Tag Archives: #beingabetterman

Better at Knowing How You Feel

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“Oh, I know how you feel…”

Really?

Hearing this phrase from well meaning friends, relatives, acquaintances, the girl in the drive through at McDonalds is a way of saying “I heard what you said, but let me either, not really care, pretend to care or tell you about when it happened to me – which of course makes me superior to you and my experience much more meaningful…..”

This platitude of “I know how you feel” is only ever really felt by those who actually have experienced what you are going through and know saying “I know how you feel” is not necessary so they don’t say it – you may catch their eye in that moment of feeling and you know they know – they do’t need to tell you.

Lets take a step back from my rant and talk about why I know that I do not know how you feel…

Firstly I realised and acknowledged to myself that I am not a full functioning alien empath and therefore can not physically, emotionally or even intellectually know how you feel…

Secondly, I can not read minds….

Thirdly, I spent most of my life thinking I knew how everybody felt, and why, and how they could fix it, and I told them how, if they didn’t listen I insisted….

So, my first lesson in knowing how somebodies feels is in acknowledging that I don’t.  The second lesson I learned, albeit the hard way, was that whatever they are feeling, it is their feelings, their way…. and it is not mine to judge that.

It does matter the circumstances, it doesn’t matter the judgement….

“Oh he/she is so strong considering….”
“He/she is so emotional over……”
“What a whinger….”

“Why won’t they talk about it, I’ve offered so many times….”

etc etc etc

Probably said with all the best of intentions (sometimes…) but really just bullshit platitudes to indicate that you don’t know how they feel – and this is probably what confuses you.  And, so many people think they can ‘do something’….

In a hard moment often people will call, or say “If there is anything I can do let me know…”  to which I always reply, “Yes, as a matter of fact there is, can you come around and wash my car / mow my lawn / do my washing etc etc”  As you can imagine you get ‘crickets’ in the conversation or on the other end of the phone….  Mostly, you have to realise that unless you have a time machine, or can bring people back from the dead, there is nothing you can do except be there.  I don’t need new friends in moments of grief, but they will often be the most supportive;  I need my old friends, but they are often the most scarce…  success has a thousand fathers and failure/grief/sadness etc is an orphan…

Sometimes, I think the people that really know how I feel, don’t contact me with the immediacy of action and the ‘can I help syndrome’ – they are the ones that fill my heart with the one line text, the card in the mail (do people still do this other than me…), the quick email that is the true indicator that they may not know how I feel but they remember how they felt when it happened to them….

Look, I don’t know how you feel unless you tell me, and you are probably not going to do that for a while as you are processing it yourself, and maybe will be for the rest of your life.

Look, I don’t know how you feel but you can cry when I am around and not be ashamed or feel weak…
Look, I don’t know how you feel but you can come and hide at my place….
Look, I don’t know how you feel but you can be as illogical with me as you like and I won’t judge….
Look, I don’t know how you feel…. and I won’t mow your lawn or wash your car….

The best of intentions are usually just that; it is like having every intention of doing something… they are actually for you and not the other person – like most things in life when we look at them…. which is usually not because we don’t know how other people feel, but because we don’t think about it in our daily lives and it only becomes a concern in times of hardship, grief or failure….  then it is just a platitude for us, again.

I feel like this post has run it’s course – but you already knew that.

 

 

 

Better on the Crazy Train

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I have written a lot about living our lives on autopilot – just going through life watching TV, jumping from shiny thing to shiny thing and then, bang, one day you wake up dead and think how did that happen, I had so much to do!

I think there is another trap in life, especially modern life and that is riding the crazy train with all the other clowns and not knowing it.

There are two major challenges here – firstly getting on the crazy train and then getting off.

The crazy train is also a very different place.  All the people on the crazy train don’t know they are crazy and don’t even know they are dressed as clowns and recruiting other commuters.

We all have to ride the crazy train.  It involves listening to the Merchants of Misery (The Media) and believing them; working at jobs that don’t mean anything or make anything (commonly known as bullshit jobs), doing anything that involves any government agency or Bank, etc etc

But, the crazy train is a means of transport and doesn’t have to be a way of life.

Here is my little example.  You have to get on the crazy train to undertake one of the above  bits of life in modern society.  You press the button and step onto the train with a clear intention of your destination – by the way you don’t have to buy a ticket on the crazy train, it free!

You look around and see that everyone on the train is dressed as a clown.  They are squirting each other in the face with plastic flowers, throwing buckets of confetti over each other, driving up and down the isles in those little cars and generally doing what clowns do – this is the purpose of the crazy train – pointless motion in costume to achieve little results.

You find a seat by the window thinking of your destination.

Suddenly a very nice clown sits next to you and asks why you aren’t dressed properly and points out that you stand out as being different.  You politely tell them you just want to ride the train to your appointment.  His is very understanding and agrees that it’s okay for you to do that…… but, …… suggests that just so that you fit in a little better you might want to just try on, you don’t have to wear it all the way, but just try on, this red nose.

What could be the harm you think – you do feel a little awkward and the nose might help.  After putting on the nose you are introduced to a few other clowns.  Each one suggests something else you might want to wear to fit in a bit more…. what could be the harm you think.

So as your destination is approaching, you are in full clown outfit and juggling at the end of of the carriage when your stop is announced.  You say you have to get off, but you have fitted in so well, it seems a shame to leave now.

Some insist you stay as you are the best juggler they have ever had…..

What, me, juggler clown…?  You yell out “No, I am not like you.” and as you do you catch your reflection in the window of the carriage, in full clown outfit, juggling and smiling through your clown makeup……

You stay on the crazy train.  You can’t remember your original destination but you are now going with everybody else and it seems like the right thing to do.

Suddenly the door opens and a person gets on with street clothes one.  You sit next to them and suggest they try on the spare red nose you have so that they will fit in a bit more.

Better at Not Knowing Who I Am….

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The other day I heard this great explanation of figuring out who you are;  it starts off as a little bit of a test and the interesting use of the word percieve.

This is a bit of a follow on from a post I wrote the other day about possibly being in a computer simulation (which I suspect may still actually be true!) – the thing about this post was in part, identifying who I actually was.

The dictionary meaning being “become aware or conscious of (something); come to realize or understand”

So here is the exercise about finding who you are…. I will use a car (an ordinary automobile, like the one you drive to work):

  • I am looking at a car (or even driving it, or touching it)
  • I can perceive that car.
  • Am I the car?
  • No.  I am not the car because I can perceive it.
  • I can not be something I can perceive.

You can repeat this exercise around the entire house with all the things you own.  You can even do it with your friends ….. “Am I my best friend, no, because I can perceive my best friend, so I can not be them….”

Now comes the really tricky part of this little exercise.  Stop worrying about all the ‘things’ and people around you and just take a seat and think about you.  Now we are going to repeat the exercise.

  • Am I my body? No.
    Because I can perceive my body.
  • Am I my thoughts?
    No.
    Because I can perceive my thoughts.
  • Am I my emotions?
    No.
    Because I can perceive my emotions.

What the…..!!!!!

What am I.
Who am I.
Who is this all perceiving me.

Good question?

Better the Construct of Myself (Is this The Matrix?)

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The start of this post may not make sense to people who have not seen (or understood!) the movie The Matrix – but a lot of people will say the movie can not be understood…. anyway I digress.

To summarise the premise of the movie:

Our lives as we perceive them are computer generated and we are all actually living in a simulation…

That about sums up the Matrix and the rest of the movie and subsequent sequels are about our hero, Neo, trying to get control of the simulation and escape to the ‘real world’.  (The real world in the movie is actually a bit shit and we all live as human batteries in a pod of jelly – but again I digress….)

Part of our hero Neo’s education of him being a ‘slave to the machines’ who run the simulation (The Matrix) is that he goes back into the Matrix to defeat it.  In going back into The Matrix he finds has a certain look, wears certain clothes, has a certain haircut etc etc – all of which turn out to be his ‘construct’ of himself in his mind which is translated into his appearance in The Matrix…..

NB: Apologies but I think my introduction above to this post is as about as complicated as the movie!!!!!

So, our hero Nero lives in the Matrix as a ‘construct’ of what his mind tells him he is…..

Is this sounding a little familiar now?

I think we all live in this world (which the longer I observe could actually be The Matrix and the movie was really a documentary…!!!) as constructs of ourselves.

For me the ‘taking of the blue pill or the red pill’ (for those who haven’t seen the movie the choosing of the pill is the time that our hero decides if he wants to know the truth!) was when I retired from my career after 38 years…..  suddenly I was no longer the ‘construct’ I had made of myself over those years.  For me this was a bit scary as I actually thought this was who I was.

For all of us I think this construct is different, but it is often just the way we think about ourselves as opposed to the way we act.  I was trying to think of a few generic example…

We think we are generous but dont donate to the man in the street…

We think we are good at maths but can’t balance our finances…

We think we are no confrontational yet always appear to be in arguments…

We think the bloke down the street is an idiot yet he appears to be happy and we are always miserable…

I think the problem with our ‘construct’ is that it only relates to the real world in our head, and worse it is only visible as a shit construct to those around us and not ourselves.

One thing that led Neo to discover The Matrix was that everyday he had lived his life, it just, didn’t feel right.

In my pervious career it never just felt right.  The values that I was living, didn’t quite feel right, my interactions with people, mostly didn’t quite feel right (the funny part about this is the best interactions I had with people which I remember vividly today were the ones where upon reflection I didn’t behave in line with my construct)…. mostly, in the last 38 years I feel as if I have been living in The Matrix, walking around in a constructed personality, clothes, attitudes, loves and hates, friends and enemies, values and even dreams and aspirations, which were created outside of me.

A lot of what has happened to me in the past, a lot of what I did and said, was like watching a movie.

So, I wake up – I take the pill that shows me The Matrix is not real and my construct… my construct of me, of who I think I am, who other people think I am…. is in actual fact, basically, bullshit!

Well, let me tell you that realisation is where the fun starts, as perhaps you are left with nothing.  I was lucky.  Still lurking inside me somewhere was me.

I am still trying to find him… and let me tell you 38 years of learned, acted and executed behaviours is something pretty hard to unlearn.

Living now is really living the adage that if it doesn’t ‘feel’ right, even if that feeling can’t be put into a logical train of thought, then it probably isn’t.  I catch myself at least a thousand times a day thinking as the ‘construct’ who is telling me that the person I am trying to find is actually imaginary and get back to the real world and the business at hand…

But, I think there is a trick.

What if the new me is just another construct and I find that I am watching the wrong movie, and it is all just a dream within a dream and Leonardo DiCaprio just appeared from Inception….

Better at Doing Nothing

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This morning I went for a short walk with my friend Made in the Balinese village of Silakarang after telling him today I planned to do nothing….

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Doing nothing internationally

I have actually been doing that since we arrived several weeks ago, however, it is the case that actually doing nothing is impossible;  even doing nothing is doing something.

When I ‘circle talk’ like this it often reminds me of the overwhelming common sense and wisdom of the Australian Aboriginal people when I was working in the APY lands – I would often be looking for people and ask a local man or woman where that person was, and they would so often reply “They must be somewhere.”  This is logic that you just can not argue with.  Just like doing nothing is doing something.

I have a series of retorts I use since retiring which my wife partakes in yet I am sure is sick of hearing, such as:

Since I retired I have been so busy I am thinking of putting another man on.

 

My wife asked me what I was doing today and I said nothing, and she said, but you did that yesterday; to which I reply “Yeah, but I hadn’t finished.”

These go on and on; but, am I really doing nothing – which as commented above, is actually impossible.

My today of doing nothing is perhaps best aligned to where I am at – of course I am ‘somewhere’ but, where is my head at, is it somewhere that matters or am I still on autopilot living without actually noticing my life.

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Doing nothing at home.

I hope not. I hope I am getting better at appreciating the moment, this moment, which is all that exists and needs to be noticed to be truely appreciated.

Doing nothing for me today, is as I have posted so many times before, about noticing all the moments that will exist today and that each one will never come again and should be cherished; because, we never really know what the next moment will bring.

Better at Being Grateful (16/21 Gratitude Challenge)

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Todays challenge:

Stand in front of the mirror for five minutes and focus on at least five things that you love about yourself. Write them down in your journal.

I was a little concerned that it was only 5 minutes – and I was more concerned that it Screen Shot 2015-06-06 at 1.39.36 pmdidn’t actually say naked, but, I took that as a given….

Initially, I couldn’t get a good view as there was some fat old guy standing in front of me.  When I finally managed to peak around the dugong that had beached itself in front of me I discovered I am a pretty attractive man.

I can understand why men want to be me and chicks dig me… they are after all, only human.

One must remember that this is the second day in my gratitude challenge which is focusing on me… I prefer in any period such as this that all days are focused on me, but, as ‘Effi’ in the old TV show Acropolis Now said “beauty is a curse, and I have it!”

So back to me and the mirror – make that mirrors as one was just not enough.. take that as you will!  I thought I should work my way down from my head to my toes – remember that looking at the sun in its entirety can blind you.  I initially tried to use one of those eclipse peep hole cameras but couldn’t get it aligned properly – more about my arse later….

One
I concentrated on my eyes… I was there for about 20 minutes looking left, and looking right, up, down, trying to catch my eyes moving in the mirror (admit it you have all tried!) before I realised that a lot of the time when I have looked in the mirror (other than in doing the above experiment) you do not actually look at your eyes.  You look where you are shaving, you look at the hair you are combing – but, do you ever stare into your own eyes.  Well, today I did.  It was interesting because you cant look at both of them at the same time – which of course doesn’t matters as when you swap you cant see your eyes moving anyway.  I love my eyes not only for what they see, but because I am grateful I have them and I can see.

Two
In the process of checking our my head, I did notice that my ears are rather prominent.  Something that to those who know me will know – they are like a couple of dinner plates attached to either side of my head.  When I was a baby my Mum once dropped me and I just glided to the ground.  But, as much as I wanted my ears pinned back, I have had then pierced several time (thinking about that now why would I want to adorn my ears with things that would draw peoples attention to them?) and have listened to a lot of shit, heard a lot of sad stories and listened to a myriad of good a bad jokes:  they have taken me through decades of music and now always have that slight buzz from tinnitus…  I am grateful for my ears – I have even learned to love their enormity.

Three
I didn’t dwell on my narrow shoulders, man boob chest, or mono abdominal muscle – I went straight to my arms – well one arm in particular – my right arm, no left, hang on no right…  just above the inside of my elbow is a 2 cm scar, still very prominent with the three stitch holes prominent on each side.  This was an operation that I had when I was about 8 years old to see if I had a hole in my heart.  I was awake and they inserted a tube through this cut in my arm to explore my heart – no hole (other than the one left in my arm).  I like this little, old fashioned scar, I am grateful that it reminds me that I do have a heart and it doesn’t have a hole in it.

Four
My dick – all me love their dicks!

Five
I have a scar on my knee (not from the above loved body part hitting it I might add) from a push bike accident when I was a kid.  It reminds me of how much I loved being a kid.  I am grateful that I had a good childhood and great parents – this little scar reminds me of it all the time – I love it.

So, I wrote them down – the five things that I like about my body.  But, to me this is a silly gratitude challenge.  My body is just something I have.  It is my cover, the walking around bit – looking at it in the mirror and saying what bits you love, is frankly, irrelevant; it is just a continuation of us being grateful for something that doesn’t matter – our looks.