The Grind - 2

There was a broad statement last week about efficiency and it was closely tied with a personal dream. I felt I left a lot of things on the table that could be debated till the cows turn blue. Let me attempt to clarify my point of view. 

In most cases if one was honest with oneself one would most likely realise two thing’s. 

A. I am not efficient 

B. What I do is not remotely close to my dreams. I hide from the difficult steps I need to take to accomplish my dreams. 

Wow. Am I making a intellectual pivot,from my previous post ? Not anywhere close to a pivot.  Let’s look at the premise behind the 2 things 

Life is suffering. All religious scripture says that. Must be true right ? The suffering exists because we mentally compare ourselves to the mean ideal person that collectively society has decided. Our uniqueness is what causes us to be far for ideal. We suffer because we are insufficient or ineffective when compared to that mean. It’s an arbitrary mean based on the lowest common divisible attribute of being people. Read that again. The lowest common attribute. It’s essentially the worst attribute all of us have. Efficiency is a measure against the lowest society has. And if for some reason all of that society takes “y” time to complete some tasks versus “x” time by some other society; one could say that the society is more or less efficient that the other. It still is a a measure against the worst possible common attribute. Society and social situations are judgemental there is no way to escape that. However if you get to the bottom of this argument you will realise that in order to be part of a society and to perform in that society you will naturally tend to gravitate towards that mean and that mean will possibly be suboptimal. You decide to be inefficient to conform to the mean of the society that you are part of. The only way to change that is to become part of a society where the mean is higher than your own average. The mean pushes you to perform and you understand and accept that for your own benefit. You become as efficient as the society around you. 

One doesn’t have to be good or excellent at everything. Being good at one is enough. That is your niche. Build on that. Utilise that niche and the skills that come with it to follow your dreams. Superman or Wonder Woman are essentially characters in a comic book. Trying to become them in the real world is foolish. Believing that you need to be a super hero is even more crazy. It is impossible. What is possible is being a hero with the skills you have; becoming the best possible version of what you could be. This is difficult because it needs that one be absolutely honest with oneself. One knows what needs to be done to improve the quality of life but one ignores it yet ? It again revolves around the difficulties with the ridiculous low mean that society imposes on its self. People get scared of rocking the mean boat; who knows, you might get thrown out of the cave (ref a post a couple of weeks ago called To My self) you will not survive and so people are quite content with a performance that is lower than ordinary. Making a change to this takes effort; the mean has to be thrown away and one needs to believe that the cave doesn’t matter or that what you would do is for the betterment of the cave. 

Some parts of social structures will always appear as injustice. Take for example the fact that when you will probably die you might leave behind the people you know. Nothing can change that truth.  Injustice it is. How does one cope ? Only way I know is to be true to oneself. To accept reality for what it is. To understand the underlying reason. To strive for improvement and excellence. All this while being humble and patient enough to learn and adapt. Someone said “change is the only constant”. I am not sure what they meant. I can however speculate that one needs to always be ready to discard beliefs and learn something new. 

The grind changes every second. You change physically every 7 years (?) then why should it be so difficult for you to find your path and follow your dreams. 

Dream on

C