INTERESTING TIMES

You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.
~ Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

About Pirsig and his book: I was made to read this book at approximately age 18, when I first started working at the Nantahala Outdoor Center in North Carolina. I was quite moldable, impressionable, unformed at that age. Payson Kennedy was in charge of training and orienting all new staff, and reading this book was his one requirement. What it taught me was a lesson that took many years to sink in, that small details deserve our full attention, that doing your best it the only way to do anything right. Thank you Payson for requiring us to read this book, for it has helped form my perspective for over 30 years since then. I think it may be time to reread it.

This of course was all brought up because Pirsig has died at the age of 88. It's encouraging to note that his book was rejected by 121 publishing houses before someone decided to print it.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/04/24/525443040/-zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance-author-robert-m-pirsig-dies-at-88

Don't ask what the world needs.
Ask yourself what makes you come alive
and then go do that.
Because what the world needs
is people who have come alive.
--Howard Thurman, civil rights leader

Idle words are characterless and die upon utterance. Evil words rankle for a while, make contentions, and then die. But the hopeful, kind, cheering word sinks into a man’s heart and goes on bearing fruit forever. How many beautiful written words—words in book and song and story—are still inspiring men and making the world fragrant with their beauty! It is just so with the words you write, not on paper, but on the hearts of men. I wish there were room to mention here the testimonies of great men to the power of some hopeful, encouraging word they had spoken to them in youth and in the days of struggle. But every autobiography records this thing. Booker T. Washington tells how the encouragement of General Armstrong saved the future for him. I know a young man who is to-day filling a large and useful place in the world, who was kept to his high purpose in a time of discouragement by just an encouraging word from a man he greatly admired. That man’s word will live and grow in the increasing influence of the younger man. This world is full of men bearing in their minds deathless words of inspiration heard in youth from lips now still forever. Speak hopeful words every chance you get. Always send your young friends from you bearing a word that they will take into the years and fulfill for you.
--from The Enlargement of Life (1903) by Frederick Henry Lynch

You just keep pushing. You just keep pushing.
I made every mistake that could be made.
But I just kept pushing.
--Rene Descartes

My resolutions for last year included a renewed emphasis on always doing my best. That practice allows me to go easy on myself when my best isn't the greatest. I did well on this resolution, especially when I decided to put my energies into doing the research that will allow me to be a good doctor, instead of simply doing what it took to pass my program. I feel good about the work that I've done and I know it will put me in good stead in the future.

I also resolved to keep my vision on the horizon. I have been swayed a bit much by men who have crossed my path; it is my weakness. My longterm goals need to be present in my daily life, and I need some way to remind myself of them. I think I was too vague about exactly what I was going to do, which helped me to not do it.

So let it be also resolved that I will make a list of my 10 longterm goals along with a timeframe for completion, and see how that ends up matching with reality. Prediction is a whole different matter from simply reporting what is. Planning is what makes some people in great demand as project managers. I need to manage this project of my life a little more actively and see how it goes.

Mind you I have a longstanding practice of going with the flow. I recognize the hazard of trying to force things, and I know the beauty in letting the finest manifestations emerge out of not knowing. I would like to enter a state of being in which the flow moves my goals forward. In other words, this is a good time for setting intention.

May the beauty
of what you love
be what you do.
--Rumi

Strategy is scarcity’s child
and to have a strategy,
rather than vague aspirations,
is to choose one path
and eschew others...
--Richard P. Rumelt

The most common way that people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.
--Alice Walker