Greg Proffit Writing

Tag: life journey

The Wise Use The Best Means—Even If It’s A Long, Strange Trip Getting There

Photo by David Iskander on Unsplash

Picking right up where we left off in the preceding companion piece in which you drank coffee and chose the ultimate end for your life, we proceed to the second of wisdom’s applications. Wisdom chooses the best end, then uses the best means to achieve it. So, the wise use the best means.

I didn’t learn about the application of means and ends to my life until after I’d already confused them royally. At 17, I entered college as a freshman. I chose the college I attended because I loved the basketball team. Seriously. What was not to love? Michael Jordan had just helped the team win a national championship. Is there any better criterion for choosing a university?

So, at 17 I arrived on campus with a cooler, a stereo with huge speakers, a bong, and some albums. My pre-med roommate said he’d never seen a freshman so outfitted. I probably took his meaning the wrong way… it made me proud.

I had not just arrived on campus, by God, I had arrived in LIFE! And I was at the summit! King of my Universe! And let me tell you, as king, I had a helluva lot of fun. All my gear was put to incessant use.

2 Years Later

It took two years to realize I had selected the wrong end.

As much as I loved cheering MJ’s exploits as a man among boys at Carmichael Auditorium (this was pre-Dean E. Smith Center, mind you), the lifestyle was unsustainable. The classes were dull. My other roommate spent two hours a night on a single accounting problem. I knew that wasn’t for me. I had no conception of why I was there once basketball season ended. The football team was mediocre even then.

The wise use the best means, and I was as far from wise as I was from equalling Jordan’s skills as a basketball player. I didn’t know what means even were.

A Long, Strange Trip

So I left college with questions about life college couldn’t answer. I went on the road to follow around the Grateful Dead instead. Hey now, don’t laugh! There are worse means to use exploring the meaning of life and consciousness than Dead shows.

Anyway, after a long, strange trip, I now know what ends and means are all about. I know that college is a means to an end, not the end. And I know a job is a means to an end, not the end. Likewise, money, most learning, etc.

Once you’ve chosen wisely and selected your life mission, your ultimate end, you’ll need to determine what it will take to achieve it. What path will bring you there? What metaphorical mode of transportation?

Remember, it is not enough to casually try out the best means. You must use them diligently. Along with diligence is patience, teachability, and flexibility. The best ends take time. It takes a lot of time to figure out what value is. Then more time to know what is valuable enough to make it your life’s pursuit. Still more to adopt the best means and stick with the program.

But if it is truly valuable enough, a wise choice, and therefore worthy of the effort, don’t make the effort by all means—make it by the best means. That’s what the wise do.

July 9, 2021
Gain Mastery—For All My Philosopher Friends, Both of You

Photo by Motoki Tonn on Unsplash

# 71 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: Attempt to gain mastery at something, whether it be a topic or a skill.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers, asserts that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to achieve world class mastery in a field. A new study debunks that idea, but it doesn’t negate the importance of striving for mastery. Whether it’s 10K hours or half that, mastering a subject, topic, area of interest, or skill, is valuable as both a means and as an end. So, attempt to gain mastery at something.

My journey hasn’t been so focused. I’ve adopted the shotgun approach to both interests and career paths. I rationalize it by claiming to be cut out of philosopher cloth. The truth is probably closer to an ADHD diagnosis. Regardless, I am heeding my own advice; I am going to master writing as both craft and career, and guitar as both hobby and personal therapy method.

I can summarize almost all counsel for burgeoning writers in the phrase, “write what you know.” That’s fine. I mean, who would want to read non-sense from someone who doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about? But a problem with this is that the other universal piece of writing advice which usually couples with the first in short order is, “be the first voice people think of in your niche.”

A niche, you say?

It’s that second part that is worrisome. Being a philosopher is fine, but it’s niche-averse. Having wide-ranging interests and even having some familiarity and expertise in a variety of disciplines is fun, exciting, and wards off boredom and monotony, but it’s not the recipe for mastering a niche.

The downside of niche-less-ness is amplified when you feel compelled to add your voice to a wide variety of topics. Where are my talking points, anyway? There’s a tendency to live off-script, which is sometimes more fun for you than the people around you.

So, the attempt to gain mastery at something specific is worth the effort. It serves as a focal point, is measurable, gains are scalable, and can become exponential. What is difficult, requiring intense concentration and concerted energy in the beginning, can become second nature, autonomic, and fluid as mastery increases.

It’s the first steps of the mastery journey that are all uphill. But those first steps are worth lacing up the hiking boots in anticipation of the gains along the path and the rewards at journey’s end.

Besides, someday someone may come looking to you for Japanese steel only you can produce, regardless of your sushi-chef disguise. You wouldn’t want to let them down.

July 3, 2021
Do Not Take Yourself Too Seriously—No One Else Does

Photo by Kristel Hayes on Unsplash

# 67 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: Do not take yourself too seriously. You aren’t the same you as you were at five, or perhaps at twenty-five. You are fluid and dynamic. Today’s “you” may vanish tomorrow, just as a stormy, wind-tossed ocean may tomorrow be as smooth as glass.

Learn to laugh at yourself

The ability to laugh at oneself is a life skill to cultivate. It’s tied to the realization, often hard won, that you are fallible and sometimes weak but still resilient and worthy of love. You are a work in progress. The edits aren’t all in. So don’t take this present draft, this iteration, too seriously.

The capacity for change is one of the enduring and ennobling traits of this life. From birth, we change and morph and develop and grow. Our beliefs vacillate, our energies fluctuate, faced with defects we compensate, and all of this admixture forms a distillate; the current self occupying today.

So, for the semblance of stability, if we’re both lucky and wise, we discover some values around which to pour concrete and anchor down. We drop anchor on a belief, or a lover, or a quest. You can find us moored there for a while.

As sure as the wind changes, our course can change, too. We can hoist the anchor, scrape the barnacles, unfurl the mainsail, and ride the wind. You may not see me here tomorrow. It’s possible tomorrow’s version may be different altogether—other than the wrapper. If I haven’t spoken to you in 5 years, I’ll wager you’re a different person. The physical resemblance might prove vaguely familiar, but internally you will have changed. There is plenteous truth in the trope:

“We are always in the process of becoming. Self-identity is a fusion of our prior decisions and our current thoughts.”
~ Kilroy J. Oldster: Dead Toad Scrolls

Think of the applications in your life. Your age, your health, your knowledge, your experience; all are in flux. What’s your longest running good habit? Which version of you should we take seriously? Which is the real you?

Nothing in life is static

Now, lest I wax too poetic, or else get too serious in a ditty contrived to convince you not to take yourself too seriously, let me encourage you with those words of wisdom that have come to us through the years:

This too shall pass.
~ Anonymous

I hated hearing that during a struggle. Because in the middle of one you’re consumed. It’s serious business. Sometimes you can’t see your way out or to the other side. But friend, there is a way out, and there is another side. And either way, like it or not, the quote is true, and the struggles we face turn us into different versions of ourselves. I find it helpful to remember neither good fortune nor bad lasts forever, as it says so poignantly in the Grateful Dead’s Stella Blue:

“There’s nothing you can hold for very long.”
~ Grateful Dead: Stella Blue

Since our layover on this plane of existence is so brief, let’s not get too bogged down in the mire and minutiae of personal insults and minor snubs. Better to smile, shrug, and move on. Exemplify resilience. On the other hand, when you’re riding high in April, remember not to gloat, May is coming.

So, let’s laugh more than we cry and love more than we hate and like good boy-scouts, let’s leave things better than we found them. Do not take yourself too seriously. After all, no one is going to remember all the great things you do for yourself, nor all the high-minded opinions you espoused. They’ll remember what you did for them and how you made them feel. Take others seriously and you’ll do a lot more good, receive lots more love, and have a lot more fun.

June 30, 2021
Everyone’s Ways Are Right In Their Own Eyes

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.

June 19, 2021
Do Not Ignore Your Discontent – You Never Know What Pearl Awaits

This pearl began with an irritant. What kind of beauty can your discontent produce? (Adobe Image licensed to author)

#2 on my, 99 Life Tips – A List is: Do Not Ignore Your Discontent. Identify and Embrace It.

The importance of this cannot be overstated, because the springboard of all motivation is discontentment. No one who is at perfect, nirvana-like, blissed-out peace, is motivated to do anything. Toward what end? Blissed out peace is the end of the journey. Discontent is the impulse needed to begin the journey. It is the grain of sand in the oyster that can turn into a pearl once identified, worked on, and transformed.

Your particular feelings of unease and dissatisfaction are unique to you. So, do not ignore your discontent. The irritants are signals, prompts, pressures, and triggers towards meaningful change. So, whatever that thing is that is bugging you: sit with it, analyze it, dig deeply into what is really bothering you. For your own sake, don’t attempt to drown your discontent with drugs, drink, or distraction, either. The disquiet might be temporarily numbed, but it won’t go anywhere by that method.

On the other hand, a full embrace and acknowledgement of the gnawing unease is your doorway to peace of mind. The process of discovering exactly what is bothering you, and why, will give you self-knowledge that is at least as valuable as the knowledge of what makes you happy. And it will give you a ready made boundary to keep it out of your life for good. Embrace your discontent and work on it, this is where true beauty comes from.

May 7, 2021