With just a few repetitions, even our best intentions slip from our grasp.

There’s an old Steve Martin skit where he begins with, “If I could have one wish this holiday season, it would be that all the children of the world join hands and sing in harmony.” It’s a raucous send-up of saccharine, holiday, good-wishes messaging. As he piles on more and more good-wishes, Martin keeps reworking them, until the first one soon becomes, “Yeah, that crap about the kids…”. It always reminds me of the unravelling in Monty Python’s “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” sketch. Both are funny because we all experience that unravelling.

The antidote? Find one thing to be your anchor. You don’t have to eliminate everything else. We each do need an anchor; Something we do that isn’t only an idea or belief.

I found that it also helps with low-level anger, uncommunicativeness, resentments, impatience, passive-aggression, depression, self-obsession, hatred of the world, blaming others, wanting to murder and maim people and a host of other maladies that I had been dragging around and allowing to define me. Meditation modulated my calamitous internal thinking, and the freaked-out tyrant residing in my head that represented the worst possible version of myself was largely deposed.

~ Nick Cave, from How do I stop fearing the end of the world?

I’m in complete agreement with that last sentence. It’s a magnificent sentence. Cave is talking about Trancindental meditation, which isn’t my jam. (I prefer marmalade with proper, bitter peels, thank you.) But I am definitely an advocate that everyone should have some form of meditation practice.

Meditation is intermittent fasting for the mind. Too much sugar leads to a heavy body, and too many distractions lead to a heavy mind. Time spent undistracted and alone, in self-examination, journaling, meditation, resolves the unresolved and takes us from mentally fat to fit.

~ Naval Ravikant

That’s a smashing of two metaphors (fasting protocols, and sugar consumption, are not related). If only I could rewrite that quote to be “Too much food leads to…” then it would be perfect. Anyway. There’s an endless supply of people advocating for meditation.

As I said up top, this week is about best intentions and finding your one thing.

At whatever micro or macros level we’re talking about, “Mediocrity as an existential threat” doesn’t happen because people are stupid, uniformed or lazy. Mediocrity kicks in when people stop finding meaning, stop having faith.

~ Cierra Martin, from The Greatest Existential Threat

The fix of course is to find ways to renew your focus periodically. The fix is find ways to avoid mediocrity for oneself, and thus to be able to lead by example. Only then can you be the change you want to see in the world.

Being realistic is the most common path to mediocrity.

~ Will Smith

Mediocrity is a side effect of steering by looking outward. Mediocrity is the big, bland average of all that you see in the world. It’s like those reference ranges on bloodwork: They’re the range of levels seen in the population; They correspond to the values found across the population, and they tell you nothing about what values you might want to aim for if you wish to flourish.

But what happens when those optimization efforts collide with an unpredictable environment?

~ Mandy Brown, from Against optimization

In the world of mechanical watches, each feature of the watch is called a “complication”. That’s what I mean about complicating things. I have the urge to complicate everything. I constantly see ways that I could add things to things. Eventually, it’s all too much, and then I make the mistake of trying to optimize to regain spare capacity and time in my life.

Don’t optimize. Decide. As in: Cut off options.

Don’t try to find your passion. Instead master some skill, interest, or knowledge that others find valuable. It almost doesn’t matter what it is at the start. You don’t have to love it, you just have to be the best at it. Once you master it, you’ll be rewarded with new opportunities that will allow you to move away from tasks you dislike and toward those that you enjoy. If you continue to optimize your mastery, you’ll eventually arrive at your passion.

~ Kevin Kelly

I really wish this had been in the How To Be Human manual. There are a lot of things that, by default, I would do (have done!) horribly. Fortunately, I’ve been paying attention more recently and have begun writing my own manual.

We’d like to believe that we prefer to walk down the picturesque street, visiting one merchant after another, buying directly from the creator or her gallery. We’d like to think that the centralized antiseptic option isn’t for us…

~ Seth Godin, from The Coney Island problem

Until next time, thanks for reading.

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