Knowing Where You Are

Posted on by jabittan
Joe Dallesandro wrote a letter for James Harmon to publish in his book, Take My Advice, which is a collection of letters from creative writers and poets, independent creatives, and passionate artists.  In Dallesandro’s letter he writes about many topics, and touches on our life’s work, “Nobody’s going to fault a guy for moving on if a good opportunity comes up, but people switch jobs these days for the perks, for bragging rights, and their life’s work suffers.”

I love this quote because as a recent college graduate with a great job, I have definitely felt the pressures of wanting to have an important position, a clear work plan, and something I can brag about to my friends and family.  What is difficult for me is to envision where I want to go in a career, and still remain happy and content with the job that I have now.  I think that part of what Dallesandro is saying is that we need patience and to be self aware so we recognize when we were in a good place.  I read this quote several months ago, and even wrote this blog post itself a few weeks back. At this point I am now reading, Two Feet Back, Grant Korgan’s novel about his recovery after he broke his back and was paralyzed from the waist down.  In Korgan’s book he constantly mentions his though process during his recovery, particularly one idea, “We are exactly where we need to be.” For Korgan who was recovering from back surgery, he could not judge his progress relative to others or allow his progress to be determined by other people.  He had to focus on constant improvement moment to moment, and his refrain helped him stay focused on the present without fear that he should be doing anything other than what he was actively doing. This quote merges perfectly with what Dallesandro writes.

For me, this means that I do not have to shun the thoughts of wanting a job that pays more or sounds more impressive than my current job. I do not have to feel bad for wanting those things, but I do have to be honest with myself about where I am in my current job.  Right now I am in a job that I enjoy, but that I do want to grow within to reach new opportunities. At the same time, I have been able to recognize the ways in which my job has pushed me, and what areas and skills my job has helped me build.

Dallesandro’s quote speaks to the importance of growth and being in a position where you can maximize your potential and grow.  Finding that place and being aware of when you are in that position is important, and according to Dallesandro, when we leave that position to try and impress others, we risk ending up in a place where our skills do not fit.  Korgan would add to this idea saying that we need to be fully present in the life we currently live. For him, if we cannot be confident in the person we currently are or the position we are currently in, we will not grow and strengthen ourselves to find the change we want in life.

A Balanced Meal

Posted on by jabittan
In a letter written to James Harmon for his book, Take My Advice, Joe Dallesandro writes, “When you’re young, you’re given a plate and you’re given all sorts of things to choose from, and whoever your guardian is should be trying to give you a balanced meal.”
As I have left college and entered the world of the 40 hour work week, I have begun to have major doubts about the idea of balance.  A popular idea that I have come across in podcasts from the world of business, productivity, and entrepreneurs, is that there is no such thing as a work-life balance, but rather choices of what we want to focus on.  We all have the same amount of time in a day, and how we spend that time will determine what our focus is, how well we meet goals, and what we do to achieve the things we want to achieve.
I think that the quote from Dallesandro is very interesting because it suggests that there can be a balance in interests, activities, hobbies, and meaningful work or family time, specifically when you are young and not in the world of a 40 hour workweek.  I can definitely understand Dallesandro in this quote when I look back at my own life, but I also see a major conflict.  Parents who are working 40 hours a week and who have no ability to maintain a magical balance, have to be the ones who shape and provide a balance for their children.  Left to their own, children will zero in on a single focus and loose sight of balance, and in today’s world that may mean video games, Facebook, and other unproductive activities. I am not a parent and hopefully not anywhere close to being one, but I am very encouraged by the metaphor of providing a child with a balanced meal to help them grow in many directions as they move through school, possibly into college, and off to their own independent lives.

Helping Others

Posted on by jabittan
After talking about the importance of self awareness and ceasing to judge others, Joe Dallesandro in his letter to James Harmon for his book, Take My Advice, writes about the importance of trying to help other people every day.  Dallesandro writes, “Ask yourself, Did I just think about myself today or did I think about others, or how I could be helpful to another person?”
Dallesandro is talking about self awareness and the daily focus and attention we have on ourselves.  Our society is so individualistic that we all believe that we are special and deserve something special every day. Unfortunately with this focus on ourselves we begin to forget about the importance of community and cooperation, leaving those around us on a secondary level relative to our own happiness.
In his letter, Dallesandro continues on to talk about how much we strive to be perfect, to be happy, and to be entertained, but we don’t often try to bring these things to other people.  By focusing in on other people we can create new opportunities for ourselves by building stronger relationships with those around us.  The stronger our sense of community the more peace we can find as we begin to find new people who we can rely on, and who can rely on us.

Fitting In

Posted on by jabittan
Joe Dallesandro wrote a letter to James Harmon for his book, Take My Advice: Letters to the Next Generation from People who Know a Think or Two, and in his letter he reflected on the way that many people act and how we worry about what other people think of us. He writes, “In a way, it’s how most of us live our lives.  We wonder if other people find us worthy, find us smart, find us attractive, find us valuable.”
In this quote Dallesandro is speaking of the way that we judge other people, and how we constantly are judging ourselves.  We look at other people and make determinations about them based on their appearance. I am not sure where I heard this but on a podcast I remember listening to someone talk about our biases, and their main point was that we form biases and opinions within the first 15 seconds of looking at someone.  What Dallesandro is saying is that these biases change our behavior, even if we are not consciously aware of them, and that we try to mold our behavior according to these biases. In this way, our perspective of the world shapes us to act in a certain way.
Dallesandro is critical of our fears of what other people will think. He argues that we need to loose our judgment of other people, drop our fear of what others think, and focus on what makes us stronger and better people.  By becoming more self aware, we can begin to stop making judgements about other people and allow them to be happy with the person they are.  At the same time, increasing self awareness and not worrying about what others think of us will allow us to act in a more free manner, and to build deeper connections with a more diverse group of people.

Important Decisions

Posted on by jabittan
At the end of his letter of advice written to James Harmon for his book, Take My Advice, Alphonso Lingis writes “Never make any important decision out of depression, a sense of needs, of dependency.” He continues to explain that when you make choices because of fear, those choices typically end up being poor choices.  According to Lingis, decisions that are made during happy moments are decisions that are made with more clarity, and more closely align with your true inner feelings.
For Lingis, when we make decisions because we are afraid of negative feelings or because we believe that it is what is expected of us, especially when those feelings don’t align with our own desires, we end up making hasty choices that in the long run will lead us to more difficult situations.
For me, this has been something that I have experienced multiple times.  There was a point in college where I was not happy and I was uncertain about my future.  I decided to switch my major to business because I was afraid of not finding a job immediately out of college. I was depressed, and scared, and made a decision without truly looking at what I waned and was best for me.  The major only led me further into depression.
What I later learned was to follow a major that I enjoyed and that made me happy. I switched to Spanish and found more ways to become connected and involved on campus. By taking risks and putting myself in situations where I enjoyed what I was doing, even if it was not what all of my friends were doing, I was able to grow in new ways by becoming a more engaging person. I learned to value decisions that aligned with my inner purpose,  despite the fact that those decisions were not easy and would not clearly lead to a job, .
I think that Lingis’ message is to find areas that will help you grow and feel at peace with you inner self.  By making decisions because we are afraid of what the future will hold, we act hastily and make choices that we think will make us happy, rather than making decisions that we know will make us happy.

Exploration

Posted on by jabittan
For his book Take My Advice, James Harmon collected letters from creative professionals who had carved our an independent career through art, writing, music, and other crafts. Alphonso Lingis is one of the creatives who sent Harmon a letter with advice on living life.  One sentence from Lingis’ letter reads, “The ecstasy of going into the ocean, into the skies, into the rock core of the earth, into the ice is a pleasure radically different from the contentment that simmers over possessions.”
I really enjoy this quote but in my own life I fall drastically short of actually living it.  I am terrible at traveling, and while I do spend a lot of time out doors hiking, running, and cycling, I have trouble stepping away from possessions and work to enjoy exploring new places.  I truly do wish that I was better at planning vacations and escaping from the world I know, in order to explore new cities, majestic oceans, or different cultures.
What Lingis is saying in this quote is that if someone wants to know reality, they need to step away from their possessions, and give up a dream of making money to have more things.  Reality, in Lingis’ views, is the adventure of life that includes meeting new people and cultures, challenging our body’s limits and posture, and experiencing great joys, pains, laughter, and tears.  Trips into nature pull people away from the isolation of the city to connect them with the planet, and with people who live simply.  The bank of memories that one will gain, Lingis says is greater than the monetary and material possessions that one obtains through a life of work and societal demands.  For Lingis this bank of memories creates a special place of contentment within the soul, and allows the body to rest, while careers and material drives keep us wanting for more, and leave us in a place where we cannot be happy with what we have.

Into the Ocean

Posted on by jabittan
Alphonso Lingis wrote a letter to James Harmon for Harmon’s book, Take My Advice: Letters to the Next Generation from People who Know a Thing or Two. In his letter he has a single sentence about the ocean that I enjoy, “When you go into the ocean you realize that until then you did not know the planet.” I like this quote because I am currently working on a podcast with a friend of mine about ocean science and marine biology. The show is called the Blue Pulse Podcast, and it is a great journey for me to learn more about the mysterious oceans. The one thing I keep hearing as I read deeper into the ocean is how little we understand our oceans. The oceans have been studied since the beginning of man-kind, but still so much of the ocean remains unexplored and we literally only have a surface level understanding. A popular refrain is, we don’t need to explore space, and we don’t need to look for intelligent life on other planets, we only need to look in the ocean.
The quote from Lingis speaks to me about discovering ourselves in new places.  By literally putting ourselves in new situations and unique places, such as a the ocean, we are able to see how narrowed and limited our perspective is.  Being around an abundance of life and strange and ancient creatures shows us how interconnected we are with all life on the planet. The oceans are great for Lingis to use for this metaphor because on land we so often act as though we know and understand our planet and our selves, but once we get into the ocean to see the inner parts of the planet that are not open to everyone, we realize how much has always been hidden from our knowledge.

Knowing Life

Posted on by jabittan
In James Harmon’s collection of letters, Take My Advice, Alphonso Lingis in a section of his letter writes, “Our life is by nature destined to know life.” When I think of this quote I think about all of our questions, assumptions, stories, explanations, and understandings of life. For me it is not so much our own life that this quote speaks about, but life as in in living things.  Ourselves, other people, animals, fish, plants, and bacteria.  Lingis himself continues on with the quote to write about the ways we see human characteristics in animals and how we can sympathize with the life in the world around us.  The quote is to me a simple reflection of man’s curiosity regarding the living world. it is a reminder that there is so much out there in the world of life that I do not know, cannot imagine, and could learn about.
I am currently hosting a podcast about marine biology, despite the fact that I know nothing about marine biology. The show is my way to explore the sea and the life within it. Learning about these animals opens ones eyes to the importance of other ecosystems and how we treat the world. By learning more about life and other life forms on this planet, we begin to feel more connected to Earth. We learn about the strange things that life can do, and it inspires us to think in ways we didn’t think possible.  The more I have sympathized with and learned about the life in the ocean the more I have been able to learn about my own life, and to peer deeper into my spiritual side to ask what connection I have with life that lives so far away from the high desert where I live in Reno, Nevada.

Our Reality

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Paul Krassner is one of the many writers who sent James Harmon a letter for his book Take My Advice: Letters to the Next Generation from People who Know a Thing or Two.  In his letter Kressner wrote about our perception of other people, and our perception of the world.  In his last paragraph he wrote, “Always remember that everybody’s perception is their reality.”  This speaks to me because it is so easy for us to judge someone else and their actions from our point of view. When we look at others this way, we are not taking the time to step into their shoes or make an effort to understand their lives.  We cannot criticize another person for the decisions they make if we do not understand the pressures and realities in that persons life. Each person’s unique history and experiences may have driven them to make specific decisions
Near the beginning of his letter Krassner writes,”Watch yourself as though you were observing a Martian. Watch others as though they were also Martians under observation.” What Krassner is advocating for is the ability to look at a situation objectively.  For him it is important that we are aware of how we live and what we do, but also aware of the way that others live. If we are able to build this awareness without ascribing every action or choice that a person makes as good or bad, then we can start to have greater control of our decisions and actions.  In addition, when we view people as if they were Martians, we do not bring our previous biases into the situation to create a background story about the person, (think of how easy it is to see a lawyer in a suit and decide he is a jerk before you watch him do anything) and instead we simply observe their behavior.  To me, this is a great way to begin to reflect on the choices we make to live an intentional life.

A Full Life

Posted on by jabittan
The end of Howard Zinn’s letter of advice to James Harmon for his Book Take My Advice is a single sentence with a completely new idea for me.  In my life I have always felt pressure to live in ways that my parents, co-workers, employers, friends, and one day possibly children would find impressive. I have always wanted to make my parents proud and have always tried to live up to pre-set standards, and in this has had negative affects for me with extra amounts of pressure on my actions. In the last line of his letter Zinn writes, “Live in such a way that your children and grandchildren will be proud of you.” At the time that I read that I left myself a note saying, “Don’t just strive to be someone your children would look up to, but live that life.”
How I have interpreted this quote is that the important idea for Zinn is to develop an identity that does not stand of injustice, does not accept the status quo, and pushes for a life of independence that is interesting, unique, and creative.  The impression of Zinn’s message is that children and grandchildren will not be impressed by stories of how one studied for years to become a lawyer or work for a large corporation to make big bucks.  Nor will a child be fascinated with a story of a climb up a corporate latter that encouraged suites and sacrificing family time for weekend business calls.
Zinn’s quote is difficult to unpack and accept because striking out on ones own in a creative journey is difficult and risky in more ways than just financial.  The corporate world of suites and increasing workloads for fewer employees is a path that many choose because we often find that we need to make personal sacrifices to provide a lifestyle that will provide opportunities for the rest of our family.  This is the greatest challenge for me at this point of my life. I am not sure which direction to go, and how to live a life that can provide for a family financially, without taking away from the relationships that I have. I do know that I can fill my life with interesting thoughts and actions that will help me live a full life regardless of my career choices. At this point I can only strive to build my mind so that I build creativity in my free time to help me find the full and interesting life that Zinn writes of.