Month: January 2020

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Gratitude for My Home

I live in a great place. A safe place.

I walk around alone, unarmed, without fear. This is true even in the dark, even when the nights are completely fogged in. This is true even in a city where homelessness is rampant, and car break-ins happen on a regular basis, and everyone’s windows and doors are covered with anti-human bars.

For me, there is no need to worry.

My water is clean, or at least as clean as it can be in an increasingly polluted world. I can even afford a secondary water filter.

Our house is warm. We are never cold. We might complain about the cold, but it is just the whining of the rich.

It is just the same for food: we are never hungry. Our food is nourishing and plentiful. We have never truly known hunger or starvation or privation.

We can afford substances that alter our mind in a variety of ways. And we can afford the time to use them.

We can afford the time to loaf and complain and explode over tiny meaningless offenses. Because that is how wonderful our lives have become. We find problems in the mundane and minute.  

We can read all day.

We have endless power.

I can feel the presence of the ocean in the air. I can even walk to the ocean and back in a day’s journey. That can be shortened to mere minutes with a car, of which we have a luxurious one.

Every morning, I have a difficult choice to make: which park do I walk the dog to? There are 8 options that immediately come to mind, and I’m certain there are more I’ve yet to discover.

It is a beautiful country we live in.

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The Leadership Principles of Glover Johns

Below is a set of leadership principles I transcribed from Jocko podcast episode 87 (The Clay Pigeons of St. Lô). I loved them and wanted to share them with you. In episode 341, he revisited these rules and dedicated the entire podcast to discussing them.

While Jocko was focused on Glover Johns’s book during the episode, he wraps up his coverage by reading from David Hackworth’s book About Face, who was covering a farewell speech by his idol. 

David Hackworth on Glover Johns

“He was a leader who taught by example.” 

“to hear in a single speech this great man’s basic philosophy of soldiering was like being let in on the secret ingredients of some magic formula.”

Leadership principles of Glover Johns

  • Strive to do small things well.
  • Be a doer and a self starter.  Aggressiveness and initiative are two most admired qualities in a leader, but you also must put up your feet and think.
  • Strive for self improvement through constant self evaluation.
  • Never be satisfied. Ask of any project, “How can it be done better?”
  • Don’t overinspect or oversupervise. Allow your leaders to learn through mistakes in training so they can profit from their errors and not make them in combat.
  • Keep the troops informed. Telling them what, how, and why will builds their confidence.
  • The harder the training, the more the troops will brag.
  • Enthusiasm, fairness, and moral and physical courage: four of the most important aspects of leadership.
  • Showmanship: a vital technique of leadership.
  • The ability to speak and write well: two essential tools of leadership.
  • There is a salient difference between profanity and obscenity. The leader employs profanity tempered with discretion, he never uses obscenities
  • Have consideration for others.
  • Yelling detracts from your dignity. Take your men aside and counsel them.
  • Understand and use judgment. Know when to stop fighting for something you believe is right. Discuss and argue your point of view until a decision is made, and then support the decision wholeheartedly.
  • Stay ahead of your boss.

I transcribed the quotes, so there may be differences from what the book says.

References

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Time Enough at Last

My second realization in this year of enough is that I actually have enough time.

Complaints about never having enough time abound in today’s world. Examples throughout history can be found too, so we might even venture to posit that it is fundamental to the human condition.

Lines from Chinese Zen poet Stonehouse come to mind:

“A human life last one hundred years but which of us get them all”

As well as these lines from Chinese Zen poet Cold Mountain:

“A man lives less than a hundred years but harbors cares for a thousand”

It is true. I harbor cares for a thousand years. And yet, even the less-than-one-hundred that I am most likely to receive are enough.

We can’t have it all. Aren’t constraints an essential element for creation? Why bemoan what we cannot change?

In my own life, I spent last year feeling like I was stretched thin. Between a new born child, a business, cooking three meals a day – there never seemed to be enough hours in the day to accomplish everything I wanted. Fitness fell by the wayside. Projects languished. I did not play music. I never gardened.

At the same time, I spent 8 months of the year not working at all. I spent time with my wife and son. I spent time preparing beautiful and loving meals that were enjoyed by friends and family. I spent time with my father on his birthday – whole days, uninterrupted by any other cares of the world. I spent time with my father while he was dying, making it so that he could leave this world without the pain that had been haunting him for years, ultimately building into a final, unbearable crescendo. I spent time focusing on honoring my father’s life, arranging a beautiful service, and celebrating him with our family.

What I had was too many cares, not too little time.

Moreover, the past two weeks have proven that I do have enough time to fit everything that I want. Perhaps that was the ultimate trick: changing my concept of time and admitting that I have enough of it.

I can fit in five hours a day of work, 3-4 hours a day with my son (allowing mom to work and to have a life), I work out five days a week, I spend 1+ hrs a day walking my dog, I play music, I read books, I still prepare 2-3 meals a day, and I am working in the SF Japanese Tea Garden once again.

I have enough time, and it is glorious.

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Enough Digital Hoarding

I was inspired by Diana Montalion’s "Year of Enough". I’ve been thinking about the concept of "enough" in my own life.

My first realization is that I possess enough information. Thousands of e-books, hundreds of physical books, thousands of papers and articles and presentations. Information on things I care about (and some things I don’t). With the importance of action over information, there’s no need to keep acquiring more.

I have enough. This year:

  • I will not buy audio books
  • I will not buy apps on my phone
  • I will not buy new books
  • I will not buy new books, even on my Kindle, which I considered a loophole
  • I will not add new digital subscriptions

There’s gold in my archives, unexploited and unmined. Yet, I keep acquiring more.

I’ve got more than enough for a lifetime already.