Mind the Beginner

I was watching “Kung Fu Panda” yesterday and for those who’ve read a bit about the tao this movie is full of nice little references to it. One of the nicest quotes from the movie is from the old wise turtle/kung fu master.

Yesterday is a memory.

Tomorrow is a mystery.

Today is a gift.

That’s why they call it the present.

That’s the Tao for you, it’s so overly obvious we all seem to forget it.

For most of us the present is filled with promises, ideas and beliefs about the future and pain, uncertainty and doubt the past has planted in our minds. But what if you could unpack your present and find only today in it? Without the limitations brought on by the past and the illusions from the future.

This way of thinking severely blocks the “Western” mind that’s evolved around achieving things, always seeking the next best thing and never being happy with what is going on right now… hardly even noticing what’s here right now. Receiving gifts is a skill we’ve all but forgotten.

Okay, a bit of a sidetrack here but bear with me, there’s a message here.

In the western world we tend to judge a gift by it’s value (in dollars) and by the prestige it will give us “Look at me with my new iPod.. it’s expensive as hell..”  Kids who grow up in this enviroment quickly learn this way of unpacking and clearly show disappointment when the gift wasn’t exactly what they wanted. It’s not good enough.

Now we jump to Japan, and the way they treat presents. For starters the way it’s packed is as important -if not more so- that what’s in it. The gesture of giving is all others will see for presents giving on a party stay packed untill everyone goes home. You might wonder why this is but it’s simple:

- If the present is a disappointment people won’t see it

- It’s impossible for the giver to boast about what he has given. The value stays unknown

- And so every present is equal

- (It’s also good form to give a present back, bot with a slightly lower value as to not let the whole thing get out of hand.)

Now back to our present day. As soon as you project expectations onto the gift you’re bound to end up disappointed every once in a while. The Western approach of “what’s in it” is more important than the gesture. Whereas the Japanese approach is to accept every present wholeheartedly and treat it exactly for what it is. A gesture of friendship, love or gratitude that should be treated with the utmost respect. The giver after all has no intention of disappointing you or giving you less than you deserve in their eyes.

And so, treat every day as a gift, don’t be disappointed and know that you get what’s yours to receive.

Every day we make choices in our life, what to drink what to eat, where to go and what to do. But those are not the choice I want to talk about here. I want to have a closer look at those other choices otherwise known as taste or value.

As soon as we value something there are things that “better” or “worse” than that thing. In short we’re constantly comparing whatever it is that crosses our path and it limits us, it limits us severely.

Picking flowers

If a flower is less beautiful than the one you saw yesterday, is it a lesser flower? How about this blogpost, how does it compare to other blogposts, not only on this blog but compared to all other blogposts out there. Do you see the limitations? We find it harder (or even impossible) to appreciate what’s in front of us because something else has a higher assigned value.

It’s impossible to stop comparing but it’s not impossible to stop choosing the one over the other. Why wait for something better that’s out there when you have something great in hand. To many opportunities go passed this way just because they don’t compare favorably to your golden standard. To much time is wasted in hunting down these golden standards when something lesser (again, an assigned value) is right in front of us.

You loose a lot of opportunities and time this way.

Letting quality slip

Am I advocating no longer chasing quality? Certainly not! Yes that newest model phone is better, even the best out there but isn’t your current model almost as good? After all, you were happy when you first got it right? The quality of what you have hasn’t changed, the assigned value changed, you choose to make something else your golden standard and now are no longer content with what you have.
It’s an ongoing cycle, the search for ever greater things and always looking to the future for opportunities when they are in fact, right under your nose this very instant.

Why hunt for the better *insert something here* when the one you have is just fine as it is.

The freedom bit

The title of this blogpost mentioned being free and so far I didn’t write about it yet. What does freedom have to do with it all. As soon as you no longer waste time you have more time on your hands to do the important stuff, there’s some freedom right there.But there is more.

As soon as we assign values like beautiful, tasty and pleasant we immediately give birth to ugly, disgusting and unpleasant for the one can not be without the other. We chose to call that flower pretty and so other flowers are lesser flowers. As a direct result the other flowers will give us less pleasure. Congratulations to us, we just cheated ourselves out of pleasure. Way to go!

Assigning value leads to a diminished capability of enjoying what’s right here, right now for you can not enjoy fully what is here if you’re thinking of a golden standard elsewhere.

And so, when you stop choosing, you gain freedom to enjoy whatever is right here.

 Time and time again I look at this screen and think about what to write next. Where to get my inspiration and how to make an interesting blogpost. Today I had no inspiration at all so I decided to look through some of my old blogposts and the comments I got there.

One in particular did manage to inspire me. The comment came from Stephen over at ratracetrap stating that he liked my short blogpost style. Now you might have noticed that lately I’ve been writing longer and longer blogposts so it seems I didn’t listen to Stephen.
Short blogposts do have their advantages, there are whole blogs dedicated to the tao of short posts. They usually post several times a day and have multiple bloggers working on the same blog. This blog of course has only one blogger so multiple posts a day would seem a bit steep.
Now what is this tao of the short blogpost. Again, it’s quite simple after someone tells you:

• Short posts make for quick reading
• Short posts pack a punch (a quick one of course)
• Short posts get to the point quickly

The overall theme here is being fast and being witty.

That’s the tao of the short blogpost in a short post: Make a statement, do it fast and get away with it!

Thank you for the two minutes of your time.