Non-practice

“I’ve lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.” ― Mark Twain

FEAR: False Expectations Appearing Real

“Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.” ― Jean-Paul Sartre

I have some dark emotions. I don’t like rats and bugs.

But they are pretty much innocent. Most bugs fear me, and most rats will run away from me.

I have only encountered them a few times, and most of the time it was me who started the process (I ran after them, not them after me).

Yet, I fear them, and I associate them with dark emotions.

That’s irrational, I think.

The solution?

The first step is acknowledging the issue.

The second step might be trying to change what I can – how I look at the world.

I can’t change the existence of rats and bugs. But I can look at them in a friendlier way.

In a poem like “Gândăcelul” – by Elena Farago the little bug is presented nicely.

In a book like “Papucii lui Mahmud” by Gala Galaction, the rats are around a monk living in solitude, and they are considered to be part of this world, they are not abnormal creatures of which we must get rid of.

The third step is reinforcement. Meet a rat, don’t run away from it. Meet a bug, don’t kill it, and don’t be afraid to touch it, or, at least, don’t look at it with disgust.

That’s it – three steps: acknowledge the issue, look at the situation differently, and reinforce the way of looking at the situation.

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There’s a book called “Partea nevăzută decide totul”, by Horia-Roman Patapievici.

The unseen part determines everything could be a possible translation. I’d like to adapt that in the current blog post – The emotional part determines everything.

Everything is related to emotions. Your ethics code, how you see success, how you prevent failure, how you fight for your rights, how determined you are to do a good job, how you view your role in society. Emotions are pretty much everything.

I can’t stress this enough.

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On his bio on Twitter, Jim Bagnola says (punctuation corrected by me):

“Humbly enjoy a world ranking among leadership professionals; funny, focused, complicated, spiritual, frequently intelligent, often has brushes with stupidity”.

I know this because I used to handle his account for a while, I think he wrote the bio himself, but not 100% sure about that. :)

“I’ve lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.” ― Mark Twain

The thing I want to say is that we are all smart and stupid most of the time. At the same time.

I can be good at some aspects of online marketing, but even in there I have flaws. But I’m not good in a lot of other aspects of life.

The list of “I’m-not-so-good-at” is quite huge. The same is the list of “I’m good at”.

I think of persons I know. Some people are fantastic in some aspects and less-than-fantastic in others.

And, even more troublesome, my criteria are faulty. I analyze people based on a mental model. That, too, has brushes with stupidity.

Not only am I stupid, but I analyze others in stupid ways.

From 2 stupid dogs: “ARG, You dogs are entirely too stupid to qualify! STUPID STUPID STUPID!!!” (source)

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“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” ― Maya Angelou

Sometimes, people tell me – “I moved on! I changed, I’m not the same person!”.

This leaves me in shock – how can people change what they feel about X (X can be a person, a situation, a thing, an action, a habit, a hobby)?

While I do have a poor memory (sometimes, life seems to look a lot like “Memento” (2000)), there are some things I can’t forget – mostly how I feel about X.

Finding out people can actually move on from a thing in their past is simply amazing!

On another note, I’m as much puzzled when I meet people who can’t move on. The opposite is, it seems, also true.

Also, a song on memory – Barbra Streisand – Memory. :)

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There are some quotes in the Bible, like this one:

So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. (Exodus 3:8 NIV)

(Plus others)

that refer to places flowing with milk and honey.

While it must not have really flown, it might mean that those places were good for raising animals that gave milk and bees for their honey.

Did it flow? Sure, but you needed to put some effort into this.

Add some toast and you get a song. :)

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From 2005 until 2015, for almost 10 years, I lived in the same space in Bucharest. I got a nice place to live in, I was happy with the overall conditions, I kept the place because I enjoyed the deal.

Between 2015-2016 I lived in London in an apartment in a house. Close to the job, close to the Tube, very nice conditions. Other things paled when compared with these.

From 2018 to 2020 I lived in an apartment in Bucharest. The main benefit? 10 minutes close to the job. Even after the job position changed, it was still very close.

When I chose a Master’s program in 2016, I chose one close to home (Năvodari), useful to my career (IT), and from a good University (Ovidius).

In 2018, I chose another Master’s. Close to home, in IT again, and from the private University considered to be the best there is (Titu Maiorescu).

What’s a key element? Focus on the important things, and the rest will follow. Choose a house close to work, the rest of the things are secondary.

Avoid going out to restaurants if you want to live cheaply, and other things will follow.

Read books if you want to do self-development. What books? You’ll discover that yourself as time passes.

Watch movies and confront yourself to pop culture if you want to keep an engaging conversation. You’ll be better with this as time passes.

But if you keep focusing on important things, others will follow.

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There is a saying: “Fortune favours the bold” / “Fortuna audaces iuvat”.

What this means for me are two things:

• You tend to solve some things in life by not caring about the less important things; when you want to start a business, you put some things in your imagination – “I’ll need this and this”; but, after a while, you might see that some of the things you thought were important for you, in practice were really not that important;
• Another thing – some things solve by themselves; you start a business, you worry about A, B, and C; while A and B will prove a real thread, C might solve by itself.

The “7 years of bad luck” are only true if you think they are.

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I sometimes meet people with inner prisons.

Too much ambition, too little self-trust, patterns of thinking, a bureaucratic mind.

They may come from traumas, habits in thinking, a lack of exposure to new things, too much focus on a single path, a certain education, a certain profession.

We all have inner prisons, but they can be a problem when you can’t do anything out of them.

People focusing on money tend to be too ambitious and less creative, people with certain formal education can tend to think in patterns, people with emotional problems tend to express their weaknesses.

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Sometimes, I have dark images in my mind.

And I had a real surprise when I met people with a positive mind, with no haunting memories, with an optimistic outlook, with no hard inner pains.

The boy meets the world.

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