When even flexibility wears you out, what’s left?

With the power of hindsight I can see there was an age of fire. There was a long period—too long, probably—of trying to carve a path through the world. A period of trying to make a dent in the universe. Making my mark. I think it’s telling that all those metaphors involve destruction and defacement. Eventually I see a transition—first into the age of water: flowing, accommodating, shaping to fit the container. But now, something lighter still. Something subtler. The age of air.

We’re here looking for ways to make conversation more alive […]. I’ve adopted this strategy of, stop eating when I want to eat a little bit more. stop talking when I want to talk a little bit more. Stop training, moving around and exercising when I want to move a little bit more. So that I’m actually left in the wanting of it […]

~ Jesse Danger, from How do you end?

How can you effectively and gracefully end something, while maintaining its value and mutual appreciation? The key is understanding the balance between leaving fulfilled versus staying and seeking ever more.

You tell me flatly that you are too tired to do anything outside your programme at night. In reply to which I tell you flatly that if your ordinary day’s work is thus exhausting, then the balance of your life is wrong and must be adjusted. A man’s powers ought not to be monopolized by his ordinary day’s work.

~ Arnold Bennett

Bennett never worked in IT. It’s not the technology itself which drains you. It’s the endlessness of it. It’s the fractal nature of it. It’s the Sisyphean nature of the work.

[But ultimately acting makes you happy?] Yeah, I think. It is also about balance and finding the balance between the very cerebral part of your brain and the much more impulsive creativity that can come from chaos. So for me it is very much about that balance. The cerebral part of acting and the perfectionism can be exhausting, but the spontaneity can be very joyful. So it’s about managing these two sides of the experience. But yes it’s fun. I mean, there is no point in doing a movie if you’re not having fun.

~ Edward Norton from, Edward Norton – The Talks

The dance of getting the balance just right is equally applicable to any field. Flowing yes—but more so, learning to breathe.

Giving up and moving on are two very different things. There comes a point when you get tired of chasing everyone and trying to fix everything, but it’s not giving up, and it’s not the end. It’s a new beginning. It’s realizing, finally, that you don’t need certain people and things and the drama they bring.

~ Marc Chernoff

Well, I think that’s too harsh. That last line—for me—is about realizing that I created all the things and the drama. It’s not that I don’t need certain people, it’s that I’m under the illusion that my problems come from without.

Stoicism, in theory, is a philosophy. As a practice, it is a set of rules to live by. The Stoics believed that life was complicated—more importantly, that it was exhausting. So to create rules was to help ensure that we stay on the right path, that we don’t let the complexity and the nuance of each individual scenario allow us to compromise on the big, high standards we know we hold.

~ Ryan Holiday from, 12 (Stoic) Rules For Life: An Ancient Guide to the Good Life

This is an enormous post. Normally something of this size would be twelve, separate posts. It’s nice to be able to leisurely read through this. I’ve gotten enormous return on my investment of time from these rules. I often remind myself, however, that these are aspirational. These are the ideals for which I’m striving. However, they are not the reef upon which I’m planning on smashing the ship through strict adherence.

The keys to life are running and reading. When you’re running, there’s a little person that talks to you and says, “Oh I’m tired. My lung’s about to pop. I’m so hurt. There’s no way I can possibly continue.” You want to quit. If you learn how to defeat that person when you’re running, you will know how to not quit when things get hard in your life. For reading: there have been gazillions of people that have lived before all of us. There’s no new problem you could have–with your parents, with school, with a bully. There’s no new problem that someone hasn’t already had and written about it in a book.

~ Will Smith

Again, maybe a bit too much striving— but the core is solid: Learning how to persevere, and reading, are critical lessons of life.

What do I mean by explorers? I am talking about people who have found and are pursuing a very specific form of passion – I call it the “passion of the explorer.” These people are excited about opportunities to have more and more impact in domains that matter to them. They are constantly seeking new challenges that can help them to learn faster by creating new knowledge that never existed before. They also are actively seeking help from others in addressing these new challenges – they freely acknowledge that they don’t know the answers and that they need help in finding the answers.

~ John Hagel from, From Expert to Explorer

Transitions are the difficult times. The wind blows from wildly varying directions. The currents shift. The lighting changes. Grand vistas come into view. More, and different, metaphors.

I can feel my raw power subsiding. Literally. Some days, a 20-minute nap, an hour or so after a nice lunch, is just the most sublime thing. (Not the nap of exhaustion. Not the nap of collapse.) After years running the engine near the redline, it feels nice to settle into the solid, long-haul part of the power curve. More metaphors: A journey. A quest. A culmination. A destination. An end.

Until next time, thanks for reading.

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