Why is it So Hard to Get Things Done?

Truthfully, we feel too much. 

If we didn't care about how tiring or dreadful this or that task was, or how time-consuming and tedious, or scary and risky, we would get a lot more things done.  But we care too much, and because we care, our feelings become a sort of monster that steps in front of our active self and stops us from doing the things we need to get done. 

Consider a computer.  A computer gets everything done that you ask of it, unless there's something wrong with it, of course.  But a healthy computer will perform everything you want, and it won't hesitate (except to process) nor whine.  It will just do it.  That's because it has no feelings for anything it does and so it does them all.  No task is better than another or easier.  It is all the same to the computer.  And because of that, computers accomplish a lot.  Consider how much your computer does each day.  But a healthy able-bodied human being, who could hypothetically do everything he tells himself, often doesn't get stuff done.   Instead, he hesitates and delays, hems and haws, and all because he allows a big monster named Dread to get in his way.

I am very well acquainted with the monster Dread and his intimidating, seemingly all-consuming presence.  Whenever I think of doing a task, he comes in between me and the task, and roars at me horribly, showing his frightful yellow teeth.  He threatens me with his rock hard muscles and his giant club.  And suddenly whatever I was planning to do seems most horrible and unpleasant.  So horrible and unpleasant that I often run away so that I don't have to deal with him.  But the horrible thing is, putting the task aside doesn't get rid of Dread.  He's still there in the corner of my eye, yelling and taunting, and it seems rather that each time I postpone doing something, Dread renews himself, becoming bigger and stronger, so that I am cowering under him and unable to do anything for fear of him. 

Only lately have I begun to realize that Dread has no power over me.  I am the one who has power over him, actually.  Because I am the one who created him in the first place.  So I can make him small or tiny, or silly and laughable, and I can even make him cease to exist if I like.  That is the power I have over Dread.  For I gave him life, so I can very easily take it away.

Case in point:  This weekend I cleaned the stove.  I didn't have to clean the stove, but it has been getting rather yucky with oil and grease stains all over it, and I have not cleaned it for a while.  It was one of my goals this year to clean it and when I wrote that goal, a vision of Dread went through my mind, and each time I thought about it, I saw Dread too.  But this weekend, I decided to clean the stove.  And I just did it.  I didn't consider what a terrible task it was, or how yucky.  I just considered what I needed to do to get it clean, and I did it.  And I put on some fun music while I worked.  And I enjoyed myself.  Now my stove is clean, cleaner than I've ever had it, and it looks beautiful!  And I get to enjoy looking at it and using it.  As I think back on it, I marvel at how easy it was to get this chore done when I had been dreading it all this time.  But at the moment I wanted to get it done, I didn't let Dread interfere.  I put him aside, even bringing in his arch nemesis Fun, and because of that I accomplished my goal.  I just did it, without considering my feelings for it. 

Each time I push aside Dread, I have realized that I often have a much better time of it, and it actually makes getting stuff done a breeze, and an enjoyable breeze at that.  I often feel much better about myself for doing it, because I kept a promise to myself, and it makes me feel like I accomplished something great (even if it's tiny).  It makes me happy and not just at that moment, but every time I see what I've accomplished, every time I see my nice clean stove.
 
In actuality, it's not the chore or having to do it that punishes us -- it's ourselves.  We punish ourselves by thinking terrible thoughts and making things harder than they really are or need to be.  If Sisyphus had enjoyed rolling a large boulder up a hill, and then watching it fall before it reached the top, would it still be considered a horrible punishment?  No.  It's how he felt about it that made it an onerous task vs an easy one. 

Indeed, perhaps the best way to free ourselves of dread is to choose to bring more fun into our lives, into whatever it is we are doing.  That way, instead of letting dread making us feel awful, we can enjoy just that much more of our lives.

Seeing What You Want to See

I had an argument with my friend over just this topic, so of course now it is my post for the day.

Our argument began with him saying how Americans are always trying to point out the differences between people and how prevalent that idea is in the media.  In some way or form, Americans are always trying to point out, "You're different."  That was his absolute opinion.  My argument was that Americans are not the only ones who do that.  Every country, every culture, every people do that.  Everyone discriminates.  If not race, we discriminate on class, culture, religion, gender, sexual preference.  Everyone does this.

My friend did not agree, however.  He was trying to aver that only Americans do it to such a high degree, that other countries aren't so bad.  "You don't find it in other countries."  And I said, "No, that's not true."  And I pointed out how I met a black man in Germany, an educated man working hard to pay for school, who said that if he applied for an apartment, he would be turned down as soon as they saw him.  And of course, my friend dismissed this story because it happened in Germany, a place known for Nazis.  But I told him Germany was trying to change their image precisely because of that; and yet, there is still that racism.  Of course, he would not listen, and kept declaring that other countries were not like America in their discrimination.  And I kept declaring that, "Yes they are!  I have been to other countries!"  At the time I thought of Madonna and how she was trying to get out word about the discrimination of the gypsies in Europe, which in the heat of argument, I couldn't get out.  And now I can think of a great argument which I didn't think of back then, which was that when my other friend and I went to Europe, we were commonly mistaken for Japanese tourists (which we are not), and sometimes subjected to Japanese words as if we understood.

But my friend wouldn't listen, falling back instead on the argument that Americans and white people are the most discriminating people in the world.  In my thinking, anyone who is in power would be the same, because everyone wants to think they are and be better than everyone, and it would be to their benefit to do so.  But my argument was falling on deaf ears and pretty soon, frustrated, I said, "I'm not going to argue with you anymore.  You don't listen.  You just want to be right.  You want to see the world the way you want to see it."

I thought that was it, but then he became flustered at and adamantly denied my new reasoning (because he believes his view of the world is the one true, right one).  And I shot back, "You see what you want to see.  If you want to see it, it's going to be there."  He couldn't believe the idea that just because he wanted to see something, it would be there.  He is of the mind, as so many other people, that it has to be there for him to see it.  And I said, to continue my new argument, that "It's like the Bible.  The Bible will say something, and two people will interpret it differently, and both of them will think they're right.  And what is right?  Who knows?"  But he wouldn't listen to that argument either, opting instead to say that if he saw things the way he wants to see them, he could just as easily say that I ignored things (notice he didn't say, that I saw things the way I want to see them.  Mmhmm.).  That statement annoyed me, but I wasn't about to go on fighting anymore, especially when his girlfriend, my friend, told us that we were both wrong, and that both our arguments made no sense.  That annoyed me too, but I figured she just might be trying to end our argument, which was just fine with me.

I am perfectly willing to admit that I see the world the way I want to see it.  Is it the real world?  Who knows?  Is there a real world?  Who knows?  And who can ever prove it?  It doesn't mean I am wrong.  It doesn't mean I am right.  It just means I see a part of the world I want to see.  It's like looking at a rose, I thought, pretty soon after this argument.  I could see a rose and see its beautiful red petals and admire it, and my friend there would see that it has thorns.  Are we both right?  Yes.  Do we both see a part of the truth?  Yes.  But I like the part of the truth I see better. 

It is so mind-boggling to me, even though I've read books that have made me aware of it recently, that so many people (so many people) believe that the world they see is in some way the "real world."  Although, I was probably in the same boat as them just a few years ago.  But I also have held, for the most part, a somewhat different view from other people I knew, which I can only attribute to, as a child, reading so many books.  So it came as great enlightenment to me to realize that my version of the world wasn't the be-all end-all version of the world.  And it didn't have to be.  And I'm fine with that.  It actually takes a huge weight off my shoulders.  It surprises me then, whenever other people seem to think that it is, and when I enlighten them of this knowledge, how they fight it.

I suppose, however (if I really think about it), that the reason they do fight it so passionately (as my friend did), is because I am disrupting a very core belief of theirs, one perhaps rooted in making up their life and identity:  that they see the world as it is, how it really is.  And saying that they don't, is not an idea to be borne with -- at least not at the first moment.

And the other thing is, going back to the first argument with my friend, that perhaps the reason why he feels so strongly that Americans are trying to point out your differences, is because he is in America and he, as a minority, feels different.  You feel different, and that's why you feel (or fear!) that everyone is trying to point out your differences.  And so you see all the ways that people do that, real or imagined.  But the argument I wanted to make to him (that I wasn't able to get out) was why is being different such a bad thing?  Why do you have to see it as a bad thing?  Maybe it's good to highlight differences.  That's what the news highlights anyway.  Different stories, different people.  Not the same stories, not the same people.  That would be tedious and unbearable.

Why do I have to be so logical?  Because I want to understand.  And for that I need to take myself (my ego) out of the equation, so I can see the world from other people's points of view.  Because we don't all see the world the same way.  If we did, we probably would never fight. 

As it is, we all see the world the way we want to see it.  Sometimes fear colors it, sometimes the need to be happy -- but we all only see it through our own eyes and interpret it as we want.  Just look at Pat Robertson, and his horrible comments about the Haiti earthquake.  Obviously, the way he wants to see the world is that God is punishing people (even innocent people) for all the terrible sins of others.  Well, that's his world and his God, the way he wants to see it.  Is it right?  A lot of people would say no.  But you can bet he believes his world is the "real world," just like everyone else.

The "Thank God I'm Alive" Effect

Today I had the weirdest (or should I say craziest) thought when I woke up.  It wasn't a dream because it made me completely forget whatever dream I was having.  It was an idea and an intense realization of it. 

The thought I had was of skydiving, and how immensely terrifying it must be to jump off a plane 30,000 feet in the air.  I see people doing it all the time on TV, know people who have done it, and have toyed with the possibility that once I have racked up enough courage I may one day do it; but no, once I had this vivid visualization, I realized this is not something I want to do. 

The image that suddenly came to me was that if I were in a plane (in a plane!  I'm scared just being in a plane miles up in the air, with the doors closed!)  I would be way too frightened to jump off it thousands of feet down.  I could imagine how I would feel if the doors were open, the air rushing through violently, the noise of it beating at my eardrums.  And the height.  Oh, the height!  Of seeing all those things on the ground as teeny tiny dots.  And the thought that I would be jumping into it, falling, falling, falling.  And someone on the plane telling me to jump.  Jump?!  NOOO Way!  Are you crazy?  Why would I jump?  Why??? 

Why would I jump off a plane miles off the ground?  Other people do it, and they survive.  But I can't.  I don't think I ever could, now that I really think about it.  It's not because I don't think I would survive.  I think most likely I would.  Most people do.  It's not even the fear (although it's a big factor), because I like overcoming fears -- it makes me feel masterful.  And that would be a great fear to overcome.  It is just that, why would I scare myself like that?  For the thrill?  But what good would it actually do me?

That is where I came up with the idea for this post today.  The "Thank God I'm Alive" Effect, the reason why we do such crazy outlandish things, risk life and limb is for the feeling at the end of "I overcame, I conquered, Thank God I'm Alive!"  But how long does that effect really last?  And does it change you profoundly as a person?  Does it make your life better to have done it?

When I was a kid, I used to walk to the library myself.  It was only two blocks from my home.  One time, as I crossed the street, I hadn't looked both ways (I know, shame on me).  There was a crosswalk, but no stop sign for the cars to know to stop.  Having driven now I realize that that's a dangerous situation for a pedestrian.  Anyway, as I skipped across the street unaware, I suddenly heard the screeching of car tires and turned to see three vehicles stopping before me.  The van that was right before me was inches (and I mean, inches) from me.  I was face to face with its grill and it was higher than me.  And the lady in the van yelled to me in a concerned but admonishing tone, "You're lucky I didn't hit you!  You need to watch out!"  To which I then went right on walking along thinking how lucky I had been.  And that was it. 

I mean, I was a child, and I still recall the incident and think about it from time to time.  But did it really have any lasting effect on who I became?  I don't know.  But I know this, I have known people who have gone skydiving, and you would never know it to look at them.  It doesn't seem to have changed them or their lives to great effect.  It hasn't made them happier, more appreciative, more full of life like you might imagine.  My coworker, in particular, who herself admitted she was on the shy side, had told me she thought that the experience would change her, and that's why she did it.  But after she did it, it was done, and there was no lasting effect from it. 

And so it makes me wonder:  all these risks that we take -- the drugs, the life-threatening adventures -- to get a thrill.  Is it really worth it?  Once the thrill is gone, then what?  Or do different people react differently to life-threatening experiences?  Do some people just take it in stride?  Or does the very nature of taking such risks lead only to contentment?  Once the risk is gone and overcome, it is almost forgotten.  We only feel the fear when it is before us.  But when it is after us, it goes away, and so does the appreciation we felt at that moment we survived death.

There was a really great Simpsons episode in the beginning about this very topic.  In it, Homer thinks he's going to die.  His family had gone to a sushi restaurant and Homer, being Homer, had ordered a rare delicacy, a blowfish that had to be cut in the right areas or would turn out poisonous.  The chef of the hour being indisposed with Mrs. Krabapple, one of the underling cooks deigned to serve the dish for Homer.  When the chef found out (after Homer ate it, of course), he deemed that Homer must have been poisoned by the inexperienced cook.  Homer then went to Dr. Hibbert, who told him if he did in fact, eat the poisoned fish, he would die within a day.  And so, Homer, really believing he would die, wrote up a list of what he wanted to do on his last day.  He wrote things like see the sunrise, listen to Lisa play the sax, teach Bart to shave, be intimate with Marge.  The day didn't always go as planned -- with him oversleeping and missing the sunrise and ending up in jail at one point -- but for the most part, he had a really wonderful day spending his last remaining moments with the people he loved.  It was a touching episode.  And in the end, he didn't die.  He didn't eat the poison after all.  And when he finds out, he's so excited and grateful, he vows to make the most of his life.  But then the next scene they show him sitting there eating and watching TV, wasting his life away again.  He didn't learn anything. 

It was a great episode.  A great episode.  It was touching, and it really summed up the truth of life.  You appreciate it most at the moment you feel that it might be taken away from you.  But when you are living and going through the motions of life, you forget how lucky you are just to be alive.  You take it for granted.

I suppose the point of this post was me trying to figure out if I really needed to go skydiving to have that appreciation for my life.  But it seems to me, from the people I've met and from other people's experiences, that's not the case.  You forget.  And so, it is not the life-threatening experience you need to change you profoundly (although it does at times), even though that's what the movies tell you.  Years ago, I thought that's what I needed.  But in reality, what I really needed is just what Socrates said, to "Know Thyself."  Meditate.  I know I keep going back to it, but it's true.  Nothing has changed me so profoundly as that simple act.  It's all right there in you, and yet we keep seeking the answer everywhere else but inside ourselves. 

Will I ever go skydiving?  Who knows?  Maybe one day when I'm brave enough (or crazy enough).  (Yes, I've changed my absolute no since the beginning of this post.)  But I know I will not do it seeking a life-altering experience.  Seeking a thrill, yes, but not something that will change me profoundly and make me appreciate my life.  I know that that can't be found in one moment of risk-taking.  That takes some deep and serious soul-searching to accomplish, along with a little reminder every day to appreciate everything life has to offer.

No Way Out - On Suicide and Mass Killings

I was thinking yesterday about suicide.  No, not suicidal thoughts, but the idea behind committing suicide.  I forget what prompted it.  It might have been a story about "The Office" in which Steve Carrell's character puts his head in a noose and told young kids that "Suicide is not the answer."  The suicide prevention groups cried foul because they felt that depiction of suicide by Hollywood on such terms not only causes pain to those family members who've had loved ones kill themselves, but causes those who would kill themselves to become more emboldened to do it.  It's safe to say this is a sensitive subject.

On my own thoughts of suicide:  I have thought them.  Not recently, but when I was an adolescent, and a suffering adolescent as most are, I thought them.  And probably other times when I have been heartbroken, the thought has flitted through my mind.  When I told a friend in college that I had considered it, he looked at me like I was crazy.  The thought had never crossed his mind.  "Lucky him," I thought.  "His life must be perfect."  Years later, when I played a game of "I Never" with a friend and said "I've never thought of killing myself" and we both drank, I felt a sort of validation.  I wasn't the only one who felt my life was crummy at some point.  That was nice.

But the actual thought I had of suicide the other day, was that it is all about control.  The person feels helpless and that there is nothing they can do to change their life, that things will only get worse, and that the only thing they can do to alleviate the pain is to end everything.  Then the pain will go too.  But if death is what they want, why not do something heroic, something people are afraid to do because they fear dying, and save someone or something, do something good?  You might die, but you want to die anyway, right?  -- Seriously, I was so taken with this line of thinking in high school that I actually told my Harvard interviewer about my idea to write a story about it.  As I didn't get into Harvard, I guess he didn't buy it. -- But no one does that.  Maybe because killing oneself is a selfish act felt at the point when you care the least about helping anyone else, only in allaying your own suffering.

It also occurred to me - Why not leave it up to fate or to God?  Put that bullet in the chamber and spin it.  Like Russian Roulette, I know.  And if you die, then it was because you were meant to, and if not - maybe you weren't meant to either.  But people don't do that either.  Or maybe they do.  I don't know.  But I could see why they wouldn't.  Because that would mean that their life wasn't in their own hands.  They would be leaving it up to somebody else, and that would mean they had no control.  And that is the one thing they want - control.  The reason you want to kill yourself is because you feel you have no control.  (If you felt you had control, you would feel you could do something about your crummy life, right?)  Suicide is the ultimate form of taking control over your own life.  You kill yourself.  You did it.  No one else.  You decided when to end it.

Now that I think about it, I guess I've been touched by suicide more than I realized.  Indirectly.  In high school, one of my classmates had a mom, whom she was really close to, who was killed in a car accident by a woman bent on killing herself.  Her father, who was also in the car, survived, and went to help the woman who tried to kill herself, who also survived.  It was a tragedy that changed my classmate in a dramatic way.  And then the year after I graduated high school, we heard that one of our art teachers - who I had but brief encounters with, and who had transferred to another school - had killed herself.  And she had just had a baby, and already had another child.  But for whatever reason people said she killed herself - the principal of the new school gave her a scathing review, or she was distraught she never accomplished her dreams - she had taken her life.  My former history teacher told us that she had been cowardly to kill herself when she had kids, and at the time, I thought it was cold for him to say that.  I could sympathize with a woman who was so sad, she felt she had no other choice but to end it all.  But now, I understand better why my history teacher said that.  It is because it was a selfish act.  She only thought about herself in killing herself.  She didn't think about her two kids who would be left without a mother to love them, or her husband who would be left taking care of two kids on his own.  She only thought of her own pain.  True, she might have thought they would be better off without her.  But it's selfish to think that other people would move on so easily and not suffer as greatly as you.  Because the truth of the matter is, you don't just live for yourself.  You live for other people too.

That is not to say that I am against suicide.  I'm not.  It's your life.  It's your choice.  Even though you also live for others, you can't live only for them.

This brings me to the topic of mass killings.  There have been so many recently - two in the last two days - that it got me to thinking about it.  I was actually going to discuss the Fort Hood and Orlando massacres when I started this post, but then I realized how close it was to the concept of suicide that I decided to intertwine the two.  Like suicide, killing others because you are desperate and depressed is a selfish act and an act of taking control.  But whereas people who kill themselves blame themselves and want to end their pain, people who kill others blame others and want to inflict their pain onto them.  Everyone should feel how they feel.  It is the ultimate in selfishness.  And when they see others do it on the news, they realize they can be just as selfish.  And that for one moment in time, people will care about them.  It may be just so that they can hate them, but for some people, they would rather have hate than nothing.

I could say how this proves my theory that men are just as, if not more, emotional than women to my male friend.  Or that this society we've created in which we make everyone else responsible for our happiness or frustration instead of looking at ourselves is a factor.  Or that what these people really lacked was the education and imagination to realize that they could find a way to change things, instead of believing there was no way out, no other way.  But those are ideas for another time.  Because fear and sadness and anger, they stop you sometimes.  They cloud your mind from finding solutions.  And the result is even more fear and sadness and anger for everyone around you.  And then it's not till it's too late, or never, that you may realize that all the terrible things you imagined were all in your head until you made them come true.

God bless the victims and their families.

Fear of Change: Health Care Reform

Anytime you mention reform of any kind, you're just asking for opposition because if there's one thing people don't like, it's CHANGE! Good or bad, people would rather stick to the way things are, and struggle it out then to change the thing that's hurting them. That's because their negative imagination makes them fear the unknown future more than they fear the dreadful present. As Spencer Johnson noted in his best-selling allegorical book, "Who Moved My Cheese?," people will do just about anything to keep from changing.

So I guess then I shouldn't be so shocked that so many people are latching onto any type of negative press they hear about Health Care Reform to violently fear it, vehemently oppose it, and imbue it with all the vitriol they've mustered for all the things that have gone wrong with their life. But I'm still shocked. Shocked that so many people are locked into such a state-of-mind that they can't see that change can be good, that the future can be brighter, and that the universe is not always out to get them.

There are plenty of complex analyses of the pros and cons of Health Care Reform, so I'll give you my simple take on it, which is "Why not try?" If we fail, we fail, but then we'll know how to make it better. If we stay where we are, we'll never know, and we'll still be failing, every day, every minute.

Here are some other points I thought were salient:

We have private and public schools, universities, utility companies, postal services, why not private and public health care?

How can we leave such a vital component of human life into the hands of people who may or may not have our best interest at heart, and definitely have their own pocketbooks in mind when it comes to OUR health?

Remember what happened to California, and all those blackouts the greedy electricity companies made us endure to hike up our electricity bills?!!! And what could people do who need electricity but endure it and take it, with no alternative? It's a basic necessity so they have us at their mercy. That's how the health care companies have it with us now, with our health! And people think that's ok. They've somehow convinced people that this is ok, and that Health Care Reform would be the evil thing. Meanwhile they're making major profit margins off our sickness, and they're one of the biggest lobbyists on Capitol Hill.

But it's not hard to convince people when they poke at the fear that everyone has, of the unknown future. And people bite. It's sad, but they do.

When private companies have a product that is a necessity to our lives but without much competition, they have us at their mercy, and that power corrupts. Look at Enron and the banking industry. These companies need to be checked, because when you're at the top, you don't care about all the little people under you getting hurt, needing help. As long as your needs are satisfied, your palace is kept in nice order, your corporate jet is filled with champagne, you could care less. That's just human nature.

That's why it has to be checked. The public option is a way to keep the health care companies in check. It's as simple as that. If we have to pay for it, we have to pay for it. We do pay for it anyway. And probably much more because we pay when people get really sick, rather than when they could have gotten preventative care and taken care of the problem early on, so we would have paid less.

And I know some people hate the idea that their hard-earned money is going toward paying someone else's health care bills, but if you really think about it, it really helps you. Consider: what if some person got infected with some deadly contagious disease but had no health insurance and couldn't see a doctor? What happens when that person comes in contact with someone, who passes it to someone, who passes it to someone, who passes it on to you and your family? Now you have a big problem that could have been avoided if that first person just had the ability to go to a doctor.

Universal Health Care like Universal Education helps everyone. Like Universal Education helps ensure an educated workforce, Universal Health Care will help ensure a healthy, vibrant workforce that can contribute to the economy and make major breakthroughs. Everyone benefits.

President Obama is making his speech on health care tonight at 5pm PDT. I have faith in him to pull this out. I hope that the public option will still be on the table. If not now, at least for the future. But I'd rather have some reform now than none at all. If it's just stronger regulation, that's something. A big step in a positive direction.