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You can never step in the same river twice

February 26th 2009 13:44

"You can never step in the same river twice"

I've been thinking a lot recently about careers - what path to follow, what job to go after etc. This got me thinking about identity - if I am to know what job or career is best suited to me, then I first have to know who I am. Of course, this is a massively problematic question. Who indeed am I?? It's a question at the centre of a lot of philosophical and spiritual inquiry.

I looked into my past, trying to find a common thread running through all of it that would point to who I am; some common characteristic of everything I've ever done that identifies me as a person. I figured that once I found this out, I would be able to call upon and remind myself of that one thread when it came time to make a decision. For example, if I found out through analysing my past that I am a technical type who likes computers, then I would go and get a job in computers. The problem with this, as I found, was that there was no common thread. The more I look into my past, the more contradictions I found. Sure, there were some general patterns, eg, I have always been fairly intelligent and technical in my thinking, but they never applied across the board; I couldn't point to just one of those patterns (or as a psychologist might call them, personality traits) and identify them as being me. I was really into computer games up until high school - does that mean I am a computers guy? During high school I was really into guitar and music - does that mean I am an arty or soulful guy? There are so many more likes, dislikes, strengths, weaknesses and other aspects of my past that I could draw upon and it would seem silly to try to make a formula out of them, one that points to me being me.

I was reminded of a quote, though, one I had read in a little Zen book years earlier (I get a lot of my quotes from this book): "You can never step in the same river twice". A brief explanation of this quote is that a river is in a constant state of flux, it is constantly changing, which means that with every new moment, it becomes a new river. Any attempt to define it by its water content or its stream speed or any other such statistic will fail, because those things are constantly changing (not to mention that it will be impossible to locate an ultimate start point and end point, but that's for another day...) Sure, we can get an idea of what the Murray River is long enough to last for all intents and purposes, but if we really try to nail down what it is, we will fail.

Anyway, it occurred to me that this principle applies equally well to the problem of my identity. Am I a computers guy, or am I a music guy? Am I a silly guy, or a serious guy? The truth is, I am all those things - how could I not be? After all, it is my past after all (or it might be truer to say, I was all those things). The one thread running through my past was my consciousness of it, and nothing more. But my consciousness is completely ungraspable - I can't look back at the eyes that see. Who I am is whatever my consciousness is at any given moment; back then, I was a computers guy. Then when I was playing guitar, I was a music guy. Then I played some video games, and I was a computers guy again. I was in a silly mood, which made me a silly guy, then later I was in a serious mood and became a serious guy. Some people see me as a guitarist, some people see me as a computer nerd, because that's the impression that they formed of me during the moments they saw me. I am a walking contradiction.

What does this mean for decision-making? If I can't nail down what my identity is, then how can I choose a career path? The truth is that your decision will shape your identity as much as your identity shapes your decision. The world is a dynamic place. So if you choose to commit yourself to a computers career, then your "identity" will shape towards that of a computers guy. Perhaps this is why people get anxious about careers - because they know on some level that what they choose will form part of their identity, and that is a scary thing to commit to. I don't expect that someone could say "I am going to be a lawyer", and not have some lawyer-ness seep into their personality (at least not a good lawyer).

Anyway, while I was writing I was thinking how all this could be reconciled with the saying "to thine own self be true", which would seem to contradict with what I'm saying, but which I really believe is a very wise saying. I will write about that next time.

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Why I write this blog

February 19th 2009 12:16

I was thinking about this blog, and it occurred to me that it's a bit purposeless. I initially started it because I found quotes to be interesting, and contain a lot of truth (or at least the potential for truth). Reading back over my blogs though, the various quotes used have just been excuses for me to splurge my opinion on things, and while I enjoy having that outlet, it doesn't seem to be very purposeful. In addition, it is very unlikely that people who type "quotes" or "quips" into Google are looking for a hyper-analysis of what a quote means or its implications. As such, I'm going to change this blog at some point into a format where the readers that find the site will be people who are actually looking for strongly opinionated analysis on generally held wisdom.

My blog is NOT intended to be light reading and I don't want anymore to attract readers who are just looking for some smart quips or their origins.

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"Mr Businessman, you can't dress like me"

February 11th 2009 04:36

Ok, so this isn't an often quoted quote, but I really like it. If you don't recognise it, Jimi Hendrix sings it in his song "If 6 Was 9". And this is the reason I like it:

I think a lot of people are being pulled in two directions: one is in the direction of how they want to think and act, the other is in the direction of how they are told to think and act. For example, I have always had a fairly casual demeanor - I don't like to take things too seriously unless they really require it. Now in the area of work and school, this has caused me no end of problems, because they want to pull me in the direction of being "professional", or in other words, non-casual. So I have these conflicting forces: one is inside of me, telling me to act not necessarily casually, but appropriate to the situation (which often is casual, because I don't believe everything requires my full attention). The other force is from outside of me, which tells me to be "professional" or to "work hard". One force is the self, the other is the world.

I believe this polarity between self and world that I feel within myself is visible in all levels of life, not just in the individual. For example, art often centres around the "self", whereas business is centred around the "world". A good artist needs to go hard into exploring what their true self is, and disregard what the world says about that. Without a true self to express, their art would lack substance: after all, art is just a medium, not a message (thanks Steve Pavlina for clearing that one up). On the other hand, business (at least in the way most people think of business: going to work for a boss, trying to work up the corporate ladder etc) is all about the world. The same is true of the defence force, politics, and anything else that is worldly. You must adapt your true self to what is going on around you. Going hardcore into exploring your true self will do you no favours, rather, you must know on a deep level what attributes your organisation desires, and apply yourself as best you can to internalise those attributes.

Now, the reason I write this blog is because I notice a lot of people in current society are trying to get the best of both worlds. They want to put up with being a corporate ass-kisser 9-5 Monday to Friday in order that they can make money, money which allows them to be their "true selves" in their time off. I see these people at music festivals, concerts, galleries - anything which they can go to in order to feel like they are not ACTUALLY a corporate ladder-climber. They will discard their corporate identity for the weekend like a rag and dress in ways which completely depart from that world. Often, they are drawn to the world of the artist, the beatnik, the hippy... the world of the "true self". So we have guys like Jimi Hendrix, doing his thing and not worrying about the corporate bullshit world, then he sees these guys from that world all of a sudden trying to dress like him and be like him. So that they can get the best of both worlds: they can be rich like the fatcats, but authentic like the artists. It is at this point that Jimi says, "Mr Businessman, you can't dress like me". He knows that their attempt to be like him is pathetic, it is weak. It is inauthentic. It is also a slap in the face to the artists: "I can devote massive hours during the week to becoming a corporate slave, but during the weekend I can be just like you, even though you have to devote your whole life to your craft." And that is how a lot of people are living these days, including a lot of "artists". No wonder music is so shit these days.

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If you're bored then you're boring, pt.3

December 2nd 2008 06:03

The last two blogs I wrote on this topic were a bit self-helpish along the lines of "how do you know if you're boring or just bored?" I'm quite sure now that if anyone thinks they are boring, they are just projecting their own boredom onto other people. So in the question of which comes first: boredom or boringness, the answer is boredom.

I've come to realise recently how much of a part boredom has played in my life. For example, the main preoccupation in my life is guitarring, and I distinctly remember wanting to learn guitar in year 8 so that I would have something to do on boring afternoons after school. I went to uni because I was bored of work, quit uni because I got bored of that, then recently went back after I was bored of work again. I started going to the gym because I was bored of sitting at home at night, after I got bored of going out almost every night. Most new movies and music bore me - they are so formulaic and predictable, so much like everything that has come before them. A lot of people bore me

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"Time flies when you're having fun"

November 26th 2008 08:03

I think it's interesting how true this saying is. Time really does fly when you're having fun - in fact, it's one of the defining aspects of fun. If time isn't going fast for you while you're doing something, then it's hard to imagine that you're having fun doing it. It's the inverse of the saying "a watched pot never boils" - where by paying close attention to the waiting process, time slows down almost to a standstill.

This saying is surely not to be taken literally, as if it is a physical entity with a varying speed. What does it mean, then, for time to go fast? I'm very curious about this question because I have a feeling it will tell us something interesting or important about human psychology. We think of time as something neutral and external which passes without our intervention. We measure it by our clocks and by the sun rising and setting, but time is not the measurement. If the sun came started to rise and set faster than normal, we wouldn't say that time is moving faster, and the same with our clocks. Really, time is measured most importantly in relation to our bodies and our experiences(after all, as Nietzsche said, "there is no absolute measure of anything"). The growing, ageing and decaying of the body is the first and biggest indicator of time as a straight line, our first notion of a beginning and an end. Secondly, our experiences are equally important - if someone's body grew and aged quicker than normal, we wouldn't say time has sped up (although we might say that it has sped up for them). The reason for this is that they haven't had x amount of time to use their body. They haven't had the length of experiences that would normally be associated with the normal span of a life. If I am right, then, we could be stuck with a circular definition of time. Experiences, such as watching a pot boil, are measured by their length of time, but time is measured by length of experience (maybe that is what this new book, The Time Paradox is about - I don't know, I haven't read it

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"Judge not, lest ye be judged"

November 20th 2008 04:41

Just as a disclaimer, I know the above is a bible verse, but I am writing about it not as that but as a common saying.

As I touched upon in a previous thread, I have often been accused of being judgemental. There is a big problem with being judgmental, and that is, no-one likes being judged! So going around judging people, even if it's in your head, is not a good way to go about being liked. There is something intriguing about the judging process, though. It doesn't seem to be as simple as "don't judge". The reason is that judging is very closely related to quality - judging is the measuring or assessing of the quality of something. And by definition, all of us are attracted to whatever is quality. Now I don't want to start a big discussion about Quality - that has already been done in vast style by a much smarter man than myself, Robert Pirsig, in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". I do agree with him though that quality is that which everything stems from (I think that was one of his claims

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Effort and the Buddha, pt.1

November 17th 2008 13:05

Last blog I write about a zen saying that I like:

Great Doubt

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Love and the Buddha

August 12th 2008 15:09

Great Faith.
Great Doubt.
Great Effort.
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If you're bored then you're boring, pt.II

October 21st 2006 10:10

"If you're bored then you're boring"

The fear of being boring is very closely related to the fear of rejection or disapproval. We’ve experienced the awkwardness that comes about when you’re in an interaction and you’re not connecting with the other people or person. We know that this generally leads to an abrupt end of the said interaction. Being boring, or awkward, does have some very real and undesirable consequences; not caring what other people think can be quite an unpleasant path to take.
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