Month: November 2023

I don’t love doing my taxes. Does anyone? But whenever I finally find the gumption to sit down and get cracking, I realize there are many interesting lessons to be discovered in the process. How much did I make that year? How much did I spend on groceries? What about the total tax bill? Is there any way I can optimize it?

In her book Wa — The Art of Balance, my friend Kaki Okumura recommends curiosity as a natural, more elegant way of finding focus than trying to force ourselves. “Playfulness helps us let go of our anxieties,” Kaki writes. “While it is difficult to pay attention to activities that stress or bore us, activities that we are curious about can quickly draw us in and captivate us for long periods of time.” Who says doing your taxes can’t be such an activity? Or folding laundry? Or running an errand?

Lower the bar, enter experimentation mode, and prepare to play. Who else does that on a regular basis? Children. Kaki first felt inspired to stress less about writing her book after watching her three-year-old cousin build sand castles, play make-believe on a swing, and tempt ants with sugar cubes — just to see what might happen. Why couldn’t she bring the same attitude to her creative work? As it turns out, she could.

Chores, adulting, even the things we do for fun or relaxation can sometimes feel “like trying to grab at falling flower petals,” Kaki suggests: “The more desperately we try to snatch them, the more quickly they whoosh out of reach.” When we reset our disposition with “a child-like mindset of playfulness,” worrying neither about end results nor excellence, we can “let things be” — and chances are, we’ll find the flower petals naturally floating down into our hands.

You might never love some of your tasks, but you can love the process of learning more about anything. Choose curiosity, and let it carry you into a natural, effortless kind of focus. Once you do, you might even have fun doing your taxes.

Having just lost a lead in his time travel investigation, crazy scientist Rintaro Okabe turns around in front of the tiny CRT TV store. The July heat is scorching, but in the flickering air just down the alley, he can see his fellow lab member Mayuri reach directly towards the sun.

“Ah, this again,” he thinks to himself. “Her old habit.” Giving odd names to everything just like he usually does, Rintaro calls it “shaking hands with the stars.” He walks over to Mayuri.

“I was wondering whether I could reach for the stars,” Mayuri says. “You can’t even see the stars,” Rintaro counters. And then, almost in passing, Mayuri says the kind of sentence we all want to believe in but often forget as we grow up — except in this case, it’s not just magical but also 100% true: “Yes, that’s right, but even if I can’t see them, they’re still there, even during the day.”

The stars don’t disappear. Have you ever thought about that? Really, genuinely reflected on that fact? I hadn’t. Not only had I never thought that thought, it took a 12-year-old anime show to serve it to me on a silver platter, but now, just like the characters in Steins;Gate compelled to investigate the odd phenomena happening in their world, I can’t unsee it. I look up at the bright blue sky and wonder: “Where are the stars right now? Which ones am I looking at? What are they doing?” Its a daily miracle that keeps on giving.

So are you, by the way. You never stop breathing. Even in your sleep, you keep going. Living. Shining. Of course, someday you will — just like the stars. One day, one more light will cease from the firmament, one more soul will go back to “the pond,” waiting for its next adventure, and though we might glance at the sky or the newspaper that day, chances are, we won’t even notice — but that day is not today.

Whether you feel as bright as the July sun or stuck in the darkest of night, remember: Stars don’t disappear, and neither do you. You are always glowing. Radiating. Brimming with potential. Rearranged stardust, ready to shine on your own or connect with your peers into a coherent picture, serving to guide us all when we look up to you — just like you will find guidance when shaking hands with the stars.

In almost every human interaction you have, people hope to convince you to see the world from their angle. “Please step over here,” the car dealer says, and from where she stands, of course it makes perfect sense to buy a new jeep. But then you step back into your own angle and realize: “Wait a minute. I’m not even looking for a new car. Let alone a jeep.”

We don’t always do this consciously, but we often do it eventually. Why doesn’t your friend want Asian takeout? Why can’t the prospect see how much the software would help their business? Why won’t your parents understand that wearing long johns to PE class just isn’t cool?

Sometimes, changing our angle is helpful. Perspective-shift-as-a-service can be a thing. It is, however, a rare and dying breed. Frequently, we find ourselves exploited after looking at the world from the other end for too long.

The far bigger and more admirable service is to step into someone else’s world voluntarily. Spend time in their perspective, perhaps offer some advice or even a little help, then retreat and once again go your separate angles. You believe in God. He doesn’t. But you can still talk about the meaning of life for an hour.

With eight billion angles from which to see the world, being pulled in countless differing directions quickly gets exhausting. Cherish the people who willingly move to your side instead of trying to rope you over to theirs, and offer the same kindness to those you can when you have the bandwidth to do so.

Look at life through a kaleidoscope, not a telescope, and remember to return to your angle when it counts.

After escaping from the bilge of their captors’ ship, aspiring pirate king Monkey D. Luffy and his new, angsty friend Koby have some time to kill while waiting for their dinghy to reach land.

When Koby has yet another panic attack about being lost in open waters, Luffy asks him: “Koby, if you could do anything in the world right now, what would it be?” “I guess there’s one thing,” Koby says, “but it’s dumb.” BAM. Before he can see it coming, Koby realizes he’s been slapped in the face. So far, it’s only him that’s dumb, Luffy claims. “Now spit it out.”

“I’ve always wanted to be a Marine,” Koby relents. “Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to protect people that can’t protect themselves.” “Ahhh,” Luffy goes, seeming no less satisfied than a miner who just unearthed a treasure he has been seeking for years. “I told you it was dumb,” Koby says, but, with a grin, Luffy only shakes his head. “If that’s what you want, I think you should do it. I’ll help you out.”

Now, in most other conversations among friends, this would perhaps not be a normal but surely a welcome response. The only problem in this one? Luffy and Koby met just 30 minutes ago. Who’d care so much about a stranger? Let alone go to great lengths to help them? Koby is suspicious. “You don’t even know me.” But Luffy simply insists: “We shared a meal, Koby. And if being a Marine is your dream, that’s good enough for me.”

This kind of genuine, sometimes naive but heartfelt attitude is not only how you get people to love the hero on a brand new Netflix show 20 minutes in, it’s also the gold standard of confidence. You might not have a Luffy in your life to slap the silliness out of you and remind you, but when you look in the mirror, even if you don’t believe it at the time, you should always say, “If that’s your dream, it’s good enough for me.”

There are no dumb dreams — only dumbness in adrift people. People lost at sea who’ve had other drifters talk their dreams out of them, just like they were once fooled into no longer believing in themselves or their desires.

That’s okay. It happens. We all get lost sometimes. But as long as we can feel even the tiniest spark of our grandest ambition, not only do we owe it to ourselves and the world to not give up, but we must use that fire to relight the same spark in others. Pull fellow drifters from the water, hand them a towel, and remind them: “If that’s what you want, I think you should do it. I’ll help you out.”

If we can one day be Koby, confused and stuck in a dead end, who says we can’t be Luffy the next? A voice of sheer support and complete confidence, ready to echo in our own and everyone else’s head, the whole crew en route to their dreams.

You are not done, my friend. You’ve got a whole lot left to do, and whether it’s raising two honest, hardworking kids, hosting an annual comedy show for your local community, or starting a company that’ll change the world, if that’s what you want, I think you should do it.

You are not Koby. You are Monkey D. Luffy, and you will be king of the pirates — or at least your own little hill in a tiny corner of the world — and if that’s your dream, it’s good enough for me.

If you’ve ever accidentally swallowed a fly while sipping from your drink, you know it’s not the nicest of surprises. I’ve had a lot of bugs in my house over the summer, and a few weeks ago, two fell from the ceiling into the bed while I was sitting on it. Around that time, I started worrying about my water glass.

Like many people, I keep a glass of water on my nightstand. But where I used to just wake up at night and eagerly take a few gulps in the dark, now, every time I put the glass to my lips, I wonder: “Is there going to be a bug in there?” I might cautiously sip or press my lips together to — pun alert — test the waters. If I can see a bit, I might try to glance inside the glass. Without fail, however, I ask myself that darned question, and of course, without fail, there has never been a bug in my glass.

In all likelihood, one day, there will be a bug paddling in my water. But if I worry about insects for 999 days before, finally, on the 1,000th day, one eventually shows up, that means I’ve spent 99.9% of the time worrying for no good reason. Perhaps, I am realizing, it is better to not think about bugs.

What’s that saying about the old man? “I’ve known a great many troubles in my life, most of which never happened.” You can’t get through life without a few scars and broken eggs, and though you won’t intend for either, sometimes, it’s better to go at full speed and swallow the occasional, unpleasant surprise — even bugs — than to tread lightly and never arrive at your destination.

Don’t worry about bugs. Worry about too much worrying.

On most days, all you need are three questions:

Who are you?

When are you?

Where are you?

And on most days, all those questions need are three answers:

I am.

Now.

Here.

Don’t stray too far from the present, and no matter whether you venture to the future or the past, remember your way home. There is only one place in spacetime where life truly happens, but as long as your consciousness is there, both you and the universe will be in perfect balance.

In your mind, you are Tarzan — master of vines, king of the jungle. Every waking moment, you swing from liana to liana, jumping from thought to thought.

On some vines, you’ll linger. You’ll hang on, kick your legs out, then pull them back again. Wee! This thought is fun! You could swing on it forever. Stay too long, however, and suddenly, you’ll get vertigo. From one moment to the next, the thought will feel threatening. Dangerous. Just a little too close for comfort. That’s how you know it’s time to jump.

At other times, you’ll be the one making heads spin. You’ll go so fast, we won’t be able to keep up. We can barely see into your mind, after all, let alone catch a shadow in it, hopping from thought to thought at lightning speed. Every now and then, even you, rajah of the jungle rope, will have to pause and catch your breath. What liana did you leave behind seven turns ago again? Darn it, the good idea is gone.

Interestingly, while lianas of thought are your everyday bread and butter, biologically speaking, they are “a conspicuous component of tropical forest ecosystems.” A parasite feeding on nature’s organic outgrowths, willing to veil whatever brilliance might lie beneath it, desperate to reach the canopy for a few moments in the sun. Could your thoughts be…? No! Oh, but commonly, they are!

Do the vines you’re so busy swinging from actually lead you where you hope to go? Or do they merely form a big, barely comprehensible circle? If you keep going round and round in your mind, the lianas can keep growing. Feeding. Hiding whatever organic insight waits underneath, dying to reveal itself. How convenient for your thoughts! Yet how unfortunate for you.

Zoom out, Tarzan! Stop swinging for a second. Slide down the current vine, and plant your feet firmly on the ground. Look around you. The forest is so much bigger than just the lianas. There’s earth, crawling with activity. Little streams, transporting nutrients to bushes. Animals big and small, navigating the dense, moist atmosphere. And of course trees — trees high and mighty, yet often suffocating under your lianas of thought.

Swinging from jungle rope to jungle rope is just one way of traversing the jungle. You can also walk on the ground. You might swim for extended periods of time. Heck, you can even build a plane and fly high above the whole ecosystem! You’re much more than Tarzan! Not only king of the jungle but king of the world — at least your world, and that is plenty.

Thinking is wonderful. Useful. But it’s not why we exist. Not why our lives have value. Even when we’re doing it well, vine-swinging requires the right speed at the right time. Every so often, however, the best thing we can do is to stop, stoop to the ground, and look to the skies. There! High up there, above the canopy, that is real sunlight. Insight. Wisdom. Presence. Only when it reaches all of the forest’s participants can the whole jungle keep flourishing — and if that means we’ll have to whip out our machete and cut some vines, so be it. Sever some thoughts to save the whole brain, and perhaps a lot more than that.

Don’t get lost in a sea of lianas, and never forget what thinking is for.

The best sales pitches are the ones where your prospect learns something new, then the insight does the convincing for you. My dentist was not the place where I expected a demonstration of this technique, and yet…

“Pain is a signal,” he said. “After we take out your wisdom teeth, your body will have to send blood, repair molecules, and other little fixers to the cavities left behind. In order to let the brain know they require those healing materials, the cavities hurt. Pain is the messenger — but if we use this new APRF technique, where we take some of your blood, turn it into plasma, then place it into the cavities, that messenger will be out of a job — because the necessary components are already there. No need for transmission; no need for pain.” Man, he was good. And he hadn’t even touched my teeth yet!

In his book Letting Go of Nothing, Peter Russell makes a similar point, except he’s not trying to sell you a 250-euro procedure but a new approach to dealing with unpleasant experiences in your life. We tend to “turn our attention away from pain,” Russell claims, because if we faced it head on, it’d likely hurt a lot more than it already does — “and that’s the last thing we want.” Actually, the opposite is required: “Pain evolved to alert organisms to bodily damage or dysfunction. […] It is a call for attention, the body’s alarm bell: Hey! There’s something wrong here. Attention, please. Rather than ignoring it, resisting it, or trying to make it go away, we can give pain the attention it is requesting.”

If we do so, Russell suggests, the pain may indeed initially surge. The more time we spend in its presence and explore it, however, the more specifically we’ll be able to point at what’s truly going on. Is it a tension in our shoulder? A numbness in our hip? A sharp sting in our neck? What hides behind the generic label of “pain?”

While sometimes, exploring our pain is merely a smart step to take before consulting our doctor, often, it is enough to make said pain go away. Russell mentions a common ache beneath his shoulder blades. If he welcomes the pain and shows curiosity towards it, he finds his body naturally shifting, muscles relaxing to accommodate the ailment — and thus making it disappear. “Without my doing anything, the pain goes and comfort returns. The body does the releasing for me — once, that is, my conscious mind gets out of the way.”

This applies to more than just physical ailments. Emotional pain, too, is a signal. Something is off, and our soul is requesting the resources to mend itself, be it healing from a broken heart, workplace depression, or a gut-wrenching loss in the family.

Sadness, anger, and grief aren’t enemies to be fought. They are messengers asking for help. But in order to listen to a messenger and fully understand his message, first, we have to let him in. If we slam the door in his face, we won’t get any closer to what’s really going on, let alone to fixing whatever might be broken. Should we invite him in and allow him to sit down, perhaps even offer him a glass of water, however, the messenger will calmly relay his news, then be on his way.

When we sit in sadness, share our post-breakup disappointment with a friend, or journal about our burnout, we may not get rid of all our pain immediately, but the load on our shoulders will lighten. At the very least, our relationship with the discomfort will begin to transform. That’s the first step of alleviating any kind of suffering — and it is the most important one to take.

The next time you’re at the dentist, therapy, or throw your back out on the stairs, remember: Pain is just a signal — but unlike plenty of life’s remaining noise, it is a cue worth paying attention to.

In The Legend of Bagger Vance, former golf prodigy Rannulph Junuh makes an unlikely comeback after disappearing for a decade. To help his once-great love Adele save her family’s golf resort, he participates in an exhibition match with golf legends Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen.

After a rocky start, Junuh finds his stride, loses it again, then comes back strong. On the final hole, he has a chance to pull ahead and win, but when he tries to clear an obstacle on the ground, his ball moves — an incident worthy of a penalty.

Suddenly, Junuh is faced with a decision: Does he report the event and lose his great return, or does he pretend nothing happened? Except his caddie and biggest fan, the young Hardy, no one has seen a thing.

Junuh pauses for a moment. “It moved. I have to call a stroke on myself.” Hardy begs him not to do it. His competitors don’t want the penalty noted. Even the referee isn’t keen on tilting this match. “Are you sure?” But Junuh insists, and so, even after he sinks the final, hard-to-make putt, the end result is a three-way tie between two legends and an amateur.

Throughout the movie, we learn a lot about Junuh. About his early brilliance, World War I traumas, and wasted potential. We learn about his struggles with alcohol, his fear of both success and failure, and his disappointment with himself about all these things.

It is only in that one moment, however, those two minutes of screen time in a two-hour movie, that we discover who Junuh truly is. Who he has become thanks to hard work, mental and spiritual growth, and a little help from his friends.

“Nobody will know,” Hardy says. “I will,” Junuh responds. “And so will you.” It’s the kind of integrity neither money nor fame can buy. That’s why Junuh demands his penalty — and why, to him, Hardy, and ultimately everyone else, the tie feels better than victory ever could.

Recognize the moments when life asks you an inescapable question, and reflect before you answer. Even the most paradoxical situations happen for a reason, and on some days, a draw can beat a win.

Yesterday, a good friend told me she picked a fight with a fellow blogger in her niche. The guy started covering her topics around the same time as she did, made similar products, and even showed up on the same podcasts to give interviews. There was only one problem: He did everything in a slightly sleazier, less authentic and professional way.

Now, whenever my friend sees his stuff pop up on Google, she rolls up her sleeves and goes: “Okay, here we go, you’re on!” Then, she makes something better, funnier, and more honest, and takes that search traffic right off his plate. Gotcha!

The most interesting part of this fight is that it’s entirely invisible. My friend’s nemesis might not even know she exists. The battle takes place only in my friend’s head — and that is enough for it to be a sufficient motivator.

It’s easy to pick a fight in public. Anyone can do it. Elon does so twice a day on Twitter, and so do millions of others. But how often are those fights backed up with actions? It’s usually the rush of excitement we are after, not true pride in having stood up for what we deeply believe in.

To pick a fight in private and sustain it? That is art. To go on a quest, a crusade, even, without anyone knowing about it, yet continuing to persevere until the mountain yields, that shows genuine passion for a cause — and real belief in your actions.

Sometimes, the world deserves better. Can you give us what we need without first denouncing what we don’t? There’s more beauty in taking the high road than in winning, but nothing beats the feeling of knowing you’ve done both.