Author: msommella

I don’t know how, if you can or if that’s even good for you…

Have you ever observed another person doing some dumb shit? The type of shit they will think to themselves “wow, I regret that decision” or ” oh man, I would have handled that totally different”. Having an objective perspective to all situations is nearly impossible. We see life through a lot of different lenses, each lense is personal as well as unique. Each lens provides its own unique perspective and not every person has the same set of lenses or same method of trying to achieve their desired results. This can cause them to view the world very different from each other. Not only does this cause a variation in perception but also in reaction.

I see the world through a set of lenses that are unique to me. Sometimes it’s hard to remember this when dealing with others. I think it’s also important to remember that an individual’s unique perspective is also shaped by their personal universe, in other words their routine or daily life. I have met folks that seem content, well adjusted, even dare I say it- happy! But the moment life throws them a curve ball they crumble.. as I’ve gotten older I tend to pay more attention to the curveballs; how people handle them and more importantly how I handle them. I also tend to try to remember that what may seem really important to me, may not be very important to anyone else… My emotional connection to a situation is unique to me and possibly a small subset of people. I’ve always admired people that were able to stay calm in chaos, when they weren’t ready for the chaos… that is very different than people that are just able to operate in chaos. I think, those are two very distinct and different ways of being.

I know people that are able to operate in conditions that I have never experienced before and sometimes confuse that with handling chaotic conditions or juggling variables, when in fact they have just experienced more things than I have. The appreciation for experience, is one only appreciated by experience.

I love sports.  I love competition.  I love the feeling of accomplishment.  I love seeing hard work materialize into something wonderful that is shared with a select few people that experienced the same journey together.  Competing athletically (definitely not professionally, very amateur) and sports in general, have always been very present in my life.  There have been stretches of time that I drifted away from competition or stopped competing as hard and blamed it on day to day responsibilities, getting older, body aches, not enough time, etc….Somehow I’ve always found a way back from that and focused on getting better, putting the work back in, training for “something” like a charity run, beer league championship, weight loss goal, pulling myself out of a “funk” or just personal satisfaction.

Training towards a goal, has been  the only way I can trick my brain into allowing me to find “another gear”.  Any person that has competed in anything, physical or mental, knows what I mean by finding “another gear”.  Its that place your brain goes, where it literally says ” fuck you body, I know your out of gas and you want to drop, but we are gonna turn this up a notch because we ain’t done yet!!”.  In a competition/game setting, its when your instincts just take over and propel you into a place where time slows down, you can do no wrong, you’re in the zone.  I’ve found it hard to locate this gear as I get older, its not because its lost or its gone,  its because I usually misplace it.  Its always there, but needs to be used often or it goes dormant and hides somewhere deep inside my mind.  Sometimes it plays tricks and acts like its found, but its just a false sense of accomplishment due to only a small amount of work done.  You need a lot of work to locate that gear.  As a good friend says “it ain’t easy, they think it is, but it takes work to be good”.  I’ve always believed that a master makes the impossible look simple.  Its takes thousands of hours of preparation, tons of sweat, tears, no fear of injuries and perseverance to make playing any sport look easy.

The next gear is also a competitive edge in life, outside sports.  People that know this gear exists are more equipped to understand they can always endure more pain than they think they can.  By pain, I mean discomfort of any kind in the pursuit of excellence.  They know that not only physically but mentally the only way to get better is to push their bodies and their minds to the point of breaking, heal up and do it all over again.  People that have never experienced this might find it odd, strange, even awful but once you find it you know its the only way to really improve a skill. People that have never experienced this also don’t know what this point is.  They think its easy, but it ain’t.  It ain’t easy….

People that compete in athletics think differently than those that do not.  I believe it depends less  on the sport they choose to play, rather than their mentality toward achieving goals.  I like to categorize them into Team athletes, vs individuals. The team athlete knows how to work with others, appreciates their teammates for the roles they play and understand what role everyone on the team plays including themselves.  The individual SHOULD play a sport that is an individual one, like singles tennis, figure skating, sprinting, etc…BUT in reality there are alot of individual athletes that compete in team sports but really do not integrate well into a team setting.  These different types of athletes can be differentiated by the style of play they possess as well as their attitude toward preparation and in game play.  In my opinion even in individual competition you still have a team system that helps the athlete achieve his or her goals, so I don’t think you can ever really consider any sport and individual effort.

Sports and competition have been and hopefully always will be present in my life.  I attribute a lot of my personality to lessons I learned while training, competing and being part of a team.  I also attribute a lot of my philosophy regarding life, perseverance and finding a personal limit (or lack of one), both physical and mental, to lessons I learned playing sports.  Its important to always push yourself, the human psyche is designed to feel good when it achieves some sort of accomplishment.  For a dummy like me, I find accomplishment in its most purest form, being better at something today than I was yesterday, beating last years time in a 5K, getting to an ideal weight, skating faster, scoring more goals than last season, putting together the best beer league team and kicking some ass on the ice!  It ain’t easy, people think it is, but it ain’t…

 

Iv’e always heard people talk about moving “up”or “forward”, the term progress always had a positive connotation and if you went backward it was negative. Forward movement terms were categorized as “good” and any term that signified backwards motions were categorized as “bad”.

Words and terms like-

• advance, progress
• move forward
• upward mobility
• climb the ladder
• shatter the ceiling
• trail blaze

All these forward terms have a positive connotation and are considered “good”. The fact that we associate direction or movement in conjunction with “good” or “bad” signifies there is a hierarchy as well as a road map to life and happiness. If there is a hierarchy in place, does everyone subscribe to the same description of levels or places within this hierarchy?  In my opinion hierarchies are only effective when everyone is playing the game by the same set of rules, following the same map and speaking in the same vernacular.  As we know, this is not how the world works today.  Maybe back in Pre internet days when the world was a huge scary place and we had limited information about the rest of the world this worked, but it also prohibited free thought and prohibited perspective from other far away communities.  The group think or tribal mentality of everyone following the same life path can be effective but fosters ignorance, alnd tends to use terms like “this is the way we have always done it”…which is a term I personally hate.

Many people believe that “bad” is the opposite of “good”.  Those same people also believe that the opposite direction of up, is down and the opposite direction of forward is backward, all logical… But what if we did not associate the man-made term “good” with the movement of “forward”?  What if we did not associate the movement of “backwards” with “bad”?  What if they were just directions? What if they were simply necessary directions that each person uses during their life journey (assuming that there is a journey). If we take away the good and bad connotations from these terms, they are just terms of motion.  The opposite of motion is being without motion, stagnancy.  So by disassociating the terms good or bad from these terms of motion you also eradicate the construct of a hierarchy in which people navigate, the mental picture would look slightly different (assuming you prescribe to the “road map” ideology of life). The opposite of movement is actually NO movement at all.  Being stationary or stagnant is the opposite of moving anywhere.

Removing negative or positive meaning from these movements would change the dialogue when people speak about their life journey.  Imagine a journey where moving backwards may be necessary in order to move forward.  Moving laterally may be necessary in order to move around an immovable object. Moving forward may not be the best move depending on where you ultimately desire to be.  Everyones map is different.  Some may be similar, but lets not confuse similarity with being exactly the same.

 

I like lists. They help me think.  Below is a simple list I’ve compiled on things I don’t care about and things I do care about.  Keep in mind the word “care” was carefully used.  It means I am not interesting in hearing anyone talk about it.  It doesn’t mean its not important.  It can be very important to you, it doesn’t have to be important to me.

• I don’t care about your politics. 
• I don’t care about your religion. 
• I don’t care what company you work for.
• I don’t care if you work for yourself. 
• I don’t care how much money you make
• I don’t care if you don’t work.
• I don’t care if you pay taxes.
• I don’t care if you don’t pay taxes.
• I don’t care if you hate hypocrites.
• I don’t care if you hate liars.
• I don’t care if you are vegan.
• I don’t care if you eat meat.
• I don’t care if you only eat free range, non GMO, nut free stuff..
• I don’t care if you juice cleanse all day er day..
• I don’t care if you get ripped on malt liquor frequently.
• I don’t care if you get high.
• I don’t care if your high right now.
• I don’t care if your straight edge and your body is a temple. 
• I don’t care what kind of car(s) you have.
• I don’t care if you don’t have a car
• I don’t care about what zip code you live in.  
• I don’t care about what YOU SAY your philosophy on life is.
• I don’t care about who you know.

 

• I care about how you treat babies, children, animals and the elderly.  
• I care about how you react when faced with adversity.
• I care about what you celebrate. ( I would like to celebrate with you)
• I care about challenging beliefs.
• I care about debating topics.
• I care about if you concede to never knowing all the facts and always try to look at a bigger picture.
• I care about experiences not things.
• I care about seeing the beauty in nature, people and all forms of art.
• I care about your health.
• I care about my health.
• I care about Hockey… talking about it, watching it and playing it.

Not too long ago I was very skeptical about the current generation.. Their work ethic, demeanor, how they interact with other people, and their overall sensitivity to other’s commentary.  As I have tried to delve into the human experience, history, and a greater understanding of myself my views have begun to change.

Below are some views I used to have  as well as reasons why my perception has changed…

People have become dumber, previous generations were smarter  

I’ve spent a fair amount of time researching this statement and its validity. From a perspective of how society functions it’s not that hard to quantify due to the amount of available data points, but there are so many categories that CAN be quantified its hard to know which one makes the most impact regarding what constitutes “smart”.

Our world has become more complicated, due primarily due to the amount of variables that have been introduced into the life equation.  What’s the life equation?  I just made it up… but take a math equation- 1+1=2, simple right?  Take a more complex equation- 1+(1*A)=4, one variable, also only one answer… so not that complex.  The life equation is not constrained to one form of math, it uses addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, fractions, exponents, logic, addition by subtraction, long division, extremely long division, etc… you get the point.   The more variables, the more complex the equation. Now apply that to your life.  The amount of variables is astounding.  They also vary from one person to another.  The end of the equation is usually a variable as well.  Probably isn’t even static.  Its  dynamic equation, that is constantly evolving and this is due to the amount of information we are able to process during our lifetime.

Oh yea, I forgot to mention that just as information is more easily available, so is misinformation as well.  Not only do you have all this additional data to process, variables to add to your equation, you also need to be able to filter out the stuff that doesn’t matter, is incorrect or malicious.

People have become more sensitive.

The way we communicate today is vastly different than it was 10 years ago, even more different than it was 20 years ago.  People’s voices have become more easily heard through the internet, social media, online gaming and different group/text apps.  With these types of communication forums the voiceless, meek, quiet can have a very loud voice.  They can reach a lot of people and raise awareness to issues that otherwise would have gone ignored.

Thoughts have changed on how we approach social issues and how we deal with them.

It is more socially acceptable to speak up instead of stay quiet.

People have become more disrespectful.

I have a lot of thoughts on this one.. many theories and assumptions.  I have been struggling which one is correct, or maybe they all are correct or maybe none of them are.  Could it be that once again, society has just been able to place a stronger magnifying glass on itself and we are able to see these warts in HD instead of suppressing them with silence?

But there is no respect for elders today!  Anyone that was worth respecting never expected it (in my opinion)

People have become more lazy.

Working/doing a job-  in relation to how we gain income has changed. We do not “work” the same way as previous generations due to technological advances. Career paths are far different today than they were in previous generations.  In fact career paths today are not straight any more.  They are actually not even clearly defined in some cases. Trade school or hard skill jobs are still around and will never go away, but their entire industries have changed a bit.  There are even new industries that have emerged.

There have always been lazy, sensitive/insensitive, uninformed, ignorant and disrespectful people in this world.

If you take a random group of people and stick them in a room there will be a lazy person, disrespectful person and more likely than not, an asshole among them.

Today’s society is hyper focused on each others behavior, primarily due to the advent of social media, TV trying to keep up with social media as well as society trying to understand how to process this fire hose of information being sprayed at us.

Using them as examples to discredit entire groups of people as well as a generation of is not a logical thought process to defend your ignorance… life wasn’t better and we weren’t smarter, now go ask your kid how to download that app.

 

The English language has a bunch of words that when they were first born had great intentions, but through the course of time (and the almighty dollar) they have become bad!!! Almost scary!!  They are words that you do not want to hear when in the conference room or end of year meeting.  Words that can strike fear in your khaki pant, blue shirt and power tie wearing ass!

Efficiency– you hear this and you know people are gonna lose their jobs… if you are one of the “lucky” ones who still has a job, you get to do additional work for no extra pay!!!

Right size– another layoff term. See ya guy who struggles at talking infront of people.  Even though you are the only one on your team that knows how to actually do the job, your fired because you suck at giving presentations!

Re-organize– basically your getting another boss… so now all the equity you put into making your boss believe you know your shit is gone and you have to break a new one in..

Safety– yes, safety is super important.  We all want to work safe and come home in the same condition we left to go to work. So why is it evil?  It’s brutal…it’s a fucking circle jerk of job security and mitigating risk (from being sued).  It’s no secret that in America the countries favorite past time is NOT baseball, but it’s SUING!!  So what does corporate America do to prevent lawsuits? Corporations create safety departments that implement processes and procedures that sound great, but god forbid you forget to look both ways 4 times before crossing that street and get crushed by a car who blew 4 red lights.  It’s still your fault because you only looked three times, standard procedure is 4.  

Those are only a few words that I have encountered during my time in corporate America.  That’s part of the reason I left….it’s all bullshit.

Creativity usually thrives when emotions are felt at a level of high intensity. Times of fear, anger, sadness, joy, disgust and surprise are the general categories of emotions whose energy can be focused into creativity. Some people are able to harness the energy from these times and release it in various positive forms such as poems, story telling, dance, athletics, debate, business planning, cooking, fine arts, etc… When I am feeling down in dumps I immediately start exercising alot, I use this to kick my mood up a notch.  When I am filled with excessive energy, I tend to write more, draw more, my imagination tends to run wild with creative thoughts.  Some folks are able to harness sad energy to create art, it acts as almost a form of therapy for them.  This creative energy, no matter if it is born from a dark place or a place of light,  can be focused in a positive way.

There is also the possibility of a counterbalance at play. This counterbalance can be considered a negative effect to the positive release of creative energy. I consider this counterbalance to be any self destructive behavior (there are too many to list and they are different for everyone). This counterbalance can also overtake the positive creative energy or even replace it.

I believe it is a common misconception that depressive emotions can be the cause of a lack of creativity, but instead I feel that complacency is when the mind is at its least creative state. The lack of feeling real emotions, whether positive or negative robs the mind of its creative energy. Autopilot is the death of an interesting ride.

Moderation is a fatal thing.  nothing succeeds like excess– Oscar Wilde