Fear and expeditions

Fear can strike anytime.

In a way it is very easy to deal with.

Stick your face boldly into the miasmas that are the face of fear and it will turn tail like a frightened thing itself and scurry away whining.

But the hard part is getting to the point where you can be decisive, so you can decide to boldly front up your problems. This is because the first thing fear robs us of, is the power of swift decision making.

Running away, hiding under the bed clothes, changing the subject may be obvious ways of avoiding the problem that is causing fear. But more insidious ways of running away include ‘Solutions’- complicated structures and ideas that serve to pin you down, unable to face your real problem. These solutions thrive on weak decision making. But simply 'making a decision' is not enough. You need to have in place a routine for dealing with fear. And the best routine is routine itself.

On an expedition you expect to be frightened some of the time, and so you are prepared for it. The first place it is likely to strike is in the weeks and days before setting off, possibly into the unknown. The night before ‘funk’ was often dealt with by sailors and other professional expeditioners by getting blind drunk and then waking up just as the boat slipped its moorings, ready to face the dangers and rewards of an expedition. This is one way of a routine taking care of things...

Sometimes you tell yourself that the fear you feel is a real intuition of some disaster that will happen on the trip. But intuitions of a vague nature like this are a cloak for your survival instinct- which is telling you ‘take care’. Nothing is wrong with that. If you get a severe intuition that you shouldn’t fly on a certain plane, take a later flight. But don’t stop flying- that is giving in to fear.

The nature of an expedition is that you carry everything you need with you, or arrange for supply dumps along the way, or for resupply. You have all the money you need, all the food you need, all the gear you need. A lot of planning and preparation have gone in to this. No expedition that succeeds wings it in these matters. In life, when we start a new project we often try and wing it. Most often we say- ‘I’ll see how it goes and then decided whether to keep on’. This is almost always doomed to failure. There are bound to be points when the fear mounts and you ask yourself ‘what the hell I am doing here?’ It is precisely at that point that all the routines, mantras, uniforms and rituals of the expedition kick in to get you moving. As long as you are moving you are winning, the expedition is moving to success. So whenever you plan a project make sure all your supplies- mental and physical- are set aside for however long the project will take. 

Actually, on an expedition, in the long run, probably worse than bald and obvious fear, is the fear that comes on the wings of discomfort. You have come to expect obvious fear and it only pops up from time to time- maybe crossing tricky ground or facing large wild animals. And you discover that the wilderness, most of the time is a neutral place- it is not there to harm you or help you- it is there for you to use to your advantage if you can. But if you are cold and tired and hungry very very quickly the whole raison d’etre of the expedition can melt away. Little things can suddenly seem dangerous. When you are shaking with cold its easy to imagine tumbling off a cliff to your death. In wartime it has been observed that privation and discomfort cause more mutinies than dangerous battle situations. An army marches on its stomach for very good reason. So for this reason you need to be able to slyly take pleasure in very small things. If everything is wet, revel in the one dry item you have managed to save. Look forward to that first cup of tea when you stop walking. Take pleasure in getting a good fire going. If things are getting so uncomfortable that forward progress is threatened, take time out to remedy the situation. Don’t fight on when your morale is dangerously low. Take one or two days rest. Rebuild your resources. Never be in so much of a hurry not to take a tactical break from time to time. Hurry is the single biggest cause of failure in expeditions. Hurrying causes blisters, injuries, getting lost, losing your sense of humour, losing gear. It is a sign of a poorly thought through expedition. You should have worked out your daily mileage and should be able to do it without hurrying. Knowing how many miles you have to do, and doing them, is the biggest single comforter you have- and the best guard against fear.

Reading

You surface from reading a book

And half the day is gone

Blear eyed, sofa sodden

Can you remember even half

Of what you avidly poured

Into a soul thirsty for distraction,

And for information that ‘might be useful’- 

‘marriage and work are the great bulwarks against crime’,

‘heroin is mainly smoked these days 

owing to its increased purity.’ 

(these two from a cop memoir) 

And like heroin

I’ve been doing that almost all my life

And no doubt I’ve found a use for some of it

Usually as fillers for otherwise dull conversations

Filleting out the good bits for later

Standing around and prating about

The secrets of this and that

It annoys some and pleases others

Probably I’m neither ahead or behind

From this lifelong tic

Should I give up the reading?

The random book habit I seem stuck with?

It won’t go now, five decades on and into the sixth,

As I celebrate the odd fact, 

Or better, the odd insight,

That lets you know you know,

And that you can rest easy now,

Go back to the sofa library

With a well earned cup of tea,

And a well thumbed book,

And out the window trees bending and arc-ing

In the wind, the summer storms again,

How many messages from this cycle of life

The same pattern growing stronger 

Year by year, how many messages

Will I ignore?

Enlightenment is not a career option.

Enlightenment is not a career option. It’s not a regular path of employment with promotion opportunities, a fast track for smart people and a dead end job for those who failed their boss somehow. Enlightenment (and we’ll get to discussing what I mean by this in a moment) is very tempting to see as a job in distinction to all the other things you could be doing, an alternative form of employment- like you could be a great rock star but that would involve selling your soul to some extent (Faust lurks everywhere in the art world) so you decide to go full on for ‘becoming enlightened’. You’re not the first nor will you be the last. Think of the old hippies, giving it all up in 1965 to get their glimmer of special awareness and then waking up in the 1980s and getting a job in computers. Which is alright. I am not especially in favour of the person who got a job with IBM in 1965 and was running a division in 1985, maybe bossing the poor old hippy about. I am not trying to make that point, that seeking some kind of enlightenment is a waste of time. No way. The instinct is 100% correct. The problem, as in many things, is in the approach.

By enlightenment I mean the belief that it is possible to a have a better and clearer view of what life is about than the standard, formally accepted view that is broadcast and implied by TV journalism, advertising and a job interview. Pretty low bar eh? OK, raise it a little. By enlightenment I mean the belief that there are people out there who are more enlightened than you are, and from whom you can learn to be more enlightened. Phew- circular- but getting there. By enlightened I mean getting to a stage where you have direct, incontrovertible knowledge obtained through intuition that many of the ‘truths’ of religion and humanity over the ages (some of the obvious ones, some less obvious) are in fact truein a very useful and necessary sense and provide a key to understanding a great many mysteries about life. So- out on a limb here, I’ll keep going. By enlightened I mean being able to spend more of your time in the above state rather than the bemused and a bit confused state which, let’s face it, is quite a lot of time.

And what I don’t meanby enlightened. I don’t mean you can teach anyone to be more enlightened. I don’t mean you have inner peace all the time and walk around like a kung fu master. I don’t mean you are super successful at your worldly job.

Jobs again. Because it is something worth noting- your job, where you live and who you spend the most time with- these are the biggest influences on your life. So intuiting this we spend a great deal of time thinking about all three- hence an obsession with ‘career’, dating websites and property programs on TV. But though knowing this may be a small step towards enlightenment, thinking about enlightenment as a kind of career like being a car salesman or a children’s author is plain muddled.

Viktor Frankl had this brilliant  but slightly obscure idea that happiness, success and enlightenment were transcendental concepts. That means you couldn’t aim at them. You had to do other stuff which loosely connected in some mysterious way. Rather like trying to be helpful and useful at a kid’s party is a very good way to become popular among other mum’s, but if you aimed at popularity you’d fail. The idea of popularity contains no cluesas to what you should do. You’d be like Bart Simpson trying to imagine the Itchy and Scratchy movie in his imagination. Nothing there. You have to do other stuff which is not indicated when you directly aim for popularity or happiness. These terms don’t provide signposts. You need to look elsewhere. And that place is in giving, generosity, gratitude and service. This is why all four of these things are a major part of any religion. Of course they are then turned into something amazing and special – they aren’t- they are simply the tools you need to proceed to the next step. Which is greater awareness. Greater awareness means you are sufficiently outside your own headspace that you can see stuff coming. it’s like being on the flyover and seeing a car crash about to happen rather than in the VW that just got clobbered by a 14 wheeler truck. You have to get out of yourself a bit- and the 3Gs are the tried and tested way.

So when you seek a career seek one that allows you to pursue these things more easily rather than less easily. Also make sure there is all the other stuff- job satisfaction, ambition looked after, remuneration etc. Remember you’re a human being not an Extra-terrestrial. Humans have jobs, or careers or occupations, otherwise that get all lazy and self-centred. So get one. Get one that suits you. How do you know what will- not by asking your guru- by becoming more aware. Back to the 3Gs, plus observing what you like doing, what you are good at, what you can do that others can’t- all the usual careers advice. And don’t be in a hurry. If your goal is really enlightenment then you can afford to take your worldly career pretty easy- I don’t mean slacking, au contraire because slacking reduces awareness, I mean keeping your eye on the ball and yet being aware when you don’t need to bust a gut. (Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon- ‘when there is nothing you can do, do nothing.’ You get the picture.)

Young, and not so young people, get hung up on the ‘right career’. There could be many out there you haven’t even heard of. Go and out and find them, get out of your head a little by going someplace new (a reason why travel or pilgrimage are a part of many religions); be grateful and generous and see whether that works better for you than being ungrateful and tightfisted…And also realise that those who did not even think about enlightenment when they started out doing a regular job may well have achieved it along the way, more conventionally than you perhaps, but there are as many paths out there as there are grains of sand on the beach...

an end of year message from our founder

What have I learned in 2019? Lots of things that are really a bit embarrassingly obvious and even somewhat childishly obvious to reveal, stuff that most folk have picked up without the fuss and bother I have expended in the effort. But, like in aikido, the slow learners make rather good teachers to others with learning difficulties...I flatter myself but there you are. Now, the main thing that has been interesting me of late is the notion of PLORK. Yes, PLORK. Plork is neither work nor play. It is working with a playful attitude or playing at something that delivers what others call work. I used to think that once you turn a hobby- say writing- into a job you lose the magic. You soldier on turnin' out the words but it is never quite the same. Now I realise that this experience just one more on the true path of PLORK. Take today for example- I could be out like in previous years doing something fun and playful like taking photos of beach gun emplacements (yes, we all have to get our kicks somehow) but instead I am at home typing away (while listening to autobahn by krafterk on spotify) and doing what others might see as work. It isn't. But neither is it what might be thought of as play. It is PLORK. The ability to turn something that looks like work into something with a playful element, without losing out to either, indeed, benefiting in a synergistic way from both. It is a very necessary thing I feel. it has all sorts of beneficial ramifications too. I believe it may even be a bulwark against the kind of automatic thinking/action that leads to horrible human excesses in business and war, not necessarily of course, but maybe- you could imagine someone 'playing' at chucking garbage into the sea, but perhaps you get a hint of where I am going with this. Working at driving a van struck me as being rather playful- and that job was indeed a jolly good one as jobs go. Jobs per se are anti-plork so you want to limit their encroachment on the rest of your life, but a job with plork is not to be sniffed at, and most jobs can be PLORKED so to speak. Once you know about PLORK you don't need to schedule in the hours of faux play encased in drinking, partying, viewing and doing pointless stuff. Why do traditional folk have such rather limited 'playtime'- because they are masters of PLORK. We are either poe serious of half drunk with soccer chanting glee. Both lack good sense. Whereas including dancing in a business meeting is genius. Dancing should be a feature of all working practices when it is not a safety hazard to do so- binmen and posties, nurses and doctors should dance round the roads and wards if they are not doing so already...I jest, but only just...indeed I PLORK. Contrast this with going to a special place to dance - it's a bit silly isn't it- so we have to have a drink beforehand. Once when I was in a meeting with a Naga tribesman who wanted me to visit his far off village he started a very impressive dance then and there in the hotel room- not just showing me what I could expect on arrival, but also a necessary expression of the eager anticipation we all felt about making such a visit. Making a cool routine of something can be PLORK. Working like Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke while shovelling tar can be PLORK. In fact plorkers can be much 'harder workers' than resentful clock punchers and skivers anyday. But they need that skill, that slivver of insight so easily damaged by the laziness that is part of creativity...All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy- maybe- and all play and no work makes Jack a poor poppinjay- but if Jack learns to PLORK he gets the best of both worlds. Plork brings humanity into the work space. When there is humanity in the workspace we may just act a little better all round, but just as important we end up thinking what we are doing is more meaningful than either dogwork or horseplay. A very happy new year to all my readers and may the PLORK be with you!

TEDx Micromastery talk

Did this TEDx talk a month back- it's on youtube- please share to your heart's content!

https://www.ted.com/talks/robert_twigger_why_you_don_t_need_10_000_hours_to_master_a_skill

thinking about thinking

Intellectuals and public figures deemed intelligent have spent plenty of time thinking. By this I mean left brain theorising, introspecting and imagining. More often than not this has been at the expense of thinking about the place of thinking in our lives. Professional 'thinkers' naturally rate the activity highly, so highly that we seldom see them place thinking alongside other human activities: working, eating, walking, talking- all of which can be done with very little theorising and introspecting. Paradoxically it is the 'less intelligent' (inclined to be more right brained perhaps) who first encounter the limits of thinking, its strengths and weakpoints. They learn that living supplies answers if you are patient- 'thinking things through' is not some activity like solving a rubic's cube; it is more like a careful stating of how things are and then giving yourself time to appreciate any answers that arrive. Take the left brain's insistance that we are born alone and die alone. The right side of the brain (or whatever it is that acts like the right side of the brain) tells us that no one is alone- unless they are so hostage to the left brain that they 'think' they are. No one's life is meaningless or random unless they 'think' it is; where does this 'thinking' start? In books by thinkers and in conversations with people who either think too much or don't think at all. As Francis Bacon wrote, "It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion." 

10 rivers

It has been reliably estimated that must plastic in the world's oceans doesn't get there directly - it is flushed down an amazingly small number of big rivers. In fact 90% of the plastic in the ocean got there by travelling down only 10 rivers (usual suspects: Yangtze, Indus, Mekong etc). So all we need to do is clean up ten rivers. That may be hard but it is in no way impossible.

Many environmental problems are framed in a way that makes them seem insoluble except by a thunderbolt from Zeus or other unlikely and idealistic solution. Yet by looking at a 90% solution we can see a way forward in many cases. The old dicta that 90% of the problem is caused by 10% of the population (otherwise known as the 90/10 or 80/20 Pareto principle) can be turned to the advantage of pollution controllers. Find out who is causing 90% of the trouble and focus on them.