Saying Never

People say - often very successful people, especially - never give up. And I've always thought that was particularly delusional advice, or at least incomplete. Everyone gives up on things, and everyone has to, and no one benefits from refusing to give up on even a single thing. On the contrary, the only way you can pursue a big goal well is by giving up much else.

So I adapted that to "Never give up - if it's really important." And how do you know? There isn't a clear criterion. You have to figure that out for yourself. And if someone else is involved, you have to respect their freedom.

Also, you can understand "never give up" less as general life advice than as how to succeed at a particular dream. While it's possible to give up or put aside dreams temporarily, they may not survive that. For me, I've found they can. I give up on things I then continue. It's almost as if these ideas follow me around. But we have to accept that putting something aside may be the end. So, you definitely don't want it to get away from you? Don't put it aside. Don't let it get lost where you might forget it. People lose sight of their dreams for the last time every day, around the world.

You can waste a lot of time losing steam questioning this, that, and the other thing. If and when you get discouraged - yet from experience you already know that, at the end of the day, or the week, or the month, you will be back at this, not having given up, whatever you say to yourself now - you might as well save the energy and the emotional pain, a little, and refuse to waste time on questions about giving up. Ultimately, the wrong kind of "giving up" is a waste of time, and you'll start to notice if you watch out for that.

It's one thing to be unrealistic. It's another to get demotivated and start believing this isn't possible yet come back around, having lost time and opportunities. You can be realistic and dogged as well. You have to be selective. You can't be that way about everything, no matter what they tell you. But you can pick one or two things to be this way about. Maybe a few more. Not many.

Parallels

It's easy to forget that every experience you've had, someone's having that experience now. We put life in a chain, but it's a fabric. What you started off seeing and ended up seeing—another person has gone through the reverse, and feels just as sure of the new view.

I don't believe that now is all that exists. I don't see the past and future as illusions any more than the present is an illusion.

But what I'm getting at is that your past is someone's present. Your future is many's past.

I get the idea. The past only matters because the present was once it. But still...

Your memories are hooks on aspects of the present you do not see, but know are real.

To say now is the only time is to forget all the links.

What You Aren't, You Own

If you are your actions, then that means your actions are driven by your identity. If you are still you, your actions won't change.

If you are your thoughts and feelings, then that means your thoughts and feelings could be no other way as long as you are you.

We are not actions, thoughts, or feelings. If we recognize that, then these are all relatively mutable, and our ways can improve over time if we wish.

It's by identifying less, not more, with something about us that we change it, or prove it. That doesn't mean disowning: that means recognizing we never really owned it in the first place, but were clinging to it.

Cozy in the Metro

There's a lot of weight carried by that thing everyone knows, the thing everyone knows so surely that they don't even know they know it. The sheer tonnage is immense.

Why is a thing true?

Is it true because everyone knows it and there's an explanation that makes sense to you?

That isn't good enough, though.

When everyone knows something and it's wrong, there's always an explanation that makes sense to most people.

It just ain't right.

What I've noticed is that people believe on familiarity. You can show how someone is mistaken, and give them a better explanation, and they can even see it.

But guess what? If it doesn't feel comfortable, if they aren't quite sure about it, if they're just more used to the old explanation, they'll go right on back to it.

You don't believe so much because a thing makes sense. You feel it makes sense because it's familiar. And when you feel it makes sense, you believe it. But that just means most belief is a translation of familiarity.

Plenty of things that make sense aren't true.

I get stuck.

I don't believe in writer's block, and I don't have it.

For a long time I seemed to have coder's block, until I realized that I believed in it. Once I realized I believed in it, I stopped believing in it, and I stopped getting it.

But it's useful to remind myself that I get stuck. It's a thing that happens—I feel paralyzed. Noticing that I feel paralyzed helps, because I know that I am not paralyzed. This cycle has whirled around its track so many times: I feel paralyzed, believe I'm paralyzed, hopeless, can't get going. But ultimately, I am not paralyzed. I am not hopeless. I can get going.

I get stuck.

That doesn't mean I am stuck. I and stuck are not identical. We are not identical or fraternal twins. Stuck and I are simply beings that understand each other.

When you truly understand a problem, it melts.

Art is finding a way to say what others will not hear or understand fully by the normal routes.

There is a large field of such things which need to be said, but cannot, quite.

Go and find one. Say it.

Giveaway

When you're very shy, friendlies spend a lot of time convincing you (and you'll try to convince yourself also) that people aren't noticing or judging you the way you fear. This is half true. People aren't noticing you much. But they are judging you the way you fear.

The trick is not to deny that you're misunderstood and misjudged, nor is it to insist on the primacy of the "mis-," because it's quite possible you are judged more accurately than you will admit to yourself. This is, to be sure, pretty unlikely. But the trick certainly isn't gaslighting criticisms away, neither the silent kind you seem to create from nothing, nor the blunt or aggressive or careless kind.

The trick, if there is one, is that you don't know, but you may want to know, and what you want to know is truth, not someone else's opinion.