Last Words

The journey of life is impossible to properly explain in words. This journal was a failure before it even started. It’s very concept is flawed. But, I do love metaphor.

I was born in an infinite pool of desire. I dreamt of money, cars, electronics, friends and people who loved me. I had all the ability needed to achieve those desires. What I missed was an idea of what to do once I fulfilled them. Where does the next turn take you?

Once you’ve attained it all, what is left? That’s easy, while trying to fill your desires, you picked up some new ones. New desires. Maybe, you realized your old desires weren’t big enough; it rained and your pool became an ocean. So, you keep going. Until the desires subside or you decide that it’s silly to keep chasing, you keep pushing yourself. You drink the ocean. Then, what do you do? You wait for life to end. You desire to outlive your siblings.

Desire is an interesting paradox. Everybody has desire or hope. Otherwise, you would be a monk or depressed. If you have hope or meaning, life seems so simple. You have reason to keep going. But, a monk has renounced any worldly desire. So, what keeps them going? In some communities, monks are revered and reach out to aid those in need. So, maybe it’s the chance to serve humanity. They spend hours studying and meditating, so maybe they seek knowledge and connection to something deeper. Maybe, they just want a nicer room and the power associated with the title of head llama.

I don’t have an answer, I’m just exploring the idea of being void of desire. What’s left after you realize that the world has nothing left to offer you? Is there meaning to life without desire?

As I pointed to above, many fill that gap with a belief they can make a contribution to humanity. Some spend it pursuing an unquenchable hedonistic thirst. Others harvest the rewards of the seeds they sowed during their days of desire. What was the point of all that hard work, if you can’t enjoy filling that desire that drove you for so long?

Some never filled their desires or chose desires that were unachievable, and gave up. These people live in denial and ignorance, avoiding the pain of their failure. They will drown their minds until the impermanence of biology gets the better of them.

Now, let’s consider someone special. This person fundamentally despises other humans. Yes, I see the irony in they are human, yet can’t stand their own race. To negate the irony, let’s say that this person despises themselves. They were treated without compassion as a child and knew nothing of trust or love. They grew up experiencing only cold and loneliness. They are alienated, at least in their mind. I’ll bet their favorite season is winter. They were offered help and compassion from others in their life, but turned down their offerings in a shroud of pride or inability to trust. This person would rather take without being offered, often in a sneaky manner, like they were cheating in a game only they were playing. Their greatest desire in life is to build an empire and status for the sake of spite or power over others.

Let’s say that this person has an epiphany and realizes the error of their ways. They find out that all their desire was for naught; it was fundamentally unfulfillable. What does life have left for this person?

Society has a deep seated fear of death. It runs rampant. But, once you understand and accept death, you have to accept it as a possibility in any moment. Sometimes, death is right. It can’t always be wrong. It’s part of life.

Is there a right or wrong way to live your life? Are there good and bad pursuits in life? Is that what you truly believe, or just what you’ve been told? Think about it. Good and bad, right and wrong, don’t really exist. They are opinions; words used to express desires of another. You can’t say that your life is any more correct than any other life. There is no good way to start or finish. There’s nothing and nobody more important than anybody else. It’s all a device to advance humanity.

Advance humanity. Most people are just trying to survive! So, who is deciding how we should be advancing? I’ll bet it isn’t you! But, even if it was, would you be making better decisions than they are? Don’t forget, we just found out that there is no good or bad.

I’ll bet a sense of futility just captured you. If not, go back and read it again. Now, let me ask again. What does life have left for you?

Darkness

The darkness doesn’t have any answers. I know this. Yet, when I’m faced with emotions I cannot contain, my first instinct is to withdraw. I pull a dark shade over my thoughts and surroundings to hide the pain inside. I hide my vulnerability.

I grew up believing that it was embarrassing to be vulnerable. True strength had no holes. A person worthy of respect was a superhero. Impenetrable. Invulnerable.

I tried to hide it. I tried so hard. I lied and deceived myself, and everyone else, somewhat unsuccessfully into believing that I was stronger than I was. That I am less vulnerable than I am. Possibly the biggest mistake I ever made. Am still making.

The darkness only grew. It began to consume more and more of my life. School. Friendships. Family. Conversations. Eventually, it got so big that there was nowhere left to hide. I was the darkness. I cried in the darkness.

You have to let go of this dark weight you’re carrying around. It’s a very romantic notion that all the garbage and pain is actually healing, beautiful and poetic. It’s not. It’s just garbage and it’s pain.

The strongest are those who are willing to be vulnerable. To put their thoughts and feelings, fears and emotions into words and out into the world. Those who are willing to be themselves. Those who are comfortable with themselves. Those who trust themselves.

Fight or Flight

We’ve been taught since we were young that there are two ways to react to a change in our environment. To fight it, or to escape it. Fight or Flight. The idea came from observing animals in nature. When a grizzly bear encounters a human, it makes a snap decision. Will I risk losing it all by standing my ground and fighting? Or, will I live to see another day by avoiding the battle? Have I really saved myself by running? Does asking myself whether to stay or run predispose me to a loss no matter what decision I make?

For the bear, this decision is instinctual. But, even if it weren’t, the bear would fight his heart out. To his bitter end. Once he engaged, he would forget that he had the option of escaping. He would never accept second best. He would never fight scared of loss. Scared that he made the wrong decision.

As I read my thoughts, I introduce fear into every situation before I even start. What if this isn’t the right place for me to be? What if this isn’t the right decision? What if I made a mistake? By questioning and re-analyzing the decision, I can’t win. No matter what decision it was. I can no longer fully dedicate myself to succeeding in my new post-decision reality. The battle intimidates me. I could have easily run, but didn’t. I could still run, but I’m waiting for a sign. I don’t want to lose, but escape is better than a loss. Or, is it?

Your Path

We all have an ideal. That person we want to be. The person we are, somewhere deep inside. The ideal we want to live up to. It could be a person we know and love. It might be a fictional character from television, a movie, or a dream. It might just be a belief in the goodness in all of us. Our ideal is the person we think of when we’re trying to make a tough decision, and we say What would Lucas do in this situation?

But, sometimes we get led away from that person. We forget to double check our decisions. We lose sight of the person we once were and the life we once wanted. We may be led by the actions of another. A sudden event in our life may push us. We might begin a steep fall down a slippery slope of bad decisions without even knowing it. Before you know it, you’ve moved so far away from your ideal that the person you were before becomes your new dream. At least she hadn’t made so many bad decisions. Or did she?

All we ever wanted was to fill our dream, our ideal. But, now it seems so bleak. It’s drifting away, into a deep dark grayscale abyss. We’ve dug a hole so deep that it seems impossible to reach back up to the place where we once were. Let alone rise above it.

How does this happen? How do we become someone we know we’re not? It scares me just thinking about it. Living to see it realized is unspeakably difficult. A better question to ask might be, What can we do? We all know that choosing the right path is never easy. It’s an accumulation of every decision you’ve ever made, and every decision you didn’t make. The future holds infinite possibilities for us, but probability says that at least as many of those paths are fulfilling, as they are disappointing. It might be the saddest despair for a man to look back on what once was, or what could never be. I can’t tell you what the right path, or the path to fulfillment might be, but I can tell you it doesn’t lead to despair.

Rising from the Ashes

Metaphor. This entry is all about metaphor.

After an 18 month hiatus, I am reviving this blog. Those eighteen months were packed with more lessons than I care to highlight now. Instead, I will answer a few simple questions, and save the juicy details for the future. I love anticipation!

Why did I stop writing so many months ago? As we all know life happens altogether too quick to fully comprehend it in that moment. Or at least, the last year and half as felt that way. I became way to enamored with my life and myself to bother writing. There was no point. My life was perfect. I couldn’t bring myself to honestly reflect on my new life. I chose to ignore and live in blissful ignorance. Despite the castle walls that were crumbling around me.

Which brings me to why I’m breathing (or typing!) life back into my unfinished journal. As all good things do, my life and identity as I knew it, came to an abrupt end. In a combination of experiences that still make me emotional, I lost everything I thought I had. So, cracking open this journal is also a coming of age for the author. I’ve come to realize how important this forum really is to me, my life and my growth. I will breathe life forever more.

As a final metaphorical irony, this post is being published on 9/11 (2008). I still remember where I was that day, six years ago. And, I’m still here.

Can your life change in an hour?

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools

I have experienced a moment that will change my life forever. This moment was a very profound, spiritual, intimate and reflective event. I feel like I left the Iron Ring Ceremony as a different person than the one that entered.

Yesterday, I was greatly honoured to have participated in The Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer, a century old tradition in Canadian Engineering. The Ritual (also known as The Iron Ring Ceremony) is a significant time in an engineers’ life. At this time, the young engineering graduate becomes a qualified member of the profession. An important step, but what really touched me was the symbolism of the moment.

The ideals of an engineer encompasses many virtues that I hold in high regard. These virtues include honesty, integrity, reliability and a responsibility to society. I value an awareness of our society and respect those who contribute to it. I understand meaningful relationships and know that we can only advance as a race if we give more than we take. In our current state, I believe that there are a disproportionately small number of people who make the greatest contributions back to society. I believe that the volume of value given by the great contributors exceeds the value taken by others. Integrity, strength of character, is embodied in self assuredness and applied in the engineers’ every decision. Honesty is removing the guise that your pride places on your mind and representing entirely candid thoughts and feelings. One must possess high integrity to be genuinely and eternally honest since one must trust themselves before others will offer their trust. Reliability is a strength of character so strong that it stands through diversity, disaster and time. Rudyard Kiplings’ voice gives words to these ideals in the above quote.

Kevin Bailey, a man that I have known for quite some time, and a person that I believe represents these virtues placed the symbolic ring on my finger. In that moment, I felt a wave of pride wash over me. I knew that moment was the beginning of the rest of my life. My character has been ever slowly evolving and this symbol unites my virtues with my character. The ring feels like a piece of my integrity, an ageless memento of commitment to myself.

My life did change in that hour. Eternally, for the better.

The timing of this day was perfect. I have passed through several important stages of questioning my moral character, leading up to the ceremony. You do not need to wait for a significant event to reflect on life and change your personality. It is never too late to be the person you want to be. Take the opportunity now and the next hour will change your life.

Fluffy Nonsense and Thought Capacity

If you read my most recent posts, you’ll notice I keep bringing up this notion that I need to save the world. The amount of space this value has taken on my posts is not only disproportionate to my desire, but is also poorly thought out.

Lately, my mind has been broken. I’ve been reviewing some of the posts that I wrote when I first started this blog, and realize how clearly I was thinking then. What factors affected my ability to think clearly and how can I replicate that state? At the time I was spending evenings alone, I was eating well, getting regular exercise and sleeping about 9 hours a night. I never skipped a meal. I felt refreshed and awake when I woke up every morning. I was living in a beautiful place with moderate weather, right on the pacific ocean. Now that I think about it, my mind was never clearer.

Since I’ve been back at school, my mind has slowly been reduced to mush. I started strong, but the stress, responsibilities and time constraints have been slowly wearing me down. I get an average of 7 hours sleep and I regularly miss meals. I certainly do not eat a regular healthy meal. I still play sports, but my focus is much more competitive. In a metaphorical sense, I am always on.

This discussion is leading to several well known problems that are characteristic of our western society. These are the issues of time management and work-life balance. I see these both as being the same problem, since work-life balance is how you manage the time that you are given.

As I am nearing the end of my academic career, I realize that my style of time management is not well organized. I know that I have a short attention span, and I have a tendancy to divert my attention quickly, often too quickly. It is difficult for me sit and focus on the same task for extended periods of time. I think of my mind as having a thought capacity. My thought capacity changes from time to time, but my mind is always running at capacity. Should I begin to lose thought on the task at hand, my thoughts begin to wander. In this way, my mind as always able to maintain thought capacity. Like nearly every other describable human character trait, my wandering attention is both a blessing and a curse.

Can I be productive while changing focus regularly? I can, but I need to get a feeling for the best time to switch between tasks. I need to set goals, especially smaller goals, and conquer them one goal at a time. I need to follow my own advice on squashing procrastination.

I need to recognize when my thought capacity is reduced, when I am not thinking clearly. I need to learn to adapt according and find a way to return to my best self.

Free Spirit

As time passes, my thoughts and time are moving towards building a sustainable business. My discussions with like-minded friends have lead me to consider who I am, my dreams, goals and motivations. I realized, not too long ago, that my dream was to take an entrepreneurial route to my career. I understand now that I need to put into my goals and values into words.
I do dream of making an important contribution to a cause that I believe in, but this is just a means to an end. The reasons I have for confronting the world delve into the realm of martyrdom.

I believe that I have a gift. A valuable and significant gift. I believe that this power I have within me cannot be realized without the opportunity. I have worked at several large companies. I have allowed others to manage both my time and my mind. To be honest, it felt great contributing to a team and given the occasional sensation that my effort was making a difference. It is a great feeling to be able to help another. This feeling is dear to me from my days as a ski coach. When you look into that fourteen year old’s eyes after a tough race, where they proved to themselves how amazing they really are, you get the warmest fuzzy feeling you could imagine. I have never felt so important, so significant, as I did in that moment. That said, if I were to devote my time to one of these large well-established companies, that would be the only time I would get that feeling. I would never get the satisfaction of knowing my strength had made a real societal impact.

Am I really this selfless? I have been known to put on a sarcastic, condescending or even disgusted face, but deep inside of me lurks this value. I am intensely frustrated by the endless amount of needless suffering this world endures. I am emotionally distressed by the thought that thousands of years of human advancement was lost when Rome was toppled by the barbarians. I cannot just watch the human race underachieve. I need to do whatever I can to improve the lives of current and future societies.

I have the passion. I embody the word ambition. I have confidence in every breath. I will fight every fight I reasonably believe that I can win, to the bitter end. I have an unfilled void in my life and I cannot sleep soundly until I can watch society realize its potential.

The pragmatist in me tells me that I am going to have problems in this role. I know that I cannot be perfect all the time. I am going to make mistakes. There are going to be decisions that I regret. There are going to times when I am not going to be able to find the right words. There are going to be times when I struggle with my shortcomings. I am worried that I will lose sight of the goal. It scares me to think that I might lose my ambition. I feel that as long as I stay true to myself and my values, I will be able to rise and overcome any challenges I may face. I also realize how cliche that sounds, but it is exactly how I feel.

I am going to experience many exicting times and many trying times. This experience is going to push me to all of my limits. I want this to be the most challenging and most rewarding time in my life. Above all, I want to be able to look back and know that I put all my effort into the most valuable cause I can think of. I want to know that I did the best I could. If I always stay true to myself, make the best decisions I can and give everything I have, I will never have regrets.

Towards Self Appreciation (Part 2)

This post is the second in a several part series on better understanding myself. If you have not yet read part one, you may want to go back and do that now.

I have provided some insight into the person I want to be. Many people feel that the characteristics one prizes is the best way to describe a person because what you dream will become a self fulfilling prophecy. I am more pragmatic than that. I understand that people are going to lean towards dreams. A dream is also a dream and not always achieveable. A ideal might influence a decision. In life, there are many factors that are considered before reaching a conclusion. Not all decisions are going to follow a persons’ ideals. Descibing prized characteristics can only formalize a small subset of the complicated interactions that influence the mind.

I am going to run off on another tangent, to describe a subtle but meaningful fact. The process of understanding who you are is simply enumerating the factors that influence your decisions. Whether those factors are experiences, ideals, values, morals, trust, confidence, rules or influence. Think about it. Every decision that you make, or do not make, descibes the very essence of you. I have chosen to contemplate philosophical life issues in my blog. I chose not to read about applied methods of software validation. I chose not to spend time with my friends. I chose not to live in the United States. I chose against devoting my every waking hour to reduce the impact of major complications affecting every lifeform in the known universe. Every decision I make, is also a decision that I am not making. Those decisions define me.

Back from the tangent, I am going to attempt to descibe who I am. I am going to try to decipher the other factors that influence my decisions. Here we go.

From all my past experiences, the memories that I am the most drawn to are those when I was appreciated. Appreciation is the only measure available to judge the value and direction of my impact. While using appreciation as a measure might work, it is a very pragmatic viewpoint. Appreciation is a source of motivation, one of the most powerful I have found. At the risk of appearing snobbish, I feel that I have been under-appreciated considering my many accomplishments. I understand the importance of recognizing accomplishments and giving praise when praise is due. I feel that our culture grossly under-appreciates the efforts of others. Unless, abstaining the younger generation from praise is a plan to ensure human perseverance and productivity in the future. Consider this angle. If society only gives praise to significant accomplishments and we recognize that acceptance, praise and appreciation are basic human incentives, then people will always push to achieve significance. Children will grow to be the best that they can be. Individuals will try harder to reach the goal. We can condition society to advance itself. This leaves a great burden of quality of life with the education system and the body that controls education. I think this is much bigger question and I will save it for another post.

I am cynical, inquisitive and generally untrusting. I have trust issues, I have since I was young. The first time my trust was betrayed, I began generalizing that I could not trust anyone. I attribute this decision to many problems I had in my life, including an underdeveloped level of respect and lack of social skills. I did give-up on others too quickly but it did result in an independent and clever (albeit paranoid) little boy. I was the cliche anti-social teenagers-are-mean story. Although I enjoyed sports, I had confidence issues and believed that I could not compete. I was not going to be bothered with an activity that I was not ever going to be good at. Instead, I tried to escape my life by watching television and playing countless hours of video games. I needed slow steps to break out of the shell I had surrounded my feelings in. Luckily, I did have at least one person I felt I could trust. My best friend, who continues to be a good friend, was able to show me the light. We spent a lot of time together. I became good friends with the friends he made at school. I started branching out, playing sports, participating in gatherings other than school and the couch in front of the tv. I grew more confidence as I was able to prove my own self worth. It was an amazingly empowering feeling. I got deeply involved in alpine skiing only a few years after I learned to make my first turn.

I am heavily pragmatic and realistic. I am always analyzing a question based on how it applies to the world we know. I am competitive. I never back down from a challenge. I could go on explaining my personality, but I have a better way. I took a personality test, which involved answering a set of questions about the types of decisions that I make. This test classifys personalities into sixteen different categories. Fortunately, my personality type (INTJ) describes me to a tee.

Towards Self Appreciation (Part 1)

Being able to describe myself is not a simple, or short topic. In fact, if you’ve been following, I have been describing myself through my thoughts since the first post. This topic, I’m hoping will have some flow to it, so I decided to split it into several posts.

I believe in taking two approaches to better understanding myself. The first is to seek help from others. The second is to carefully consider who I am. These two approaches should be very disconnected. Who I am to other people or how I am perceived. Who I believe I am or who I want to be. I am hoping that the combination should give a rounded description of Adam.

As I try to put myself into words, I find it difficult to use words based on examples, without recalling conflicting counterexamples. I feel that I should focus on the person that I want to be instead of the person that I am. I hope there is little disjoint between the responses to those questions, but am certain that there is. As I grow and change as a person, there will always be differences.

I want to make a significant and valuable contribution to society. This value is relatively novel to me. I believe that it formalized when I was considering what part of endeavours I have engaged in was the most important to me. One of the most important experiences in my life was the opportunity to become a coach for young athletes aspiring to be alpine skiing superstars. I had many reasons to be a coach but the most significant was that I was able to contribute value to their young lives, the future of the sport and Canadian nationalism. My value in philanthropy has only grown. I read news from all over the world regularly and study the principles of economics. I understand how unhappiness is spread over the world, how many problems people deal with on a daily basis, how unproductive lives are, and that I can make a difference. I feel that the impact that I can have is limited only by my own ambition.

I want to be a person of high integrity. I want to be trusting, trustworthy and dependable. I have strong moral values that need to be exhibited. This is not the person that I have always been, and I realize that fact. Over time, I have come to realize that integrity is the most important characteristic a person can have. A person with integrity is confident, honest and secure with their character. A person with integrity understands themselves, and can make sound judgments as a result. A person of integrity can weather the raging storms of life with a strength that is derived from themselves. A person of integrity supports and empowers those around him.