Weekend!
Life is difficult.
That’s the opening to Dr. M. Scott Peck’s book “The Road Less Travelled“.
His opening in full says:
Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult-once we truly understand and accept it-then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.
Now, I’m not sure that I am willing to agree with everywhere he went from that first line… I mean, “the fact that life is difficult no longer matters”? Stealing a base or three, Doc.
But that first line? That first line sticks with me and, yeah. I find that it’s something that, when I remember it, it is something that helps me get unstuck when I get stuck. Well, sometimes. Sometimes I just get stuck. But sometimes, when I get unstuck, it’s because I was able to take a step back and remember something as simple as life being difficult.
And sometimes, when I fail at something, I remember that life is difficult and then I try it again. Then, sometimes, I get better at it the next time and fail at a further point. And then, again, at a further one yet.
So I got a membership at the rock climbing gym. I’m a full-fledged member, now. Which means that I can go to the gym whenever I want and it’s part of my membership.
So this weekend, I’m probably going to go to the gym for a *THIRD* time this week.
I mean, if I stop hurting.
So… what’s on your docket?
(Image is “Play” by Clare Briggs. Used with permission of the Briggs estate.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaIvk1cSyG8Report
I’m proud of you, sweetie.
My own weekend will have FOUR DAYS to it. Which on the one hand is awesome and on the other hand was because I’m this close to running totally out of gas, so I doubt I’ll be doing much.
We have gaming on Saturday, a newly-turned-four-year-old to stop by and see for a few minutes on Sunday, and I’m having lunch with Jaybird’s Mom on Monday. Otherwise there shall be much resting.
Tonight, I celebrated my four-day weekend with a three-hour nap.Report
Kick ass Jay.
My old jujitsu instructor use to say “every time your roll, you learn”. It didn’t and doesn’t matter if you win or lose, although wining is fun. What matters is that you learn something-a move, a submission, a technique, or just the experience of rolling with someone new. Last week I rolled with a guy for 5 minutes. A 2 stripe blue belt (so like a year or more of experience more than me) He submitted me 3 times in 3 minutes. I managed to make him take 1.5 minutes to get his last submission on me. I LEARNED. And I won. I won because I improved vs the my baseline performance.
So climb that damn wall. Climb it more often next week, and repeat. Then climb it faster and repeat. I look forward to reading a post about how that wall no long provides a challenge 🙂
Playing D&D and seeing a friend’s Play.Report
The wall I climbed was a 5.5. In climbing gym parlance, that translates to “wacky ladder”.
The blue wall to my right is a 5.6. That translates to “wacky ladder that requires a little technique”.
That’s my next goal. Eventually, I mean. I’m still having psychic problems with the 5.5.Report
I was thinking about this earlier today in the context of playing chess.
The only way to get good at it is to find someone who is better than you and lose to them over and over again. The amazing thing is that you don’t notice yourself getting better until you play someone else. But if the focus is on winning and winning alone, you never really progress. You have to be willing to lose, even to lose repeatedly, in order to really get better.
Pushing yourself to the limit and finding a reserve of inner strength, being able to look at things in a new way that shows a previously overlooked advantage, and the dogged perseverance to lose and lose repeatedly– all of those things are more meaningful than the win.
The one who wins is only maintaining a skill rather than progressing.
It’s about values.Report
One of my favorite little grooks is:
The road to wisdom? — Well, it’s plain
and simple to express:
Err
and err
and err again
but less
and less
and less.Report
Hmmn, can’t tell if not completing the grook meter is ironic or the point; in either case it is deeply disturbing… like an unresolved minor chord.Report
I imagine that the meter is perfect in the original Danish.Report
I wonder, but part of me hopes not.Report
What am I missing? Looks to me like it scans perfectly.
I’m going to make a sculpture now
And donate it to Moma
It’s going to have be a cubist form
I think I’ll call it Soma.
— Not Piet HeinReport
Does it? Maybe I’m doing it wrong.Report
Almost exactly like a well-known Lewis Carroll poem (one syllable left off an iamb):
The ROAD to WISdom WELL its PLAIN
and SIMple TO exPRESS
(*) ERR and ERR and ERR aGAIN
but LESS and LESS and LESS
How DOTH the LITtle CROCoDILE
ImPROVE his SHIning TAIL,
And POUR the WAters OF the NILE
On EVery GOLDen SCALE!Report
Hah!… well sure, if you use the *whole* poem it works…
I thought it was a unique form starting with ERR.
My Err.Report
I’m not sure that accepting “life is difficult” means it becomes not-difficult; that has the facile feeling of “as soon as you stop looking so hard, you’ll meet your true love” (which is a dirty lie)
Me? Spring break starts after my 10-11 class. Am going to visit family because it’s a more reasonably-priced type of vacation and my parents are in their 80s. Not looking forward to going north where there may be freezing rain upon my arrival, however.Report
Yeah, I’m pretty sure that he’s pretty much wrong.
Road Less Travelled was a good book, though. Good enough to make me read the rest of his stuff… then get to “In Search Of Stones” and remember “oh, yeah… this is what they mean when they tell you to kill your heroes.”Report
My wife introduced me to Road Less Travelled (many years ago), and she said that that first line was very comforting to hear, and a bit of a revelation — not that it made life any less difficult, but just the concept of “hey, this really isn’t expected to be easy, it’s not just you who’s struggling” was an important message for her at the time Neither of us had parents in our lives who were actively helping us to figure stuff out when we were young adults, so we got some benefit from “wisdom” books like this one.Report
I remember thinking that rock climbing was easy until I went out to the parking lot and couldn’t grip a handle well enough to open my car door.Report
The thing where your forearms blow up still happens to me pretty much every week.
Most of that is my fault, given that the worst tends to happen when I am rappelling down and strangling the rope rather than when I’m climbing up and gripping the crap out of the various jugs along the way.Report
Game night with my folks (parents, brother, and my wife) as my brother’s kids are out of town.
Also, mostly recovering from Vegas. Hadn’t been in 15+ years. We got back at noon on Thursday, and yy feet still hurt and I’m exhausted and wishing I’d taken today off.Report
What game?Report
Galaxy Trucker, possibly Secret Hitler (my brother wants to play, but we need at least one other person), and probably Tales of the Arabian Nights. Maybe Bang!.
Likely some card games — poker or spades or the like.Report
One more conference session tomorrow morning and then more KC fun. I’ll probably go to the Nelson Atkins museum again. Flying back to CO on Sunday.Report
NCAA basketball for me. I watched the only game I’ve see all season yesterday and my alma mater won on a last second three (if you follow the tournament you know where I went to college). So, going to a friend’s house Saturday to watch round 2.
Also, practicing my bass to get ready for a bar gig next Friday.
Is there going to be a LeagueFest this year?Report
I saw Annihilation with a friend on Friday, and… well, that really is a hell of a movie. Weird as hell, incredibly unsettling, sporadically scary, and really visually inventive. It has a lot in common with some of the more artsy/self-indulgent sci-fi films that have cropped up over the years [1], including a rather gnomic plot, but the pacing was actually good.
Recommended.
Today, I finally get to see Black Panther, which I’ve been looking forward to for a long time but haven’t managed to get to yet.
[1] 2001 is the best and best known of these, while some of the others, like Zardoz and The Fountain, are in this commenter’s opinion godawful.Report
Saul and I saw The Death of Stalin yesterday. It had a bit more cursing in it than I liked and the clash of accents was distracting but it did a really great job of conveying the power vacuum that exists after an absolute dictator dies. Its something of an object lesson for people frustrated with democracy and its inability to get things done sometimes because while dictatorships can get things done, things get messy when the dictator dies because there isn’t a peaceful transfer of power.Report
So the move is complete?Report
Saw the preview when we went to see Game Night… the must’ve shown the director’s cut… the one with Jeffrey Tambor still in it.
It looked funny?Report
I saw Steve Buscemi talking about it on Colbert (or one of those shows). Not sure about funny, but it seems a lot lighter than I’d have expected.Report
Some failure observations.
Wednesday, I failed. All freaking night long. I couldn’t do anything right. Even the *EASY* stuff I did wrong. I left there thinking “why do I do this to myself?”
Thursday, I succeeded. Whenever I touched the wall and tried something, it clicked. Even when I didn’t do something perfectly, I had it perfect in my head and I learned something for next time.
Today, I failed. All freaking day long. I couldn’t do anything right. Even the *EASY* stuff I did wrong. I left there thinking “Holy cow, today was really, really productive. I can’t wait to do this on Wednesday and try this again when I’ve got some more gas in my tank.”Report