Huh? 1
Huh? 2
Unsocial intelligence…Huh?
Well all I mean is:
unsocial ~ not seeking the company of others…and y’all know what intelligence is.
This year will undoubtedly yield more tales of doom, gloom, financial unrest and woe. You have choices. Either follow the (justified) griping, moaning crowd or seek out your own independent future by carefully planning it, overcoming any interim setbacks and working diligently towards that end goal…however much you sweat, however long it takes.
Unsocial intelligence is knowing that your stance or opinion does not require a playmate or a consenting audience. It is being able to take on board information without taking on board the malaise and death of hope that hangs ominously above us currently like an unwelcome fart.
For every town with families squeezed by a newly restricted budget, there is someone buying 5 Rolex watches for an indifferent audience of trust fund pals. For every thousandth child starving in India there is someone planning this years skiing trip to Klosters, it will be their ninth holiday break of the year. For every mithering complainer there is someone, (exposed to the same difficult conditions as everyone else), head bent in concentration creating tomorrow’s Facebook, Harry Potter, Cirque Du Soleil, P.E.T.A, Jimmy Choo, Apple…They are doing this right now! What are YOU/WE doing?
‘The poor will always be with us,’ Jesus apparently mused and as He said this quite a few thousand years ago and the poor have not shifted despite decades of concerts and donations and centuries of good Samaritans, we can probably start to believe in his prediction right about now. Good people help where they can, but I have never found belly-aching to be a solution to any problem. So I entice you this year to resist the seductive call of the crowd and place your focus, skills and intelligence on an endeavour that will alter your own life for the better.
Isn’t it strange that whether we watch the news or choose not to, people are still killed, wars are still waged, and the public purse is still purloined by the corrupt people in charge? Unsurprisingly, this will happen regardless of your devotion to religiously staying up to date with these enervating, defeatist stories. Also, find any newspaper from practically any decade and you will find talks of high tax, protesting angry mobs, recession, unemployment and terrorists. Plus ca change…
However, I will add that unsocial intelligence is not lack of social contribution or sticking one’s head in the sand and hoping a problem will go away. It is more about using refined focus to gain the strength and resource to help oneself and potentially others where possible.
I wish you many glories this year.
How To Focus On What Matters
Colby Combs was 25 years old mountaineer in 1992 when he and 2 buddies, Ritt Kellogg and Tom Walter were on a steep climb on Alaska’s Mount Foraker attempting to claim a new route over three days. As the winds got stronger and visibility plummeted they had decided to abandon their plan to reach the summit. The upward ecsape route was a difficult one and they were further hindered by the porous ice rendering their securing tools fairly useless. The men continued to move upwards unsecured but tied together.
When Combs felt the line tied to one of is friends go slack he looked up just in time to see an avalanche nearly on top of him. He began sliding fast whilst trying to self arrest. He remembers hitting something and sailing through the air at which point he was knocked out cold.
When he came round he was in excruciating pain. His ankle, shoulder blade and two vertebrae were broken and he was suffering from concussion. The rope that led to his friend Walter was limp and he could see that his face was frozen in ice. His best friend was dead. It was not long before he discovered that his other partner Kellogg had also been killed.
He was alone.
Although now alone, devastated by the loss of his friends and hardly able to move without searing pain racking his body, he knew that he had to continue up the difficult technical slope to find safety. Every step was agony and he recalls thinking ‘I don’t care if my foot falls off’ and forcing himself into an ‘unstoppable mentality.’
Once he had reached the top of his route then came the descent. Six days of tortuous, agonizing, frustrating dead ends, getting lost, falling and self arresting – all with the accompaniment of the searing pain of his splintered bones. Even once he had reached the base camp he still had to walk a five mile crossing over a glacier.
He survived and spent three months in a wheelchair.
Combs quotes one of my favourite lines:
“Anything that gets in the way of success has to be eliminated – emotion, fear, pain. It’s the mental things that will impede your survival.”
Impede emotion? Why, it all sounds so cold and calculating surely?
I think of a lioness on the Serengeti Plains meeting an impala and her young ‘in. Then chasing and knocking down the impala’s baby, suffocating it and dragging it back unemotionally to her own children to eat. There is no ‘Is yours teething yet? Mine keeps me up all night…’ chatter between the new mums. It’s wham bam…not even thank you ma’am…just KILL!
It’s crude, it’s sad – (at least to us and the impala family), but the reality is, despite our higher intelligence, cognition and sad feelings towards the underdog, that’s how our lives are also. The survival of the fittest. It is not really a question of right and wrong. It is fact. It is nature.
To get what you want and depending on how much it really means to you, one has to clear the mind and pathway of clutter, nonsense, other people’s drama, our own drama and FOCUS.
We are often too involved in what does not concern us on a daily basis and this is one of the greatest impediments to our desired success.
We are bothered about what someone else thinks about us. We are overly bothered about what other people say about us. We are worried about things that may never happen. Instead of focusing on what we want we focus on the difficulty getting it. Ask anyone considering going on a diet.
I have always enjoyed and solicited the simple focus of Combs’s unstoppable mentality to acquire what I want from life. It is not always easy. Particularly when your attention is split in several ways because actually, quite a few things matter and deserve your attention.
It is interesting to note that notoriously private Steve Jobs decided to write a revealing book once he knew that he was dying, ostensibly to inform his children about who he really was, as his focus was often pointed in the direction of his remarkable business accomplishments and not at them.
It is no secret that life is not always easy, but it appears to be untapped enlightenment for many that consistently and persistently it can be simplified.
Here’s To The Mad Men!
In October 2011 the world lost three young men that frankly I had never heard of…
Dan Wheldon – British racing driver
Marco Simoncelli – Italian motorcycle racer
Antoine Montant – French speed flying champion
They were killed doing highly risky sports activities. Amongst the shock and tributes were a few voices of ‘Why is it necessary to do such dangerous sports?’ and ‘Well it is only to be expected when people don’t respect safety rules and their own lives.’
Me, I’m a careful, mindful soul.
OCD makes me over analyze even the most basic everyday things, but even I recognize that we need the Mad Men.
We need them. They push the boundaries of human ability and exploration. They are the ones that keep discovering that we CAN.
We need people who do that with their intellect, their spirits and their bodies. It means that the rest of us can sit on our sofa’s and computer chairs and pontificate from a safe distance.
Their lives are raw, loud and authentic. It’s hardcore wake up calls every race and every new previously unbroken human boundary. So here’s to the Mad Men and Whacky Women who keep the place jumping and alive, thrilling, rule-free, reckless and on edge.
At the very least, these 3 men all LIVED before they died. Here’s to you!
ref:
The video is Antoine Montant speed gliding in Chamonix. Watch and be amazed.
The Simplicity Of Love
This post follows on from previous post ‘What It Feels Like To Be Loved.’
People marry for all sorts of reasons. But is the most significant reason love? If your partner wanted to leave today could you allow them to do so without malice? This to me is love in it’s original pure sense.
True love is love that puts the other person above fragile ego, personal need, personal greed or what the neighbours will think. If divorced couples really loved, where does the often seen bile and latent vindictiveness come from?
Glaring at each other through divorce lawyers they exhibit sadness, disappointment, jealousy, ego, anger, fear…but not love.
There was a man married to his actress wife who ended up living practically next door to her…and her new boyfriend! One good reason was so that everyone could see the children with ease. When asked about this unusual arrangement, the husband said that it was because he loved her he knew she must be free to do what makes her happy, particularly if she no longer reciprocated their love as before.
This was a man with the most uncommon common sense, a deeply spiritual intelligence, anchored unusually and unselfishly by true love.
…And then, dear Reader, there’s Family Member. Today, as I write, a week or so from the last post about not feeling loved, I am once again a wonderful, much loved, depended upon person…in their eyes.
I find myself gushingly re-seated in my old familiar role of The Champion.
But you see…that Champion person, me, who was ‘not loved’ only a week or so ago was exactly the same person as today.
Did Family Member and I have an argument?
No.
Anyone who knows me will tell you I’m too laid back for life-wasting unnecessary-ness like that, (9 times out of 10).
Did I do something that offended?
No.
Anyone who knows me will tell you I have never been afraid to confront my own mistakes as publicly as I might do others, (7 times out of 10).
So in this instance I was reminded that if someone has something going on in their head and decides to bring drama to you…help them, ask them, cajole them to tell you, understand what they might be going through. However if they are not willing to have an honest discussion or to be mindful of their own actions and the consequences, then you must leave them to it to preserve your own sense of self. You risk self-analyzing into utter confusion when the analysis should be conducted elsewhere. There is only so much you can do.
We are at liberty to fix ourselves – not others, unless of course they ask and then we can only attempt to do it with their full cooperation.
In the end this is really about someone blowing off steam in one way or another. We all do it. Although it does not have to be done at the reckless expense of someone else.
Not everyone who plays aimlessly with what is already comfortable, good and right in their lives in favour of stirring up pointless ill feeling is aware of what they are doing. And I believe that is the case here. But it was important for me to recognize how, (in this case) my actions had little to do with the way Family Member was behaving. This was their choice.
As it was also their choice to randomly reinstall me as The Champion again with no change to my character, routine or behaviour.
For a seeker of beauty and simplicity of life, it is also my choice not to play a starring role in other people’s unpredictable, unacceptable drama’s.
I have always known that if you do not love yourself you will have nothing to give others.
As we are talking about the simplicity of love, this then has to be one of the most important rules:
Don’t seek love from others that you do not have for yourself.
The only place love can be guaranteed consistently and without disappointment is from yourself. This too is about choice. Once you know this you will have fortified armour for drama (yup it rhymes!) and plenty of love to spare, even for those who disappoint you, for those who find someone else to love, or for those who forget what true love means from time to time.
And you? How do you handle vindictive behaviour? I’m not going to lie to you – I’m no saint and my reaction may be different if it was not a family member…
