A Meaningful Life

In an old movie called The Gods Must Be Crazy a light plane pilot throws a coke bottle from his window and it hits an African Native on the head. The African Native hasn’t had much to do with western culture and thinks it came from God. He decides it might be a weapon because when he hits people with it, it hurts.

Most know it as a coke bottle. However, the ‘truth’ is that it’s both and neither at the same time. It’s what you make it to be. There is no absolute truth just versions/stories of truth.

You might be saying to yourself that education removes the ignorance and science reveals the truth but even then the reality is limited by the language and measurement capability you are able to use to describe, measure and classify things like a coke bottle. The coke bottle is silica it’s not a coke bottle. The coke bottle is atoms. Nope, it’s a string theory construct. Not it’s not. We may never know the truth that many of us seek.

Get the drift? No truth, no reality.

The good news. This means Santa is real! Yep I let my kids choose that if they want. Knowing this truth, that there is no truth makes life a joy! It allows you to be a creator of your own world how you want it to be, a God like power.

Inspired by some other good posts on Santa by Rosemary , Lance and Rowan

My new years resolution is very low key. It is to add a little more rigour and discipline to life.

People tend to go for big ticket resolutions but it takes a revolutionary change in your life to have them happen. We all know they don’t, humans just fail badly honouring their New Years resolution promises and commitments.

Here’s a few reasons why my resolution is low key:

• Low key resolutions are far more likely to happen. Small regular wins are better than big fat zero’s.
• 98% of your actions are habit which simply wont change on a shallow statement of resolution.
• It is inauthentic to promise yourself something that you know you wont do.
• You simply can’t stop and change your life based on a date. A “date” has no real power, it’s a word.
• What humans commit to do and what we really commit to do are very different things.

The last one is the crux of the matter. As an example many people commit to less chocolate or coffee. The reality is that we are very committed to satiating feelings. The pleasure of quelling that feeling is what we are really committed to.

What you secretly commit to in your life trumps your resolutions every time.

Resolutions that work are revolutions. Revolutions require shock or structure to make them happen.Roughly 40%-50% of people have a new years resolution to get their finances in order. The next biggest is weight and fitness at 20%-30%. To have any of these happen means massive life upheaval so the vast majority of us will no doubt fail because the is no significant difference in our daily lives to have the change happen. There is no shock factor present or there is no structure in place to have it occur.

Pick something small. Get a win on the board. Then step it up by preparing the structure, systems and resources you will need for your larger personal revolution to occur.

Quite often you look at business, goal achieving, sport and the like you see bravery and professionalism present as important ingredients of success. Yesterday I had a good example of this in action at a personal level. My son Caleb got a splinter about 2 cm long in his toe, from one side to the other. It was jammed in and every time we pulled at it with the tweezers the tip of it would just break of.

For a three year old I was amazed how brave he was when it came to dealing with it. He was upset and teary but nothing like what I expected when he saw the splinter. It was huge, scary and he knew it was going to have to come out. Our initial thought was, “this is going to be a nightmare”.

Fortunately his reaction was very good, lots of tears but not a panic attack. We were at a birthday and luckily Jeanette a friend of ours, whose a nurse, helped get it out in a very professional manner.

It makes you realise skill and expertise is vital in dealing with a problem well. It also reminded me of that old saying “leave it to the professional”.

Quite often in business and at home I’ll hang on to tasks because I believe I can do them better. The reality is I can’t. The “Professional” has education, training and experience in the specific task at hand. Hard to match.

Sometimes I get very excited, almost euphoric about the business I’m involved in, Saasu.com but one big catch is that it’s like climbing mountains. The higher and harder the climb the more of a rush you get but the risk of falling increases.

At present we are pushing ahead on some crucial feature releases plus we have three strategic announcements so it is breeding anxiety and stress within me. Last night I realized how most of the anxiety and stress is in my mind. Fear and its symptoms stress and anxiety are created by the mind, they are not real. The only true and valid fear is the one that exists just before you are about to face a life threatening circumstance, something that might actually kill you (thanks to Landmark Education for this insight). All other fears are well overstated and over-rated.

A doco on the Hubble Space Program last night helped put my anxiety and fear into perspective. The Hubble had taken a picture of the end of the universe. Pictures taken by Hubble are very old because they are looking back in time, the vast amount of time taken for light to get to Hubble from the edge of the universe. When the universe was young it was made up of neat and tidy galaxies. Now the universe is older it’s gotten quite worn out and messy. A lot of the galaxies have mashed into each other (photo above care of hubblesite.org). Millions of galaxies out there have hundreds of thousand of stars, each of which might have their own planets. These most probably have their own life forms. These galaxies collide and decimate each other. Jeepers, whole galaxies are being created and destroyed. In context, my existence isn’t even a blink.

As an aside, if you believe we are alone in the universe you probably also don’t believe something until you see it, you think you will win lotto one day and you chose to refute basic mathematical principals around statistical probability. The maths that we are alone is: 1 planet out of 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 known stars and associated planets in the universe.

So why get mentally worked up about such relatively small things in one persons life, my life. Release 5.0 of Saasu is hardly a Galactic Crush. Not even close to being a micro-second of universal existence. It really does highlight how inward humans can be if not slapped with an occasional reality check. It also highlights the selfishness of fear for ones problems and existence.

Fear is obviously an effective genetic defensive mechanism that is very difficult to suppress but going forward I’ll try save my anxiety and fear for my kids and wife.

For tips on overcoming fear the Buddhist faith has it covered… tibetonline.tv or try the odd discovery channel doco… discovery.com

Been a while, but Latham getting in is kind off exciting so thought I’d post. More exciting is that my daughter can now swim on her own . Well kinda, has a floaty on her back, but her reality is that she’s doing it herself. I’m a very proud dad. You need to reflect on these things, life isn’t just about issues, politics and big events. The biggest things are right in front of you. Despite this we tend to look straight over the top of them and out into the un-real world.

It’s been a while since my last blog entry. Too busy with family and work. Blog is distant 3rd. Would like to put Blog second and Work last one day. Need a big cheque though so my business partner, Grant (synapse chronicles) and I can retire early. Anyone? The wars all over and the Iraqi people ’seem’ happy to be rid of Saddam. It’s not than clean and simple unfortunately. There’s problems ahead. War is never good and even when it’s over it is a catalyst, birthing future problems.

I agree with the Dalai Lama’s thoughts on the topics of war, aggression and self defense. A massive conflict rages in my mind with respect to these issues. I am passive but I’m not submissive. Where can I find the line in the sand between self protection and aggression? These quotes from the Dalai Lama indicate the conflict of mind that I think exists for many people. I agree with both statements. “If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.”…The Dalai Lama “Anger and hatred cannot bring harmony. The noble task of arms control and disarmament cannot be accomplished by confrontation and condemnation. Hostile attitudes only serve to heat up the situation, whereas a true sense of respect gradually cools down what otherwise could become explosive. We must recognize the frequent contradictions between short-term benefit and long-term harm.” …The Dalai Lama

This seems to be the approach to Iraq….If your a good citizen in your community and you beat up the bad guy to stop him mugging someone weaker than him, people will cheer, they will even put the boot in themselves. No one will criticize your aggression or stop you. Don’t beat him 12 years latter when everyone has forgotten about it an expect everyone to join in and start kicking.

The Neo conservatists in America and the UK (and John Howard) should have pushed to look at an Iraq regime immediately after the 1st gulf war. Doing in now has given Saddam unprecedented media focus, in the Arab world and exacerbate the pre-existing tendency for Muslims and westerners to polarize against each other. The more he was on TV the more difficult it became not to go to war as time passed. Why? Every month that went by Saddam grow stronger, gained more international focus, and built up more irreversible pride while the coalition collapsed. It fueled his belief that he was the hero of the Arab world standing up against the west. He probably envy’s Osama. Dictatorship is only about ego through power. Hitler was a dictator never held at bay by his own countries people. Other countries in Europe stood by knowing it could be a problem. Then it was all too late. A passive stance on Iraq legitimizes many things for Saddam. A 97% election win, killing and torturing to rule through fear, the invasion of other countries (Kuwait) and the use chemical weapons. Backing down by America & UK at any point after giving focus to Saddam in the global community was impossible. They forced themselves down a one way road. It would have sent an undeniable invitation to other potential dictators. The second that road was taken, no-one could turn back from war. This is why there are so many people now swinging back in favour who aren’t happy about the whole messy thing (me included) but we fear what the alternate cost is what we have just mentioned. It’s not that Saddam gets away with it if nothing happens its what other ‘potentials’ out there decide to do in the future. There’s plenty Saddam’s in the world they just need to be watered by the hose in-action and they might flourish. What do you do? I still don’t have an answer.