This Moment, and This Moment, and This Moment

Life can be a cruel mistress. You can love her, take care of her and be truly good to her, but the next thing you know, she delivers you a heart-crushing blow.

If you are an adult (and I know nearly all my readers are, despite the cadre of high school students in Southern California I know who are avid enthusiasts of The Deep Woods), then you already know that life is replete with pain, sadness and struggle. These formidable foes are an inextricable part of existence, and they’re part of nature.

There’s a great line in the novel “Fight Club” by Chuck Palahniuk that says: “On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.”

Well, on a long enough timeline, no matter who we are or how well we’ve managed to organize our lives, all of us will experience profound sadness, crushing loss, deep disappointment and likely intense physical pain that becomes both all-encompassing and debilitating. Again, this is just part of nature.

Not to get morose, but every one of us, if we haven’t already, will likely have to deal with the pain, hurt and loss associated with the death of a parent, a favorite aunt or uncle, a brother, a sister, a close friend or even what is said to be the most difficult loss to bear, the loss of a child.

What’s even more intense is that, as humans, we know that we are mortal. We know we are going to die, and we know that everyone we know living today also is going to die. And once again, this reality is just part of nature.

Yet, as Sir Francis Bacon famously proclaimed, “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.”

But how does one go about commanding nature in an effort to ease the pain that living brings?

For me, knowing the nature of existence allows me to focus on what I am doing right now — in this very moment. Because all we are sure of is that we have this moment, and this moment, and this moment.

This realization that life is now prompts me to ask myself why anyone would ever want to squander the now.

Why would you ever allow yourself to consciously live in a state of negativity, one replete with unhappiness, anger, distress, discontent and malaise over trivial things you have no control over? And let’s face it, nearly everything in our lives we have little to no control over.

Now, that’s not to say we should feel something other than deep sadness over pain, loss and other adverse circumstances. It is proper to feel these emotions, and you do not want to shut them down or cut them off, as that also would be a form of squandering the now. Yet, think about all the times we do squander the now by not paying close enough attention to our own minds.

We get mad when someone cuts us off on the freeway. We get upset if the barista gets our coffee order wrong. We become angry because one of the stocks we own slides after the company announces downbeat earnings guidance. But, if you realize that it is your reaction to these things which is the cause of your sadness, and not the actual events themselves, you realize that with a little effort, you can command nature by altering your mental state.

The first step in doing this is to recognize that thoughts are the root cause of all of our emotional states.

Indeed, the ideas you have in the now are what is affecting you right now. So, if you can consciously identify those thoughts, process them and either let them go, change them or integrate them for future use, you will be much better off when the inevitable wave of life’s sadness slams onto your shore.

By knowing your own mind, and by cultivating a self-awareness capable of identifying thoughts as the root cause of all discomfort, pain and pleasure, arousal and peak experience, you can avoid squandering the now.

Instead, you can embrace the now for what it is, and you can become better at dealing with the good, the bad and the ugly — because life is replete with all of these elements, and that reality isn’t going to change.

So, do not let your head wander its way into despair.

Take control of your thoughts, which one can do via practices such as mindfulness meditation and other active efforts to recognize the content of one’s own mind.

By recognizing the “you” in there, and the content of your inner life, you will put yourself on the path to making sense of the sad, happy, debilitating and glorious days — and everything in between.

Finally, consider that while the world can at times be a very scary dragon — it’s a dragon we can tame, as long as we understand what’s in our own frame — and as long as we obey nature.

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Face It

“Facing it, always facing it, that’s the way to get through. Face it.”

–Joseph Conrad

One of my proudest academic successes was a paper I wrote for a graduate seminar on comparative literature while still an undergraduate at UCLA. The paper was on Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and the theme of entropy (philosophically, physically and geopolitically) woven throughout the author’s masterwork. This paper captured the attention of the English Department faculty, and it was widely lauded and held up by some of the best minds in the field as a stellar example of cogent, thoughtful and unique literary analysis.

The success of this paper, and the enjoyment I extracted from “the doing” of the work had a life-changing effect on me. It was then that I knew I was capable of offering up a worthy and different perspective to the wider discourse of important ideas. For that I am grateful, as it was one of the first plots on my life’s map that took me to where we are right now, together in exploring the world and all its intellectual wonders.

Wisdom about money, investing and life can be found anywhere. If you have a good quote that you’d like me to share with your fellow readers, send it to me, along with any comments, questions and suggestions you have about my newsletters, seminars or anything else. Click here to ask Jim.

In the name of the best within us,

Jim Woods