Just One Thing
Carrying on the tradition for "firing up" things on Sunday, we fired up the barbie and had Sonic and Mew over for some juicy flame broiled steaks, broccoli-cheese casserole, asparagus, Portobellos and general visiting.
Mew and I had a long philosophical discussion before Sonic arrived, and the topic of this particular excursion of thought was on the "One Thing." Interesting synchronicity with gerbean's ruminations, but a slightly different take on the "big picture."
Don't know if you've seen City Slickers, but in the movie, this crusty old cow-hand tells a city slicker that the meaning of life is just one thing. And it don't matter what that thing is, but it's the one thing in life that defines you.
This flies in the face of a lot of modern culture which, largely as the result of advertisement I suspect, would rather enjoy things they can get right away. Instant gratification. Short attention spans. And this is not to say it's not important to enjoy things now, but there is a deeper satisfaction that comes from delving deeper into just about anything. A level of enjoyment that's not available on the surface.
Many of us have a wide variety of interests and most of us have discovered (usually as we get older) that we can't pursue everything. And more frustrating, that any one thing that we do select is no match for all those other things that we aren't doing.
It's like picking one marble up and putting it on the 'doing' side of the scale ---even if that's the biggest, coolest marble in the bunch of options--- all the other marbles on the other side of the scale will keep attracting our attention and throwing off the balance. Especially when the really cool thing starts to show the slightest signs of drag or effort, then the stuff we aren't doing starts looking even more attractive. Until we pick one of them and actually start doing it. Rinse and repeat.
Reminds me of an experiment with a monkey reaching in the bottle full of jelly beans and grabbing them all, but then he couldn't get his hand out. And he wouldn't let go. The very fact we have so many options can keep us from getting any of them done.
Now Mew knew of this phenomenon and we both agreed it was hard to remember what was happening, while it was happening; however, I discussed with Mew how I learned to handle this after much trial and error. It's certainly not the only way, it may not even be the best way for anyone else, but it has served me well over the years.
If you follow one thing deeply enough, it connects to everything else. Now, most of the time, we don't follow stuff deeply enough to start noticing these connections and just skimming across the surface of things will never reveal them. This is the way of mastery. Knowing one thing to know 10,000 things things as a wise eastern thinker once said, or seeing the world in a grain of sand as his kindred soul in the west echoed.
But there's another way too, for those who can't bring themselves to focus on just one thing, at the potential cost of all those other things we have to let go.
Most of our interests actually connect to something deeper. Some basic value or capability, and developing this value or ability furthers all of these interests. Working from our center. At work, for example, I never do anything that just accomplishes one thing; if it's not doing 3 or more things at once, I know I haven't thought it through sufficiently. With this approach, everything we do is multiplied. This doesn't mean multi-tasking where we try to do several things at the same time and do each poorly, it's choosing the one thing to do that furthers the most of our objectives. We can often tease this out by asking what about this interest is important to me? And why is that important?
Climbing the scales of our criteria this way can reveal some interesting insights. Stuff we wouldn't usually connect. (Even stranger, it's not unusual to discover that what we thought of as "ends" were actually "means" to deeper ends, and that maybe what we really wanted wasn't "x" after all, but the feeling or state we thought "x" would give us. Maybe it was the feeling of individuality and not the Dr. Pepper that we wanted all along?)
When we're working from our center, the question we usually ask ourselves is 'what is the most important thing that I could be doing right now?' And sometimes that might be taking a nap. Or doing something to refresh our energies. But if we think about all those things we are interested in, and what they might have in common, we can sometimes find
just the right angle to pour all those jelly-beans out of the bottle at once. And our best choices may not be at all what first appears on the surface.
Mew and I had a long philosophical discussion before Sonic arrived, and the topic of this particular excursion of thought was on the "One Thing." Interesting synchronicity with gerbean's ruminations, but a slightly different take on the "big picture."
Don't know if you've seen City Slickers, but in the movie, this crusty old cow-hand tells a city slicker that the meaning of life is just one thing. And it don't matter what that thing is, but it's the one thing in life that defines you.
This flies in the face of a lot of modern culture which, largely as the result of advertisement I suspect, would rather enjoy things they can get right away. Instant gratification. Short attention spans. And this is not to say it's not important to enjoy things now, but there is a deeper satisfaction that comes from delving deeper into just about anything. A level of enjoyment that's not available on the surface.
Many of us have a wide variety of interests and most of us have discovered (usually as we get older) that we can't pursue everything. And more frustrating, that any one thing that we do select is no match for all those other things that we aren't doing.
It's like picking one marble up and putting it on the 'doing' side of the scale ---even if that's the biggest, coolest marble in the bunch of options--- all the other marbles on the other side of the scale will keep attracting our attention and throwing off the balance. Especially when the really cool thing starts to show the slightest signs of drag or effort, then the stuff we aren't doing starts looking even more attractive. Until we pick one of them and actually start doing it. Rinse and repeat.
Reminds me of an experiment with a monkey reaching in the bottle full of jelly beans and grabbing them all, but then he couldn't get his hand out. And he wouldn't let go. The very fact we have so many options can keep us from getting any of them done.
Now Mew knew of this phenomenon and we both agreed it was hard to remember what was happening, while it was happening; however, I discussed with Mew how I learned to handle this after much trial and error. It's certainly not the only way, it may not even be the best way for anyone else, but it has served me well over the years.
If you follow one thing deeply enough, it connects to everything else. Now, most of the time, we don't follow stuff deeply enough to start noticing these connections and just skimming across the surface of things will never reveal them. This is the way of mastery. Knowing one thing to know 10,000 things things as a wise eastern thinker once said, or seeing the world in a grain of sand as his kindred soul in the west echoed.
But there's another way too, for those who can't bring themselves to focus on just one thing, at the potential cost of all those other things we have to let go.
Most of our interests actually connect to something deeper. Some basic value or capability, and developing this value or ability furthers all of these interests. Working from our center. At work, for example, I never do anything that just accomplishes one thing; if it's not doing 3 or more things at once, I know I haven't thought it through sufficiently. With this approach, everything we do is multiplied. This doesn't mean multi-tasking where we try to do several things at the same time and do each poorly, it's choosing the one thing to do that furthers the most of our objectives. We can often tease this out by asking what about this interest is important to me? And why is that important?
Climbing the scales of our criteria this way can reveal some interesting insights. Stuff we wouldn't usually connect. (Even stranger, it's not unusual to discover that what we thought of as "ends" were actually "means" to deeper ends, and that maybe what we really wanted wasn't "x" after all, but the feeling or state we thought "x" would give us. Maybe it was the feeling of individuality and not the Dr. Pepper that we wanted all along?)
When we're working from our center, the question we usually ask ourselves is 'what is the most important thing that I could be doing right now?' And sometimes that might be taking a nap. Or doing something to refresh our energies. But if we think about all those things we are interested in, and what they might have in common, we can sometimes find
just the right angle to pour all those jelly-beans out of the bottle at once. And our best choices may not be at all what first appears on the surface.
Excellent thought but sure took me some thinking to get it. Me and my 3rd grade education eventually agreed with ya...I bet there is a good disney level parable out there somewhere. Wonder what one thing ole Mew will focus on...Heck, I still wonder what one thing I'm going to focus on..dang it. Good thoughts there.
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