.

    After the 7 scoops, I flip the toggle switch and hear the satisfying churn of the grinder. It is deep and resonant, not like the high-speed whine of a blade grinder. Those sound more like a smoothie maker or blender. My grinder is more like a throaty wood chipper. I watch the heap of grounds slowly disappear into the grinder’s maw. I assist with a tiny pastry brush, sweeping the reluctant beans into the hopper to disappear. The aroma is fresh, instant, and intoxicating.

    buy a burr coffee grinder
    My burr grinder at the center of my morning ritual. (Photo by Author)

    The ritual is peaceful, serene, almost hypnotic. It is half-mindful-half-autonomic magic. I could do it asleep, but I remain aware of every step of the process. I know every quick-slow scoop matters to the outcome, so I pay attention with a much deeper part of me than normal thinking. Like I said, it’s magic. And my burr grinder is at the center of it all.

    So, buy a burr coffee grinder. It is a fantastic investment in excellent coffee, healthy ritual, and the beauty of single-purpose, well-engineered tools. Which means it is a fantastic investment in yourself. Win-Win-Win.

  • What Do You Like & Why Do You Like It?

    What Do You Like & Why Do You Like It?

    What Do You Like, Why Do You Like It?
    Photo by George Pagan III on Unsplash

    # 85 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: Know why you like what you like. Learn to identify the feeling of liking something before you have the words to tell yourself you like it. That resonance, that connection, that is your home.

    This one has been staring at me for a couple of days. I know what I mean by the tip I offered months ago when I created my list and posted it, but this one captures so much.

    What you like defines you

    Why do you like that? Why don’t you like this? Can your likes change—become weaker (?), or stronger? If they can change, did the thing formerly liked change? Or did the former “Like-er” change? Important stuff.

    We all start in infancy as blank slates. Yes, I know, the argument of nature vs. nurture. Sure, sure. Still… I have no Grateful Dead genes that make me resonate to that frequency, nor any Russian genes I’m aware of that make the slow, deliberated, painstakingly detailed accounts of Dostoevsky so appealing and full of life and truth to me.

    So, as for the accumulation of culture—which is really a fancy word for group or social liking of a thing—I’m on the nurture side of that debate. We like what we like because we get exposed to it by someone who convinces us that people like us like stuff like this. There’s a kind of peer pressure to like most of the things we choose. 

    [That, and the size of the menu in proportion to the size of our appetites, and whether we find good entrements (palate cleansers) between samplings.] 

    There are also degrees of liking a thing. You may wear the tee-shirt, but not kill bats on stage and drink their blood. (You can look up the old Ozzy Osbourne legend somewhere… Google it.)

    So, Greg, you’re 300 words in and haven’t told me a damn thing about why I like some stuff and not other stuff.

    True, dear reader, we are halfway down a proper electronic page and I cannot tell you what to like. I can, however, urge this—Don’t let anyone else tell you either!

    We all got our first likes because someone pushed sweet mashed pears into our baby mouths before they spooned in disgusting pureed lima beans. Someone played Mozart, or Miles Davis or Metallica before Beethoven, Benny Goodman, or Bad Company.

    We first gain likes and tastes from the people around us who expose us to them and usually because they like them too. (Maybe not with babyhood pears, but you catch my drift).

    Here’s the rub

    At some point, earlier or later, I don’t know, you will want to pay attention to whether or not you’d like Led Zeppelin at all if that delectable girl in the yellow overalls didn’t look so good wearing that logo emblazoned across her beautiful… t-shirt (what did you think I was going to type?)

    My mom was a member of the Columbia Records club. This was back when dinosaurs roamed North America and people still had turntables on which to extract sound from round plastic platters. She got several albums a month, and she used to sit dreamily and play one album called Go To Heaven by a band of long-haired men, standing in a cloud on the cover, wearing cheesy looking, white, polyester-velveteen Lawrence Welk suits. 

    Alabama Getaway and Don’t Ease Me In off that record sounded like countrified crapola to my 13-year-old ears. Hearing it made me gag and flee the premises, long before I got to hear Lost Sailor and Saint of Circumstance. 

    I couldn’t stand it! Yuck! 13-year-olds ought not be judged too harshly for underdeveloped anything. Puberty makes for a cloudy filter.

    But I did like her Fleetwood Mac, and Rickie Lee Jones, and Little Feat albums. I even liked Jimmy Buffett, and I wanted to like Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young because they had the coolest album cover. (You know the antique looking, sepia-toned album where they’re posed with a dog, and Crosby cradles a shotgun, and Neil is draped with bandoleers and a pistol, and a guitar is lying on the ground — Deja Vu—and it looks like Matthew Brady took the photograph right after the battle of Antietam or something). 

    God, I loved the look of that album cover because I was crazy for all kinds of Civil War stuff. That picture was so cool! Who cared about hippies floating in white John Travolta suits in a cloud!?

    But the music, Jeez! My misanthropic mom would get drunk, put on Teach Your Children and slur, “Hunnneee, jusss lishen to theesh wordzz. Thish iss evertheeen I wanna  shay to you kidzz.”

    OMG!! Please No! — Likes can change

    I hated C,S,N,Y then. Association, ya know?

    Though, I LOVE their music now. Different association… ya know?

    The same reason I now love all things Grateful Dead. I had to grow into it. Then it grew into me.

    So, sometimes early exposure doesn’t take root. Germination takes longer. Circumstances change, and then, bam! You hear something, or see something, or taste it, and it’s like tasting and seeing and hearing home. Like gathering up fragments of self that complete you. I know, weird.

    But, they say there’s no accounting for taste. And truly there isn’t. If you will put on your Indiana Jones hat and do some personal archeology to dig up the reasons you’ve buried and kept your own personal treasures, you’ll learn a hella lot about yourself.

    Fact is, your likes and loves will tell you more about yourself than your dislikes.

    Shove over, I’ve invited God in

    Probably shouldn’t drag God into a story already crowded with Jimmy Buffett, my drunk mom, Rickie Lee Jones, and bandoleers, but I see [Him] as defined (bad word, I don’t think [He] can be defined adequately, else the whole God idea shrinks, but it’s the best word we’ve got) by what [He] likes, immeasurably more than by what [He] dislikes. Just like you and me are defined more by what we like and allow in than by what we hate and keep out.

    It’s the opposite of the way evangelical Christians think of God and themselves. These define themselves by what they oppose, what they’re against, what they resist and are afraid of. They never crack open Song of Songs, the most beautiful ode to physical, sexual love ever written (“kisses sweeter than wine”). It just sits there unread and unappreciated in their bibles. They conveniently forget Noah got drunk (after preserving humanity), David committed adultery—and murder (and was still called a man after God’s own heart), Jesus turned water into about a hundred gallons of wine at a wedding, and Peter denied Jesus (but Jesus restored him again over fish tacos on the beach).

    They forget God loved everybody, EVERYBODY so much, [He] paid the ultimate price to win us back. I don’t imagine [He’s] trying to keep anyone out on technicalities like who they love. [He’d] prefer to outfit us all in white suits, invite us to stand in a cloud, and Go To Heaven. Or maybe my God is just bigger and more full of Grace and Mercy than yours. I dunno. Or maybe I’m wrong. But I’d rather be wrong believing in God as revealed Love. Maybe you’re unflawed, and you’re loved for your perfection. That doesn’t apply to me. But because God loves flawed me as much as [He] does, my only response is to trust [Him.] That is what faith is all about, after all. The heart’s response to a God showing and proving [His] Love.

    If you’re curious about my brackets around masculine pronouns in reference to God, it’s because of my uncertainty of how to think of God and gender. I think of God as Father, the only real Father I’ve ever known. But God is called El Shaddai in the Hebrew scriptures, too, which means “the Breasted One”, or nurse. I love that image—of God being the source of life and growth and sustenance, of comfort, and warmth, and security, the way a nursing mother is to her infant child. You are welcome to your own images. I am convinced in my heart that my brackets aren’t offensive to [Him], or Him. End of disclaimer.

    Back to the topic at hand—Here’s an unlimited credit card

    Learn to identify what you like, on your own terms. Evaluate your preferences to see if you picked them up as the price of admission to some tribe or other, or thinking they’d be the key to some girl’s heart. 

    What do you like, the real you? Imagine you have an unlimited credit card. Your preferences and tastes are the only ones you need consult. You start with an empty iPod, empty media shelves, and an unfurnished home—no pictures on the walls, nothing in the pantry, fridge, wine cellar, or liquor cabinet. What’s parked in the driveway? What do you get? What do you like? Not—what does your wife, husband, lover like? No. What do you like?

    Go ahead, you have my full permission to fill your life with as many of those things you can. On the way, you’ll answer the question: Why do you like that? It may be this simple. You just do! It resonates. And it scratches the persistent itch, uncovers the empty spot, and fills up the void. Because it caresses your heart; and sings you, rocks you, swaddles you, envelops you, whispers you—home.

    It may as simple as the idea enshrined by Mick Jagger—

    “I know it’s only Rock n’ Roll, but I like it… yes I do!”

    ~ Rolling Stones: It’s Only Rock n’ Roll

    Mick likes Rock n’ Roll, and that like defines Mick. What defines you? What do you like?

    One day, I’ll invite you over to my own imaginary bare-floored, yoga-pillowed pad where we can have church listening for the whisper of God, blasting my collection of studio and live Dead performances on my megawatt stereo system, while we drink Napa Valley wine and Russel’’s Reserve and Grok out on all my Van Gogh and Monet and Mondrian paintings. Or maybe we’ll “ooh and aahhh” over my library of thousands of volumes of curated literature, housing everything from Brené Brown to Zane Grey.

    You’ll like it. Or at least I will.

    What did you ask? Oh, yeah, that Aerosmith you hear coming from the other room? Oh, that’s just my girlfriend rocking out on the sounds she likes. She calls mine alternately “Grandpa” or “Sleepy” music. If you prefer the Demon of Screamin’ to my sleepy tunes, you are welcome to plug in your headphones. To each his own. I can’t tell you what to like, I can only ask you to tell me, why do you like it?

  • Everyone’s Ways Are Right In Their Own Eyes

    Everyone’s Ways Are Right In Their Own Eyes

    Everyone's ways are right in their own eyes - even this beautiful alley in Charleston, SC
    This Charleston Alley seems like the right way…it sure is beautiful. (Photo by Beth Hughes, used by permission)

    # 62 on my, 99 Life Tips—A List is: Know this as well: Everyone’s ways are right in their own eyes, including yours.

    Most of the inspiration for this tip comes from the Old Testament, with maybe a little from the Grateful Dead.

    “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes: but the Lord pondereth the hearts.”

    ~Proverbs 21:2

    This proverb reinforces the fact we all do what we prefer. Preferences yield choices, which produce behaviors. These habitual acts become our way of life. But our preferences come from a deeper well–the sense that what we prefer is right. 

    Let’s say this rings true and you believe me. Now what? Are you supposed to excavate every action–performing psychological archaeology–to uncover the latent impulses that inform your every preference? Damn, that’s exhausting just to type. Imagine how much you’d have to live in your head to do that for every decision?

    Yet, this describes so much of what makes up the advice found in self-help books. And even at the professional, clinical level, there’s a lot of retrograde motion attempting to uncover the why’s of behavior. That’s the rub of typical therapy or psychoanalysis once you strip away the jargon.

    What if we could agree on some basic assumptions?

    1- Our nature as humans is to pursue self interest until we meet an obstacle.

    2- Our actions conform to this nature. 

    3- We do what we do and live how we live because it seems to be the right way to fulfill self interest.

    4- We continue on this course until or unless something larger than self interest replaces it as our primary motive. (which is tricky because this becomes our new self interest, though perhaps not for selfish reasons)

    See? Simple. Where should I send my bill? 

    The ancient proverb cited above tells the why’s. But if you don’t like that font of wisdom, might I interest you in some Grateful Dead?

    “Sometimes we live no particular way but our own

    And sometimes we visit your country and live in your home

    Sometimes we ride on your horses, sometimes we walk alone

    Sometimes the songs that we hear are just songs of our own.”

    ~Grateful Dead: Eyes Of The World
    (Songwriters: Jerome J. Garcia / Robert C. Hunter)

    We live the way we do for reasons that seem right. I’ve never woken up and thought, I’m going to live all wrong today. Have you? Even when we do something we know is wrong, we rationalize it to make it right. (Interesting word, rationalize, the practice of torturing reason to turn something wrong into something right so you can avoid feeling bad about it.)

    But enough digression. When you see me, it is safe to assume I’m doing what is right in my own eyes. I’m going to assume that about you. The trick is to assume it about yourself. 

  • Form Follows Function

    Form follows Function in Nature…almost as if it were designed that way, right?

    ”Whether it be the sweeping eagle in his flight, or the open apple-blossom, the toiling work-horse, the blithe swan, the branching oak, the winding stream at its base, the drifting clouds, over all the coursing sun, form ever follows function, and this is the law. Where function does not change, form does not change. The granite rocks, the ever-brooding hills, remain for ages; the lightning lives, comes into shape, and dies, in a twinkling.

    It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law.”

    The above quote is from Louis Sullivan, an American architect of the late 19th-century, best known for his protegé, Frank Lloyd Wright, and for developing the shape of the tall steel skyscraper in 19th-century Chicago.

    His quote above, taken from an article about the artistic design of tall office buildings, has been condensed to one perhaps more familiar to most readers which is:

    Form follows function

    How something looks, its form, should reflect what it does, its function. 

    I really like the 21st-century rise of ”Lifestyle Design”. Tim Ferris, author of books including The 4-Hour Workweek, The 4-Hour Body, and Tribe of Mentors, would be one of the leading proponents of this school.

    I find that most of the people I’ve met don’t think much about designing their lives. Their lives are designed to serve a function created by someone else.

    Perhaps this is inherent in what Thoreau meant when he said,

    The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation…

    Does the form of your life follow a function you chose? Or did someone else choose it for you?

    If you’re living a life that looks the way it does out of necessity to fulfill a function that is more useful for someone else than it is for you, stop and think what you can do to re-design it so that it functions first for you. 

    If there is anything essential and exceptional about American Freedom, it’s to be found in the answer to that question.