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Growing Up: the Tao & cold calling to get what you want
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"Most people aren't lucky enough to get fired and die a slow spiritual death over 30-40 years of tolerating the mediocre" from The 4-Hour Workweek, by Tim Ferriss, the book I'm currently finishing (and yes I have been doing the "comfort challenges" including lying on the ground in the middle of the pavement on a busy London street, two days in a row. Am I insane? Quite possibly.) For anyone who has ever embarked on, or is considering some kind of creative pursuit intended for wider consumption... poetry / vlogging / writing, producing and performing in a one man show, or otherwise sharing the depths of their soul with the world, this is SO helpful to understand why you suck (at the start).... Also reassuring for anyone whose friend / daughter / babysitting child has asked for your thoughts on their work and it's clearly terrible. DON'T WORRY they might just be getting over the hump. There is hope. (Hopefully I'm almost past this phase but tbh no idea...) GETTING OVER THE HUMP
If finishing was Obsession #1, getting over the hump was #2.
What do I mean by that? I couldn't have begun to articulate it at the time, but I felt it in every cell, waking and sleeping.
I knew I wasn't really writing. Not like real writers wrote. I was sitting in front of a typewriter and pounding out pages, even completing books, but what I was doing had nothing to do with real writing.
What was I doing?
I was using the act of writing (I should say the sham or simulacrum of writing) as a pretense to plant my own ego on the planet so that I could believe I really existed. Have you ever taken a selfie? That was it. That was what I was doing. It was like what people do today on Facebook and Instagram.
I was the hero of the books I was writing. I was the protagonist. I was the point of view. Everything happened to me.
I knew this was bullshit. I knew it was sick, it was sad, it was pathetic. I knew I had to get past it...
What was the hump?
One way to define it would be to say it was the watershed between the amateur and the professional. But that doesn't go deep enough.
A real writer (or artist or entrepreneur) has something to give. She has lived enough and suffered enough and thought deeply enough about her experience to be able to process it into something that is of value to others, even if only as entertainment.
A fake writer (or artist or entrepreneur) is just trying to draw attention to himself. The word "fake" may be too unkind. Let's say "young" or "evolving."
That was the hump.
To get over it, the candidate must grow up. A change has to happen at the cellular level.
I wrote one novel, and another, and another. Seven years full time, with gaps in between to earn money. And still I couldn't get over this hump.
A couple of years ago I re-read two of these first three manuscripts. I still have them. They're not terrible. But they are excruciating. Scanning a paragraph, I want to put myself up against a wall and slap the hell out of myself, and I would if I didn't have compassion for all of us who are compelled by the nature of life and the structure of the internal universe to go through this ordeal and initiation.
There seems to be no way to make the passage easier, nor any method to eliminate the pain. The lessons can't be taught. The agony cannot be inoculated against.
The process is about pain. The lessons come the hard way.
I don't want this to be too long but I also recently read Michael Singer's The Untethered Soul and loved this bit on the Tao (if you've never heard of the Tao, read on):
the secret of the middle way
It is best to approach the Tao through some very simple, almost rhetorical questions. For example, is it good for a person to eat sometimes? Yes, obviously it is. Is it good for a person to eat all the time? No, of course not. Somewhere in between, you passed over the Tao. Is it good to fast periodically? Yes. Is it good to never eat? No. The pendulum can swing all the way from gorging yourself to death, to starving yourself to death. Those are the two extremes of the pendulum: the yin and the yang, expansion and contraction, non-doing and doing. Everything has two extremes. Everything has gradations of this pendulum swing. If you go to the extremes, you cannot survive. That's how extreme the extremes are. For example, do you like hot weather? How about 6,000°F? You'd be instantly vapourised. Do you like cold weather? How about absolute zero? The molecules of your body would never move again.
Let's use an example that is a little less extreme. Do you like being close to another person? How about being so close that you're never apart? You eat every meal together, you go everywhere together, and you do everything together. When you talk on the phone, you always use a speakerphone so that both of you can partake in every conversation. You want to be so close that you're the same person. How long do you think that could last?
That's one extreme in human relationships. The other extreme is that you want your own space. You do your own thing. You're îndependent. You like being separate so that you always have something to share with each other when you're together. How independent are you? Well, you travel separately, you eat separately, and you live in separate houses. At what point are you so separate that no one can figure out if you're having a relationship? You haven't seen each other for years! Both of these extremes will end up the same. Too close, too far away - in either case, you won't be talking to each other before long. Everything has its extremes, its yin and its yang.
... So where is the Tao? The Tao is in the middle. It's the place where there is no energy pushing in either direction. The pendulum has been permitted to come to balance concerning food, relationships, sex, money, doing, not-doing, and everything else. Everything has its yin and yang. The Way is the place in which these forces balance quietly. And indeed, unless you go out of the Way, they will tend to stay in peaceful harmony. If you want to understand the Tao, you must take a closer look at what lies between the two extremes. This is because neither extreme can last. How long can a pendulum stay at one of its outermost positions? It can only remain there for a moment. How long can a pendulum stay at rest? It can remain there forever because there are no forces moving it out of balance. That is the Tao. It is the centre. But that does not mean that it stays static and fixed. We're about to see that it's much more dynamic than that. and... you'll have to read the book to find out more because that's enough for now, onto the podcast... Ben recently trekked 2,000km ish across Zimbabwe & Namibia from his farm that was destroyed to the international human rights court that has since been shut down. This is what we chat about in the ep (including what happens when a horse encounters elephants for the first time...) / you can read more here: Why a farmer is riding from Zimbabwe to Windhoek on a horse (This is a part 2 episode... listen to Ben's Growing Up story at Ep. 87 - Ben Freeth: suing Robert Mugabe, the Walled City, thugs and the Holy Spirit) Also, here is an extract from the above article in case you haven't already heard about Ben's story because it's truly insane!! Please forward to anyone who doesn't understand the importance of property rights xoxo The abduction and torture happened two weeks before the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Tribunal was due to hear a case brought by Mike Campbell, later joined by 77 other applicants, against the Republic of Zimbabwe. The case, which Freeth attended bandaged, battered, and in a wheelchair, challenged the harassment, forced eviction of farmers, and seizure of farms instituted by Mugabe in 2000. In its unanimous decision on 28 November 2008, the Tribunal ordered Mugabe’s government to protect “possession, occupation and ownership” of all the applicants’ farms, except for two, who had already been forcibly evicted. The state was ordered to pay them compensation. Mugabe ignored the Tribunal’s ruling. Freeth and his family, including his children, and the Campbells, suffered increasing harassment and threats as they continued to run their farm, until their homes, and those of the farm workers, were burnt down by war veterans eight months later. Freeth’s home was burnt down on 30 August 2009, with the Campbell’s home suffering the same fate two days later. [Ben's father in law later died from his injuries]" Ep. 106 - Andrew Fleig: stoicism & cold emailing to get what you want Okay this was fun! Andrew is only 19, my youngest ever podcast guest. He was really into Stoicism and after failing to get any work experience in academic philosophy departments he cold emailed the Daily Stoic guy himself (Ryan Holiday) and asked for a job. It worked. He also cold emailed me and asked to meet while he's in the UK on exchange. He came to my flat in London and we recorded this conversation. Fun! He has definitely inspired me... the person I most want to get in contact with right now is Ira Glasser (not to be confused with Ira Glass.) maybe this can be my homework before next week's letter... Previous editions here. Forwarded this and want to subscribe? Click here. |
Hi! I'm Delia Burgess
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