Sunday, December 23, 2012
Monday, October 25, 2010
Mental Puppies
I was on an awesome vacation recently and stored up a lot of podcasts to last me through the drive. One of the podcasts had Tara Brach, whom normally I find annoying at best, as a guest speaker. She mentioned a couple of things that made a big impression on me while I was driving through the mountains.
She just mentioned in in passing, but in short it was the idea that when the mind is idle it spends its spare time rebuilding the memories of the past and racing ahead to plan the future to support the illusion of our individual personalities. After hearing that, whenever my mind wanders I find myself looking at the wandering and trying to put it into one of those two buckets. Usually I'm meandering through the past hopping and chopping it to make it more tolerable - but that might be my advanced age.
She just mentioned in in passing, but in short it was the idea that when the mind is idle it spends its spare time rebuilding the memories of the past and racing ahead to plan the future to support the illusion of our individual personalities. After hearing that, whenever my mind wanders I find myself looking at the wandering and trying to put it into one of those two buckets. Usually I'm meandering through the past hopping and chopping it to make it more tolerable - but that might be my advanced age.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Net vs. Gross Fun
One of the first first things that I put together long ago was what I lovingly called my theory of Net/Gross Fun. Some college friends pointed out that pretty much any fun that involved nets was more or less bound to be gross. Haters gonna hate though, so I'm paying no attention to them.
Most basic level, what you are trying to do in daily life is to maximize 'fun'. 'Fun' is something that makes you happy - gross fun is what is momentary, and net is the end fun level after any bills are paid. The point is, some things that make you happy for the moment tend to make you unhappy in the long run. Extreme case would be that setting your car on fire and driving it over a cliff, jumping off at the last moment and savoring the fireball as it hurtles into the night - would probably be a lot of fun. On the downside though, then you're walking back home in the dark, and the folks that car is landing on probably aren't going to be in a good mood. Net fun is negative in this case.
More mundanely, eating a whole box of donuts isn't a great idea. Having one as a treat isn't a big deal though. Having a couple of drinks is fun, but chugging a bottle of Canadian Hunter and spending the rest of the evening throwing up, not so much.
Most basic level, what you are trying to do in daily life is to maximize 'fun'. 'Fun' is something that makes you happy - gross fun is what is momentary, and net is the end fun level after any bills are paid. The point is, some things that make you happy for the moment tend to make you unhappy in the long run. Extreme case would be that setting your car on fire and driving it over a cliff, jumping off at the last moment and savoring the fireball as it hurtles into the night - would probably be a lot of fun. On the downside though, then you're walking back home in the dark, and the folks that car is landing on probably aren't going to be in a good mood. Net fun is negative in this case.
More mundanely, eating a whole box of donuts isn't a great idea. Having one as a treat isn't a big deal though. Having a couple of drinks is fun, but chugging a bottle of Canadian Hunter and spending the rest of the evening throwing up, not so much.
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