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I feel kind of sad for people stuck in the rat race and the 'you must go to school and get a 9-5' to succeed mentality

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Alfred Whitehead said “Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them.” The issue with this these days is that people believe that mindless action will automatically advance their lives. See as people we make decisions guided by our values based on implicit expectations. And people have a nasty tendency to accept these implicit expectations as truth or something that is guaranteed to happen.

People go to high school to get into college, go to college to get a degree, get a degree to attend post-graduate studies, attend a graduate school to get a master’s degree, get a master’s degree to get a better job. Sucks for the guy who goes through all this and ends up graduating during an economic recession and can’t find a job (that was me, and the reason I got involved with poker). And how the F*** did that stoner from my senior year who didn’t go to college manage to become a millionaire in the same period?

Poker player might read books and play a lot, follow strategies, control bankrolls, etc etc with the expectations that we will become +EV players. The truth is that none of this is guaranteed. My best friend’s been reading for like 10months and playing well within his limits but just can’t seem to win to save his life. And no matter how much I advise him it just doesn’t help. Other the other hand my roommate played for the first time two days after moving into my house. Within a week he dominated me, cleaned me out every time, started playing full time after 2 weeks while going to school part time, and he has been successful for the past three years making a ton of money.

We make so many plans and set so many goals in life that we rarely look beyond our goals. I don’t know how many opportunities I had during college, which were very risky and I opted not to get involved because they would get in the way of my “goals”. Who knows where I’d be today if I had just gone for it.

What people don’t realize however is that everything in life is pretty much independent and while our actions might influence future outcomes it probably has a far lesser effect compared to all the universes actions. Religious people act according to the values instilled by their religious denomination with the expectations that they’ll end up in “heaven”. But no one can even guarantee that heaven exists. So why do people keep on making life changing decisions based on these implicit expectations that no one can ever guarantee. I guess its same reason why some poker players consistently insist on trying to suck out and go for that two outer on the river. A lot of it has to do with people’s desires to fail/struggle before succeeding.

A lot of it comes from the fact that it has been instilled in our values that hard work and struggle will always lead to a successful outcome. Just consider all the romance movies we watch, from Cinderella to contemporary love stories, its always the same thing, the couple goes through a tough time but stick together with some bumps on the way and all is well at the end. It just sucks that life doesn’t work out that way. My girlfriend recently made me watch a chick flick called “Love Story”, it’s pretty old but she said I’d like it. The move started as a typical romance story, rich guy falls in love with poor girl, rich parents don’t approve, couple gets married regardless, parents disown the son, now couple is poor having to pay for college, they live in crappy neighborhoods, work 2 jobs to pay for school, then graduation comes and they both get good jobs in new york and live in a nice apartment and are happy. Good ending!! Well not quite, unlike most romance movies this one was more realistic. Just when everything seemed all right (happy ending like) the girl got cancer and died. Now that is true life.

Why is world history and evolution not stories of progress but rather this endless and futile addition of zeroes. No greater values have developed. Hell, the Greeks 3,000 years ago were just as advanced as we are. So what are these barriers that keep people from reaching anywhere near their real potential? The answer to that can be found in another question, and that's this: Which is the most universal human characteristic - fear or laziness?

In my mind my life is like my little window to the world, and every minute it's a different show. Now, I may not understand it. I may not even necessarily agree with it. But I'll tell you what, I accept it and just sort of glide along. You want to go with the flow. The sea refuses no river. My idea is to remain in a state of constant departure while always arriving. It's like you come onto this planet with a crayon box. Now, you may get the 8-pack, you may get the 16-pack. But it's all in what you do with the crayons, the colors that you're given. And don't worry about drawing within the lines or coloring outside the lines. I say color outside the lines. You know what I mean? Color right off the page. Don't box me in.

In my search for meaning in life I’ve come to understand one thing there is no truth in the future because the future can’t be predicted. Whenever discussing this I’ll grab a ball and ask the other person them what would happen if I just dropped it, not throw it but just let go. Most people will say that the ball will fall straight to the ground, so I drop it but kick it before it hits the ground making it fly all over the place. The truth is that there is no reason for a ball to drop straight to the ground, other than the expectation that there will be no interference. The only truth is the now. I don’t know the future, the past has been biased by judgment and is no longer truth, the only thing I know for sure is what’s happening now. Philip K. Dick wrote about time: “that its always 50 A.D. Actually, there's only one instant, and it's right now, and it's eternity. And it's an instant in which God is posing a question, and that question is basically, 'Do you want to be one with eternity? Do you want to be in heaven?' And we're all saying, 'No thank you. Not just yet.' And so time actually is just this constant saying No to God's invitation. That's what time is, and it's no more 50 A.D. than it's 2005. There's just this one instant, and that's what we're always in." This is the narrative of everyone's life. That behind the phenomenal differences, there is but one story, and that's the story of moving from No to Yes. All of life is like, "No thank you, no thank you, no thank you," then ultimately it's, "Yes, I give in, yes, I accept, yes, I embrace." That's the journey. Everyone gets to Yes in the end, right?”

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The only thing that matters at the end of the day is how well we sleep at night, with the knowledge that we have to face ourselves in the mirror. Our mothers and friends are not going to share our beds, nor are they going to sleep for us.


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Benedict Anderson says about identity that you have to get a baby picture. So you pick up this picture, this two-dimensional image, and you say, "That's me." Well, to connect this baby in this weird little image with yourself living and breathing in the present, you have to make up a story like, “This was me when I was a year old, and then later I had long hair, and then we moved to Riverdale, and now here I am.” So it takes a story that's actually a fiction to make you and the baby in the picture identical to create your identity. And the funny thing is, our cells are completely regenerating every seven years. We've already become completely different people several times over, and yet we always remain quintessentially ourselves.


God...sorry for the random post...it helped cure my hangover!!