A few quotes:

I’ve lived a great life. Nothing has gone according to my plan. – Me

You love struggle. – My friend 6S during one of our many half funny, half serious conversations.

To live is to suffer. To survive is to find meaning in the suffering. – DMX

The integrity of the self depends on the ability to take neutral or destructive events and turn them into positive ones. Getting fired could be a godsend, if one took the opportunity to find something else to do that was more in tune with one’s desires. In each person’s life, the chances of only good things happening are extremely slim. The likelihood that our desires will be always fulfilled is so minute as to be negligible. Sooner or later everyone will have to confront events that contradict his goals: disappointments, severe illness, financial reversal, and eventually the inevitability of one’s death. Each event of this kind is negative feedback that produces disorder in the mind. Each threatens the self and impairs its functioning. If the trauma is severe enough, a person may lose the capacity to concentrate on necessary goals. If the impairment is very severe, consciousness becomes random, and the person “loses his mind”. In less severe cases the threatened self survives, but stops growing; cowering under attack, it retreats behind massive defenses and vegetates in a state of continuous suspicion. – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Cheating Chaos

6S is almost right. I do love struggle but that’s because I don’t quite view struggle as struggle. I view it as one of the most essential parts of life. Don’t get me wrong; when things don’t go my way, I go through it like everyone else, but I quickly remind myself that it’s ok and will be ok. I’ve learned over time to embrace the inevitable chaos and disruption of order that we all have to face. I love finding meaning in that complexity and turning it into fuel to make my life and other’s lives better. So much so that I almost seek it now which is why a lot of people think I’m crazy. It’s just that most of the greatest things I’ve experienced in life have come as a result of struggle. I owe struggle, pain, chaos, plus my survival of them most of the credit for my growth in life. That along with unshakable faith that things will always go according to plan, just not my own.

We all make plans and have an idea of “perfect” in our minds. We combine what’s wired in us already with societal influences and develop a plan of how life ideally should go. Often we get so attached to those plans that we fail to see warning signs when it’s time to change directions. Or if circumstances out of our control change directions for us, we panic, become frustrated or withdraw and succumb to the chaos. Don’t do that. It’s natural to feel depressed for a while after chaos strikes but don’t stay there. Get back up and continue to move forward until one day the meaning behind that chaos comes to you. I can tell you firsthand that on the other side of potential disaster awaits a lot of greatness for yourself and others. You have to remain calm enough and believe in yourself enough to not simply endure but go a step further and find ways to embrace it.

Anyone who exercises regularly will tell you that in order for your body to grow and achieve results, you can’t do the same workout forever. Eventually your body will get used to it and then you have to introduce some chaos to it in order for it to start growing and developing again. That’s how the mind works, that’s how the body works, that’s how relationships work, that’s how life works. “Can’t run from the pain, go towards it”, like Jay-Z once put it.

As a bonus here’s an excerpt from the book, Flow:

In the beginning, fires started as random: volcanoes, lightning, and spontaneous combustion ignited fuel here and there, and the energy of the decomposing timber was dispersed without purpose. As they learned to take control over fire people used the dissipating energy to warm their caves, cook their food, and finally to smelt and forge objects made of metal. Engines run by steam, electricity, gasoline, and nuclear fusion are also based on the same principle: to take advantage of energy that otherwise would be lost, or opposed to our goals. Unless men learned various tricks for transforming the forces of disorder into something they could use, we would not have survived as successfully as we have.

Till next time. It’s still peace and it’s still love.

A free safety in football is someone assigned to roam the back field and eliminate all threats of the opposing team scoring against his defense. He’s the last man back and his presence allows the defense to do their job with the confidence of knowing someone is back there to protect them. If a long ball is thrown, the free safety is there to knock it down or intercept it.

A strong safety on the other hand is one who is assigned to a specific side of the field, or who already has a defender designated to them. Valuable but not quite as much as the free safety whose job it is to protect the entire field.

In life terms, our free safeties are the people who allow us to live our lives with confidence and pursue goals and aspirations with vigor and enthusiasm knowing we can fall back to them. They are, by nature, encouraging and protective over us. They get on us when we miscalculate or fail on an assignment but only with the intent of making us better next time. Free safeties see things we can’t see. They become our peripheral vision and extra set of eyes on this turf called life. Their game is mostly built on intuition and instinct. They see danger? They tackle it. See a threat coming? Intercept it.

The key now becomes two fold: choosing a good free safety that suits your style of play and also allowing them to do their jobs. Some of us go about life thinking we don’t need a free safety until one day life loops a ball over our head and scores a painful touchdown. Then we wish we would have had someone back there to protect us. Some of us have free safeties and don’t allow them to do their job properly. We get in the way or get too comfortable and wave them off prematurely. Other times we think we can have more than one but that doesn’t work either. Eventually the two will collide and you’ll be left with none. Or you’ll have strong safeties playing the free safety position they don’t belong in.

Most of our friends are strong safeties. Their range is a bit limited. They’re there when it’s time for parties and time for laughs. Occasionally we’ll share something deep with them but with caution to not reveal more than they can handle. With free safeties, however, the range is endless. You don’t have to think around them or use much caution. It’s a free and safe zone where all is welcome. From the back field where they stand observing, they see all our weaknesses and vulnerabilities; trying to hide them is pointless. Furthermore, free safeties love their job. They’re so in tune that they can sense when things aren’t right and unlike other positions who may do the bare minimum, they feel somewhat responsible anytime something bad happens.

Back in the day Bill Withers sang “we all need somebody to lean on”. Michael Jackson’s “Will You Be There” captured the same emotion in the 90′s. And Jay-Z more recently said, “whateva she lacks, I’m right over her shoulder and when I’m off track, (she’s) keeping me focused”.

The bottom line is we all need a free safety, it’s why we come into the world with a built in one, our mother’s. Over time–for some, sooner than other’s, we defect from our mother’s and have to find a new free safety ready for the day to day struggles we’re facing. If there’s a lack of trust, lack of communication, or lack of respect, the whole operation is in jeopardy and you’re probably better off without a free safety for some time. But eventually you’ll need that protection, that coverage, and that safety again. They make wins more frequent, losses easier to accept, and this game of life that much more fun.

“Was born to dictate, never follow orders” – Jay-Z

“We don’t care what people say” – Kanye West

“He had a Mercedes sports coupe with no license plate on it. I think he felt the normal rules just didn’t apply to him. He always kind of felt ‘I don’t succumb to authority’.” – Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs biographer on Steve Jobs.

“I know fear is an obstacle to some, but it is an illusion to me…” – Michael Jordan

“F*ck the world if they can’t adjust” – Tupac

“I believe that the most important single thing, beyond discipline and creativity is daring to dare.” – Maya Angelou

Every great hustler, athlete, poet, entrepreneur, or happily married couple believes that the rules don’t apply to them; they’re correct. They don’t apply. They abandon the norms society has established for them and live the life they want. I’d like to emphasize that what the heart wants is usually different from what the mind wants. The heart is designed to want the best for us. So you must first be able to connect with that then you can proceed with breaking laws with the assurance that the heart will never steer you wrong.

I’m not saying for everyone to go out there and go do illegal things after reading this. That would be being a rebel without a cause and that’s not cool. You need a cause first. That cause could be that you want to build fast, good looking computers. That cause could be that you want to be the greatest basketball player of all time. It could be that you want to share your poetry or art with the world. It could be that you want your relationship with someone to work. Once you’ve decided on a cause, now it’s law breaking time.

You don’t so much have to break laws as much as you have to disregard them while establishing a set of your own. A set of laws that align with your goals and aspirations. There are a lot of guidelines implemented by society to keep us in check. These guidelines are by society for society in order to keep things the way they are. Not for you and I to achieve wealth, true freedom and happiness.

As Freud and many others before and after him have noted, civilization is built on the repression of individual desires. It would be impossible to maintain any kind of social order, any complex division of labor, unless society’s members were forced to take on the habits and skills that the culture required, whether the individuals liked it or not. The most effective form of socialization is achieved when people identify so thoroughly with the social order that they no longer can imagine themselves breaking any of it’s rules.

In making us work for it’s goals, society is assisted by some powerful allies: our biological needs and our genetic conditioning. All social controls, for instance, are ultimately based on a threat to the survival instinct. The people of an oppressed country obey their conquerors because they want to go on living. 

When they do not rely on pain (or punishment), social systems use pleasure as the inducement to accept norms. The “good life” promised as a reward for a lifetime of work and adherence to laws is built on the cravings contained in our genetic programs. Practically every desire that has become part of human nature, from sexuality to aggression, from a longing for security to a receptivity to change, has been exploited as a source of social control by politicians, churches, corporations and advertisers. (Paraphrased from the book Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)

What all of that is saying is that as humans we have a natural desire to not experience pain and to be rewarded. Based on that, society is able to keep us in line by the threat of punishing us if we do certain things and to reward us if we do other things. Do “this” and you will one day be rich with a big house and happy family. Problem is most people who end up doing “this” end up anything but rich with a big house, and definitely don’t end up happy. Why? Because “this” wasn’t designed for that person. “This” was designed by society for society.

In order to experience true success and happiness, you need to develop your own set of rules and guidelines that align with your goals in life. I’m not saying drive 120mph down a busy road. Unless your goal is to die tonight or go to jail then that probably isn’t what your heart will tell you to do. What it will tell you to do are things that will have you experiencing life to the maximum which will enhance your creativity and ability to relate to others. This will in turn attract whoever and whatever you want from life.

To do this and to do it well, you have to be willing to pay the price of being out-casted, laughed at, and looked at as weird. You have to be willing to lose all you ever had in order to gain what most will never have, complete freedom and complete happiness. Not to mention probably a ton of money and recognition along the way if you so desire. If your goals are similar to that of an MLK or Malcolm X, you may even have to pay the ultimate price with your life but even then it’s still a greater life than had they conformed and lived the lives society expected of them. Imagine where you or I would be had they done that.

Remember in Lion King when Simba was lured to the elephant graveyard by his own uncle, Scar, who he trusted? Basically, Simba’s father told him to stay away from the elephant graveyard but his uncle Scar led him there under the false pretense that it would be a good thing. But really it was a setup. Simba lied to his mother, went to the graveyard, only to meet three hyenas that were prepared to kill him.

The moral of the story is to be weary of anything or anyone that you have to hide from those who truly love you. I’ve had more than enough Simba moments to know that you always pay the price. I stress the word “have” because sometimes there are things we choose to keep from our loved ones for their own protection or because it hasn’t reached a stage where we can clearly explain it to them. For instance, when you first start dating a person or working on a new idea. But if you’ve been with someone for some time or you do something on a regular basis and no one who truly cares for you knows about it, that thing is probably going to cause you major trouble somewhere down the line.

This shouldn’t be confused with needing approval. Your loved ones don’t have to approve or necessarily like everything you do but if they don’t know and can’t know, then you should probably reconsider.

Sometimes we’re not even conscious of it; like a young child who gets isolated from his or her family by a predator using candy or promises to take them to a better place. Often times, we move away from love to harm because harm is disguised as something good. It’s one thing when you’re 4 or 5 and we can only pray that most young children won’t have to face such decisions, but as adults we all need to be aware enough and wise enough to know when we’re thrusting ourselves into danger and away from protection.

And for those who believe in God, if you have to hide it from God, you’re really screwed. God sees all.