This is part 2 of a two-part post. The first half is here.

Let’s continue, shall we? Things may get a bit rowdier here in the second half. But as before, there’s something for everyone.

“Need You Tonight” – INXS

Looking back to the decade that produced me, there was a point when all the ridiculous fluff of the mid-80s gave way to some really timeless, inspired tunes. I figure it was about the time Kick came out. Still one of the grooviest guitar riffs I know, this song was ultra-cool on arrival and still is. It makes non-dancers want to dance.

If you like it: The rest of Kick is worth a listen. Consult an INXS die-hard for further instruction.

“Jolene” – Dolly Parton

A heartbreaking song about a girl watching her man drift away to a woman she can’t compete with. There is something so refreshing and honest about a song that looks unflinchingly at personal powerlessness, without dolling it up by babbling about hope. We’ve all been devastated by a Jolene of some kind, in one way or another. Utter defeat is human too, and Dolly saw something meaningful in it.

If you like it: The White Stripes do a fantastic cover of this song, mercifully ignoring the obnoxious custom of changing the gender when a male sings it. Check it out.  

“Kiss From a Rose” – Seal

You heard me. Overplayed, melodramatic and loved by all the demographics I am not, I still think this song has one of the most compelling and original melodies I’ve ever heard. It sucks me in. And a brilliant melody is truly, exceedingly rare, no matter how much music you consume. Even the most celebrated artists often excel at everything but melody, Bob Dylan most famously. That rare talent for melody is (for example) what the Beatles used to write so many dozens of devastatingly likable songs, with which they proceeded to conquer the earth. Kiss From a Rose, despite its clichéd floral theme, despite its over-the-top harmonies, despite its embarrassing affiliation with the worst of the Batman movies, features a verse melody so effortless and original that it probably gives Bob Dylan nightmares. I urge you not to watch the video at all, just listen. Ignore the words even, just follow the notes.

If you like it: I have no idea where to point you, for neither Seal nor co-writer Trevor Horn nor Batman himself will likely lead you to anything in the same league.

“Astro” – The White Stripes

Only bitter old men say rock is dead. This is an early one from the Detroit divorcees-turned-siblings. If you can figure out the bizarre innuendo in the lyrics, more power to you, but the saucy guitars should carry enough meaning for anybody. I love this band.

If you like it: See them live! In the mean time, check out Jimmy the Exploder, Offend in Every Way, or Black Math.

“Bulls on Parade” – Rage Against the Machine

If you don’t know Rage, they were (are?) a quartet of furious, rocking leftists, led by charismatic frontman Zach de la Rocha. Quite possibly the only rap-rock outfit that made any great music. Though political music is as old as music itself, no act ever achieved the same level of sheer, physical intensity with it. Bulls on Parade is a better-known track of theirs, and it still rocks my bones.

If you like it: Try Fistful of Steel, People of the Sun, Killing in the Name, or Freedom.

“Say it Ain’t So” – Weezer

Weezer’s first album is another one of those uncanny mid-nineties albums that are thoroughly, consistently exceptional. Say it Ain’t So is the standout on an album of standouts. The music is easy, catchy, and lighthearted even when it’s serious. In my humble yet coldly dismissive opinion, nothing they’ve done since has been as remarkable as any of the songs on this disc. Listing Say it Ain’t So here is really just a sneaky way for me to include ten of my favorite songs in the space of one.

If you like it: Get “the Blue Album,” as it is known.

“The Funeral” – Band of Horses

I was all over Band of Horses’ debut album when I first heard it, and this was the best track. It’s the song’s stoic refrain that gets to me:  At every occasion I’ll be ready for the funeral. Read it any way you wish; I think it’s a powerful philosophy. To my horror, Funeral was used in a television ad by the Ford Motor Company. I know it shouldn’t matter, but it does.

If you like it: Band of Horses’ self-titled debut is solid, as I’ve mentioned.

“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” – U2

Yep. U2 has been releasing a steady stream of material for almost 25 years, and though it would surely get me drawn and quartered in some neighborhoods I’ll go ahead and say that I don’t think it gets any better than I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For. That’s not to say it’s anything less than brilliant, in fact, every time I hear it I know I’m listening to one of rock’s greatest anthems.

If you like it: Reintroduce yourself to U2’s other early hits: One, Where the Streets Have No Name, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Mysterious Ways. If you’re looking for obscure U2 songs you’re definitely asking the wrong guy.

“Fast Car” – Tracy Chapman

Saddest song in the list, no question. Read verbatim, the lyrics appear to profess hope, but something — in Chapman’s voice, in the guitar riff, some subtle note of pleading somewhere — betrays a sinking doubt through all of the pair’s talk of better days to come. We’ve all done it: talked hopeful talk when we just don’t buy it, and nobody else does either. Fast Car is a song about people who are broken, and know it.

If you like it: I always loved the title track off of New Beginning.

“Brother Down” – Sam Roberts

Brother Down is probably his best-known song, but I’m not so sure Sam Roberts is known outside of Canada. It is enormously catchy, and seems to have stayed fresh after hundreds of listens. Catchiness is a virtue in my books, evidently. But the lyric is really something too: a highly quotable speech about finding principles you can actually live by.

If you like it: You may just be a Sam Roberts fan, and if so you’ll like almost everything of his. But probably not. Try Bridge to Nowhere, to start.

“March of the Pigs” — Nine Inch Nails

Not for the faint of heart. I was scared of this kind of music as a pre-teen. Nine Inch Nails, particularly on their 1994 masterpiece, The Downward Spiral, is hellishly dark. My friend, upon first hearing it said, “I’ve got to buy up everything of theirs before he [NIN mastermind Trent Reznor] snaps and shoots everyone.” Now in his forties, he has calmed from his early suicidal/homicidal subject matter, and as much as I hate to say it, the music has lost something. March of the Pigs is an intense, raging tune that will leave you no doubt as to what I’m talking about.

If you like it: You wore lots of black in high school. The Downward Spiral is must-own for you. So is its predecessor, Broken. Listen to them in the dark on headphones.

“Cherub Rock” – The Smashing Pumpkins

The Pumpkins are a rather polarizing band. Perhaps as a testament to their creativity, their material is all over the map in terms of style, and most people either love them or hate them, or both. Some of their stuff is ugly, boring or worse. Just about everyone agrees, though, that 1993’s Siamese Dream was their stroke of brilliance, and leadoff track Cherub Rock is one everyone loves. For best results, listen at loud volumes.

If you like it: Try Soma, Geek U.S.A., or Rocket. Venture into the rest of their catalogue at your own risk.

“I Feel it All” – Feist

Feist always makes me smile, but especially on this track. To me, I Feel It All is about throwing yourself headlong into whatever fate your desires will bring you, only acceptance and curiosity rather than ordinary foolishness. The perfect soundtrack for one of those rare days when wake up knowing exactly what you want in life, and it happens to be sunny. And what a line: I’ll be the one who’ll break my heart.

If you like it: Try So Sorry, Mushaboom or Let it Die.

“Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” – Jimi Hendrix

I didn’t know what awesome meant until I heard this tune. I remember the day too. I was thirteen when my friend called me and said “David! My brother’s having a sixties flashback! Come over quick!” When I arrived they were knee-deep in Beatles, Doors, Hendrix and Stones. I had never heard Hendrix before, and it blew my mind in the best way. That whole mid-nineties summer was like our very own 1968. Voodoo Child’s first solo break was unquestionably the coolest thing I ever heard in my life, and I don’t think anything’s topped it since.

If you like it: You have probably liked it for a long time. If not, lucky you.

“Isis” – Bob Dylan

My favorite Dylan tune is actually A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall, but I already included it in my Six Amazing Songs post. Isis is a close second. Sit back and listen to Bob tell you one of the strangest travel stories you’ve ever heard. In less than fourteen verses, he covers it all: romance, adventure, comedy, poetry and history.

If you like it: Consult your local Dylan nut for further recommendations. In the mean time, try Tombstone Blues if you want to keep laughing.

“Mutilated Lips” – Ween

What to say about Ween? If anyone is doing their own thing with abandon, it’s these guys. No style or subject matter is taboo for them. Pick a random Ween track, and you could get a straight-laced country song, a psychedelic soundscape, a bitter acoustic breakup song, or an Irish drinking song. And those are only the songs that lend themselves to description. Behind all the weirdness is some top-shelf musicianship that most people probably don’t stick around to discover. Mutilated Lips, though plenty weird, is a seductive song with an extremely unattractive title. Words fail me, give it a listen.

If you like it: Ween is a real grab bag; try Beacon Light, The Mollusk or A Tear For Eddie.

“No Way” – Pearl Jam

Non-Pearl Jam fans often scoff that the Seattle veterans have released little of spectacular quality after 1991’s debut Ten. Even my friend, a musicphile and fellow Pearl Jam lover admitted, “They do have a lot of forgettable material.” I don’t necessarily disagree, but all their fans know that they’ve lain a steady trail of gems all the way through their 18-year career. They also remain one of the best live acts around. No Way is a standout from their late-nineties comeback album, Yield.

If you like it: Try Corduroy, Brain of J, or Tremor Christ, assuming you already own Ten.

“D7″ – Nirvana

The “band that saved rock” left such precious little material before Kurt Cobain’s death that virtually every other notable song is too well-known to be worth mentioning here. D7 did not appear on any of the band’s releases, and hopefully you’ve never heard of it. It’s unreleased status is not much of a mystery — it’s a cover, so it lacks Cobain’s genius with melody, and the beginning is quite dry and plodding. But D7’s glory comes in its second half, when the trio kicks in the distortion and lets it rip at speed. Suddenly the same words take on a riveting intensity, not that they make any more sense. The shrill guitar solo bumps it up another notch, followed by yet another when Cobain brings the “vocals” back in.

If you like it: You probably know the multi-platinum Nevermind inside and out, so try these lesser-known, equally raging Nirvana originals: Negative Creep, Radio Friendly Unit Shifter, and School.

“Tiger Woods” – Dan Bern

I urge you to give this one a fair listen, even if the opening few lines offend your sensibilities. It’s a ridiculous song with a rather rude central metaphor (you’ll see), but one with a rare earnestness to it. As silly as it appears on the surface, it is indeed a passionate song about wishing for greatness. I hate to have to mention that this song was written long before Tiger Woods was a symbol of anything except undisputed superiority in one’s chosen pursuit.

If you like it: If you investigate Dan Bern you may find his huge catalogue is preoccupied with politics and religion. God Said No is worth a listen and will give you an idea of how he reconciles his faith with his wild imagination and racy lyrics.

Oh, Me – Meat Puppets

Another song that is probably best known by its inferior Nirvana cover. Idols of Kurt Cobain, the Meat Puppets are a supremely talented band who never made music that was quite accessible enough to rise beyond a comfortable level of obscurity. Every time I hear this song, I feel like I’m hearing my own story. If, for whatever reason, you ever want to understand me, all you have to do is understand this song. I don’t have to think / I only have to do it / The results are always perfect / But that’s old news. The beautiful guitarwork on the Nirvana version is actually not Kurt Cobain but Curt Kirkwood, the Meat Puppet who wrote it.

If you like it: The Meat Puppets have a wild and extensive catalogue to get lost in; start with the other songs of theirs Nirvana covered (Plateau and Lake of Fire.) See whose version you like better.

Bonus song:

It Girl – Brian Jonestown Massacre

Couldn’t leave this one out. I don’t know what to say about it, but I love it. You will too.

Photo by Clearly Ambiguous

Related posts:

1. 40 Songs I Will Always Love, Cool or Not
2. Six Amazing Songs That Illustrate What it Means to Be Human
3. 7 Profound Insights From the Beatles

One of my earliest (and to date most successful) posts was Six Songs that Illustrate What it Means to Be Human. Many readers said they hadn’t heard some of these tunes before, and really liked them. I’ve since received a number of requests to post a list of my favorite songs.

So here it is. But first a few quick things:

• Choosing my forty outright favorite songs is not really possible. I can’t recall every song I love at any given time, so I can never be sure I’m not omitting something. Therefore this is a list of forty of my favorite songs.
• Some songs are very well known. Most aren’t, but I didn’t take the indie-snob route and give you forty small-time artists you’ve never heard of and won’t “get” because you aren’t cool enough. I happily included songs and artists that are decidedly uncool. (You’ll see.)
• You’ll find this list to be a bit 90s-heavy, which just reflects my age and tastes. But there’s something for everyone.

Each song links to a place where you can listen to it. Most point to Youtube, and some are on Mp3Raid.com. On the latter site you just have to enter the code they show, no need for signing up or anything. Let me know if any links are broken.

This is part one of a two-part post. Part two will be posted on Monday.

Enjoy.

“Grandma’s Hands” – Bill Withers

An unbelievably catchy tune. Members of my generation might think they’re listening to Blackstreet for the first few bars. It will get stuck in your head, beware! You’ll be snapping, clapping, head-bobbing or shoulder-dipping to Billy’s vivid memories of his sweet old grandma.

If you like it: go find Bill Withers’ version of Use Me, probably better known as an Aaron Neville song. I think Bill did it best.

“The Seeker” – The Who

The taking-life-back anthem of Lester Burnham, the pot-smoking, career-ditching mid-life revolutionary from American Beauty. It’s a straight-laced rock tune, with a comedic take on the biggest of all human themes. It characterizes the search for life’s meaning as a mocking, hopeless conundrum, through the eyes of a regular joe who sees no reason why it shouldn’t make perfect sense. And with a guitar riff like that, it’s hard to see it any other way.

If you like it: I’m no Who expert, but you could do worse than giving My Generation (the album) a good listen.

“Ragged Wood” – Fleet Foxes

Fleet Foxes is one of those young bands whose first release is so remarkable and original that the mind goes wild in anticipation of what they’ll come up with next. As for Ragged Wood itself, all I can say is that I love it through and through, and it makes a perfect soundtrack for overland travel. Might make you feel like hitting the road.

If you like it: There is probably no Fleet Foxes you won’t like, and there is precious little of it at the moment. Listen to anything you can find.

“Pig” – Dave Matthews Band

A pretty, little-known song with an ugly name, Pig is all about our recurring, inane wish for life to be better, when we’re so fortunate to be alive at all. It’s not just the song’s sweet message that gets me, it’s how convincingly it’s delivered. This song inspired periods of bliss and ease in the middle of some of my worst times. Well done, Dave & Co.

If you like it: Try The Dreaming Tree, Don’t Drink The Water, or The Stone, from the same album.

“In the Pines” a.k.a “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” – Lead Belly

The only recording from the 1940s on the list. While best known from Nirvana’s flawed live rendition on Unplugged in New York, the Lead Belly version is much more haunting, in spite of its smiley, bluesy vibe. It plays on the age-old theme of relationship troubles, but with unusually sinister undertones. Leadbelly’s delightfully lazy style almost makes the listener forget that the song is essentially a death threat.

If you like it: You may want to check out other Lead Belly tunes. I’ve looked a bit, but haven’t found one this good.

“Missionary Man” – Eurythmics

This is one of a handful of songs that would completely take over my Dad when it came on. He would squint and nod his head to every beat. “So good!” he would say, like he was tasting a delicacy. I see what he saw: the same infectious energy you’d find in the other songs that did that: Bob Seger’s Old Time Rock n’ Roll, and Mellancamp’s Paper in Fire. Annie Lennox is in top form, and Dave Stewart rocks an electrifying harmonica solo. It’s hard to listen to this song without moving.

If you like it: If you aren’t familiar with the Eurythmics’ other hits (Sweet Dreams, Here Comes the Rain Again) they would be ideal starting points.

“Ahead by a Century” – The Tragically Hip

Few non-Canadians know the Tragically Hip, and few Canadians don’t. They are the quintessential Canadian rock band, still going strong after twenty-some years. Though their sound has evolved from rather twangy country-rock to become more modern and poppy, It has always been the lyrics that make it so special. Ahead By a Century “explores the realm of catharsis” according to lead singer/bard Gord Downie. To me it’s a celebration of the lightness of the present moment, despite how the weight of everything in our lives must fit inside it — but I think too much sometimes.

If you like it: Their music is so diverse, it was difficult to pick just one track. Try Scared, Locked in the Trunk of a Car, Bring it All Back, or Bobcaygeon. Oh so good, all of them.

“Apparitions” – Matthew Good Band

I have no idea if Matthew Good Band is known outside of Canada, but they had a good run of hits around the turn of the century, before their headstrong frontman left the band to write angry books and terrorize coffeehouse poetry readings. At the time I was rather dismissive of them as a little too mainstream, but in hindsight I see an earnest band with heaps of talent. I never thought Apparitions was anything less than damn brilliant though. I love this song, and feel lucky that I never owned it, because if I had I would have played it again and again until it lost its edge like most of these other songs.

If you like it: Matthew Good Band’s hits are worth exploring if you are unfamiliar: Everything is Automatic, Load Me Up, and Indestructible.

“Planet Telex” – Radiohead

Radiohead is the best in the business, and it’s a big business. These guys are professionals. I am not exaggerating when I say I could have made this a list of my 40 favorite Radiohead songs. So, naturally, recommending one above the others wasn’t easy. I chose Planet Telex because it has a certain uplifting, youthful quality that has since evolved its way out of Radiohead’s sound — not that I don’t like where they are today. I love the way this band has evolved; they’ve gone further and further from convention yet they’ve gotten better and better. So exceedingly rare. Planet Telex is a flashback to a simpler, brighter time.

If you like it: I envy you, for you’ve got one of the richest catalogues in modern music with which to acquaint yourself. Some of their work is a tad inaccessible to the casual listener, so start simple. Easy: Letdown, Bulletproof; Moderate: Exit Music, Nude; Challenging: Everything in its Right Place, The National Anthem.

“Pushit” – Tool

Tool changed my life. Good music has the ability to transport a person, and I’d never been taken for a ride like this. Pushit is an enormous, challenging song that descends to realms of intense introspection where most people probably don’t want to go. This 10-minute opus arrived when Tool’s creative talent was peaking; every track they did was unpretentious and epic (this was before the word “epic” was pretentious) and its mother album is a masterpiece. As good as it is, Tool is certainly not for everyone. Like most Tool tracks, it builds to a climactic “toolgasm” near the end.

If you like it: I envy you too. I would kill to listen to this music for the first time again. Tool is best absorbed in albums, but if you want a few songs to try  out… Easy: Sober, Stinkfist; Moderate: Eulogy (so good!), The Patient; Challenging: Third Eye, Right in Two. And find their incredible videos!

“In the Air Tonight” – Phil Collins

The atmosphere of this song is something else. It sounds as if you’ve somehow slipped past the edge of the universe, floating alone in total blackness, with Phil Collins’ disembodied voice singing to you a cryptic poem about your sins on earth. Or something. However you try to describe it, this song seems to come with its own unique, alien emotion that you’ll find nowhere else.

If you like it: Well, there is nothing out there quite like this song. But you can revel in its famous climax with this fantastic Cadbury ad.

“She Said She Said” – The Beatles

Of course the Fab Four had to make an appearance here. Yes, I’m one of those people. Out of the Beatles’ entire catalogue, I chose this one because it represents my favorite point in the evolution of their sound. She Said She Said is the precisely the sound of that precious little gap between the ditsy love tunes of their early years and the enigmatic anthems of their later ones. It’s full of youth and life, and it shows the whole band at full stride — as a unit. In fact, it’s one of the last Beatles releases humble enough to sound like it was played by a straight-up four-piece band, rather than a magic walrus on a harpsichord tanning in an English garden. Brilliant, but proudly smaller than Jesus.

If you like it: Go get Revolver.

“The World I Know” – Collective Soul

I don’t know why I still consider this one a guilty pleasure. Maybe it’s Ed Roland’s histrionic singing, or the too-casual cello lines in the background (but everybody was doing it back then, even Nirvana.) Even with the pretentious bits, this is a song that still, to this day, makes my lungs swell with gratitude. You have to like life to like this song though, so depending on your disposition, the emotional component may not work for you. But you may still enjoy the beautiful guitarwork.

If you like it: Most of Collective Soul’s inspired material is on the same album, namely December and Collection of Goods. Their first hit, Shine, is still their best song.

“Nitemare Hippie Girl” – Beck

From what could be my favorite album ever (1993’s Mellow Gold) this is a quirky, hilarious love song that could make anyone smile. With his outlandish words, Beck paints a picture only he could paint, and a vivid image of a skinny-fingered, perfectly imperfect girl emerges.  She’s a whimsical, tragical beauty / Uptight and a little bit moody. Don’t you love her too?

If you like it: Listen to Pay no Mind or F*ckin’ With My Head, from the same album.

“Kitchenware & Candybars” – Stone Temple Pilots

For all of Nirvana and Pearl Jam’s ambivalence about being in the spotlight, fellow hard rock outfit STP just couldn’t get enough of it. They carried the Motley Crue-esque lifestyle of excess well into the grungy 90s and made some awesome music while they were at it. 1994’s Purple is one of my favorite discs, and largely because it combined rude, indulgent rock with a sentimental, ballady side. Kitchenware & Candybars is the last proper track on the disc, and it’s a beautiful, sensitive piece for such an unapologetic band.

If you like it: Try Creep or Still Remains.

“Pedestal” – Portishead

Another avant-garde act caught in a passing storm of brilliance, 1994’s Dummy is through and through a spectacular album. I could have picked any of the tracks off of this deep, sexy record, they’re all that good. Better make-out music you will not find.

If you like it: Get the whole album, dummy.

“Don’t Look Back in Anger” – Oasis

Somewhere along the line — maybe during one of the extremely well-publicized childish bickerings between the band’s sibling frontmen — it became very uncool to like Oasis, at least in North America. I’ve always thought their music ranged from solid, straight-up rock to sheer genius, and Don’t Look Back in Anger is my favorite. Much like (dare I say it) certain Beatles tunes, it almost sounds as if the song wasn’t written by a lowly working band but had already existed in its own right, complete and beautiful, before anyone ever played it aloud. Or something. Suffice it to say these guys know what they’re doing.

If you like it: Give Oasis another chance. The Brits recognized their genius a long time ago, and not just out of national pride.

“Televators” – The Mars Volta

Completely out there, and completely beautiful. With regular instruments and plenty of effects pedals, The Mars Volta is able to create an utterly alien soundscape. Televators is one of the more accessible, less schizophrenic tracks on TMV’s best effort, Deloused in the Comatorium. This song and its mother album will create pictures in your mind you’ve never seen before.

If you like it: You are probably in a minority, and you should be proud of that, for you are capable of enjoying modern music all the way to its ragged fringes. The rest of Deloused would definitely interest you.

“Limo Wreck” – Soundgarden

By far the most inventive and ambitious of the grunge bands, Soundgarden blessed us with a small but wildly original catalogue of heavy (but pretty) opuses before packing it up in 1997. They remain one of my favorite bands. Limo Wreck is a towering piece about hubris and humility, and makes a great showcase for Chris Cornell’s unbelievable voice.

If you like it: The album it came from, Superunknown, is a one of those rare albums where everything seemed to go so perfectly, magically right, that the record is so good it leaves you in disbelief that it was actually human beings that created it. Go get it.

“Strange News From Another Star” – Blur

It is unlikely you’ve heard of this song unless you’re either a mad English townie who already owns all things Blur, or you bought their yellow self-titled album because it contained their international mega-hit, Song 2. While the rest of the album features nothing remotely as catchy as Song 2 (if you don’t think you know Song 2, believe me you do) it is a suprisingly inspired collection. It might be partly the intriguing title, but Strange News From Another Star sweeps me away to another place and time, David Bowie-style.

If you like it: From the same album you’d like Beetlebum, Look Inside America, and possibly some others.

***

Part 2 of this post is here.

Photo by Nikki Varkevisser

Related posts:

1. 40 Songs I Will Always Love, Cool or Not (Pt. 2)
2. Six Amazing Songs That Illustrate What it Means to Be Human
3. 7 Profound Insights From the Beatles

Recently I remarked on Facebook how I’ve been using a lot of exclamation marks recently! I’m not sure why, I used to hate them, but in emails and tweets and other short correspondence they do add a touch of enthusiasm that would otherwise be missing!

But as you can see, they are also heavy-handed and become obnoxious quickly! After only three sentences, I’m sure some people have already decided not to continue reading today’s post! Their loss! Regular readers will suspect I’m getting to a point here, but how long can they tolerate the extremely inappropriate — yet very tiny — extra vertical line I am appending to these otherwise peaceful sentences?!

With such casual, terrible ease I’ve made today’s post rude and strangely upsetting!

The point here is that tiny changes to our words and actions do make a profound difference, and we often forget that! A little change in tone, facial expression, word choice, penmanship, or punctuation (!) can vastly alter how your offerings to the world are received! The inclusion (or exclusion) of a simple raised eyebrow, half-smile, or ten-dollar word will send your listeners, readers, or acquaintances to a completely different place mentally, and the results can be that much more different! The domino effect from just one unusually brave choice  (or unusually disciplined, or unusually selfless, or unusually selfish — or just unusual) can send your life on an utterly different course! Friendships could be won and lost, or created from nothing! New chapters of your life could be opened, or old ones closed!

And what change could be subtler than the casual addition of an inert, six-pixel stroke to the end of my sentences today?! It should be easy to ignore, but I find it extremely distracting! Not to mention oddly misleading!

I won’t go on explaining this further, because surely you already get the tiny (but possibly huge) point I’m making! I also feel an unusual headache coming on!

Maybe as you head out into your world today, this awful post will help you remember the horrendous power — and incredible potential — that you wield in every single moment, in the form of little changes to what you say and do, whether you like it or not. When you truly appreciate the resounding impact of even your smallest choices, you will understand that feelings of powerlessness can only ever be delusion.

Your choices always carry tremendous weight, even when you feel like you have no choice in the matter. We don’t need enormous reserves of skill or advantage to make big differences to what happens to us — and to the manner in which we “happen” to the world.

Have an unusually effective Monday!

!

Photo by Munmay

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I’ve made a terrible miscalculation. Have you ever been so sure you knew someone inside and out, and then you discover something about them that completely contradicts everything you thought you knew? Denial can make you blind to it, especially if you’ve really been counting on that particular person to fill a certain role in your life. Well, that happened to me last week.

The great majority of you only know me through what I write, but that’s probably given you a pretty revealing view of my outlook on life. By now you know what I think about humanity and the potential of individuals. I get gushing emails and comments from all sorts of people thanking me for showing them a positive perspective or helping them out of a bad mood.

Raptitude has always been about empowerment and happiness. My interest is finding more skillful ways to cultivate joy and appreciate life. I write about gratitude and wisdom and all things positive. But you knew that.

If you haven’t guessed yet, the person I was mistaken about was me. Recently I learned something about myself that I never suspected, and it was a bit of a shock.

The last four months has been a remarkably pleasant and easy period of my life. It’s hard not to have a good time when you’ve got no job and virtually no responsibilities, plenty of beaches to wander and a second consecutive summer to do it in.

In the last few weeks, my moods started to go rotten on me, and I knew exactly why. The “honeymoon” is over, for now. I’ve reached the part of my trip where I need to earn some money to continue. After four months of wandering foreign shores eating ice cream and photographing ferns, I have to find a job.

Job searching has always been a sore spot for me. I associate “pounding the pavement” with one of the worst periods in my life, so it seemed natural to be a bit antsy about this upcoming campaign. But my moods took such a dark, wicked turn (much to the dismay of my visiting mother) that I started to wonder why I couldn’t see anything good about taking a break to find some income.

When I originally conceived of this trip, that was the whole idea: to live and work in another country. That was actually the appeal: the cultural adventure of making a life for myself in another country for a while. Getting a temporary job was always central to the whole thing.

But after several months of rather painless backpacking, the prospect of confronting this ordinary task hit me like an evil cyclone. My outlook went positively black, as if I was marching off to the gallows. I’ve met dozens of travelers who were happily looking for jobs, because to them it only meant more traveling and adventure.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized I am almost always concerned primarily with the potential costs of new endeavors, so much so that in my mind they overshadow the rewards. When I think about job searching, I think of interviews gone awry, dwindling cash reserves, obsessing over the layout of my resumé, and patronizing receptionists telling me, “Sorry we have nothing right now but I’ll keep this on file.” I never seem to rouse within myself any excitement about the upsides: making money, meeting new people, and funding further travels.

It’s always been like that. I’ve always felt like these kinds of ordinary undertakings caused me so much more grief than they seemed to cause others.

That’s when I finally realized something that shocked me, though in hindsight it seems so clear:

I am a pessimist.

Despite my ever-positive aspirations, I have an insidious tendency to view emerging events and people in terms of the trouble they may cause me, rather than the opportunities they might offer me. In other words, though I haven’t known it, I’ve been enduring a lifelong preoccupation with pain and difficulty.

This means reaching my goals has been needlessly difficult my entire life, because they appear to me as bundles of obstacles rather than bundles of rewards.

If desire and fear are the two forces that push and pull us about in life, my fears have had a considerable edge over my desires for as long as I can remember. Usually, aversion pushes more strongly than attraction pulls. I have always resonated with caution, self-preservation and ease much more strongly than courage, risk and challenge.

There are people who thrive on challenge and adversity. It brings out the best in them. I have always hated challenge, because my mind reads it as a promise of pain and suffering, not glory and opportunity. Glass half empty!

A positive pessimist?

When I’m in a reasonably comfortable setting, with steady income, a place to live and no looming dilemmas, I find life quite enjoyable. I have a great time doing even the simplest things, like pier-walking, bench-sitting or people-watching, and gratitude is my state of mind.

But when something I fear enters the picture, my desire and gratitude flee the scene, and it becomes a game of survival. My thinking goes nuts. I become preoccupied with escaping and controlling. I retreat, surrender, or pout. I completely forget that there is anything to be gained from the situation at all, even if that’s why I’m there in the first place.

Unlike true optimists, in the face of adversity I so easily overlook the upsides: that this is a chance to strengthen myself, to get a monkey off my back, to bask in the high of victory, to put a fear to bed for good, or simply to get what I want! I often forget all that stuff, and interpret the challenge as a steaming heap of precisely what I don’t want: difficulty, pain, defeat, and shame. And of course, I tend to get what I expect.

The most devastating manifestation of my pessimism happens when I look at my to-do list. This list only exists because I know there are great things on the other side of certain actions. I write them down because I think they’re worth doing, but once they’re in written form they become problems and annoyances. An optimist would see it as a list of glittering prizes to be won. I tend to see it as a list of crap I have to deal with.

Don’t get me wrong. My life is full of positivity, and I’ve made great progress in improving my capacity to love and enjoy life. I am not calling myself a negative person, and if you met me I don’t think you would either. I am happy almost all of the time.

But when it comes to the particular realm of challenges and adversity — which seem to be the gateways to self-improvement and dreams come true — for all my efforts I’ve been remarkably ineffective.

I can no longer deny that my typical reflex is to look at downsides first, and give them more weight than the upsides. It seems obvious in hindsight, but two weeks ago I had no idea it was happening.

How didn’t I realize this?

As I said, despite my doom-focused approach to adversity, I’m a rather positive person. I love people, I love life, I like to see people succeed. I don’t delight in misfortune or destruction. I see my life as having been far more good than bad, and I know the future will be even better.

I have made strides in my ability to appreciate the little things. I know how to enjoy a bad meal. I don’t mind waiting in line and I don’t sigh when gas prices go up. I even find considerable joy in simple actions like putting on socks or lighting a match. I’m not kidding.

I tune out naysayers. I tend not to respond to negative remarks, or if I do I’ll bring up a positive counterpoint. I don’t want to encourage criticism or negativity. I generally don’t engage in pointless criticism or other explicit negativity or a lot of other habits you might associate with a pessimistic outlook.

You can call these traits evidence of optimism, but I have had to work at all of this. As well, it’s so easy — not to mention reassuring — to make optimistic predictions when I’m at a comfortable distance from the challenge in question. Yet when it comes right down to confronting obstacles in real time, my troubles loom immense, and any thoughts of the triumph and glory that I might win shrink away like frightened turtles.

I guess what’s missing is faith in myself, and that’s no new revelation. I’ve long been told that I have a tendency to downplay my successes and overstate the difficulty of my dilemmas.

My struggle has always been comparing where I’m at now with what I believe is my potential, and of course perfection is an impossible benchmark to meet. But I’ve always felt that the gulf was far wider than I could account for, and now I’ve discovered the reason. I knew there had to be some hidden force at play.

I think I’ve been under the impression that I’m an optimist ever since the day I first learned the word. It was in grade three or four, and the teacher gave us the ubiquitous “glass half full/empty” analogy.

To me the choice was obvious. I always thought calling a glass “half empty” was kind of dumb. A glass, by definition, is just the glass part. It doesn’t become “half” anything until you add something to it. I wondered why anyone would want to call themselves a pessimist.

So maybe it was the inadequacy of the overused “glass analogy” that got me thinking I was always operating on the positive side of the line. That, and the fact that the idea of optimism appealed to me and pessimism didn’t. So I chose the label I wanted, but I suppose it was at least partly wishful thinking.

I’ve since met many people who relish the title of pessimist, and I certainly never identified with them. I remember one who said “I’m definitely a pessimist. Or actually, I’m a realist — there are only realists and optimists.” He was an unhappy, unhealthy man.

The common trait among them is that they find a particular joy in making their negative appraisals. There was never any delight in it for me, particularly because I didn’t realize I was doing it.

Where to go from here?

Well this discovery was a disturbing one, but aside from the initial shock it’s actually wonderful news.

Suddenly I see why everything has been so hard! I’ve been making it that way by giving more weight to the downsides than upsides. Yes, suddenly I’m very happy about all my problems, because the rewards have effectively gotten bigger, and the obstacles smaller.

I can safely trust that when things seem bad, they cannot be as bad as they seem. Even if I’m a little bent out of shape and can’t see through my negativity-goggles, I can have faith that the bad part is being overplayed, and the good part is being underplayed.

It means that the goals I’ve struggled with are actually far easier than I’ve made them out to be. Given the solid across-the-board improvements I’ve made in the last two years, I think I’m looking at a pretty sweet 2010 and 2011.

My biggest change is going to be how I view my to-do list. No longer will it be a gauntlet of annoyances and chores, it will be a map to the things I want. It’s such a simple change in thinking, but already I find I’m attracted to my list, not repulsed as I’ve always been.

All of it sounds so obvious. I’m sure many of you have been thinking this way all your lives. I’ve read and heard this same sentiment for years, from teachers, parents, inspirational posters and fortune cookies, but it didn’t click. I knew it, but it just wasn’t real to me until now.

Why am I telling you all this?

Once again I’ve rattled on about myself for thirty paragraphs like I sometimes do. I did promise a “shocking revelation” in last Monday’s post. But I also suspect some of you are in the same boat. I called myself an optimist because it sounded better than pessimist, and I stuck with it because I made that word a part of my identity that very day.

Your definitions of optimism and pessimism may differ from mine. If this article has given you a reason to think about it, you may want to ask yourself if you tend to overvalue the negative aspects of situations, even though you call yourself an optimist.

But it doesn’t stop there. This kind of misunderstanding could happen with any belief about yourself: your political stance, your assessment of your earning potential, your assessment of your intelligence, your economic class, your attitude about the humanity as a whole, your supposed calling in life, your supposed destiny.

I bet most of us are positively swimming in foregone conclusions about who we are and who we’re meant to be. Once you adopt a belief about your identity, a lifetime of hints to the contrary could pass before it even occurs to you that you’ve been wrong.

I misunderstood a fundamental aspect of my behavior my whole life, and now things suddenly make a lot more sense. I was attached to the idea that I’ve forever been an optimist, and because of that, I was blind to a problem I could have addressed long ago.

The label doesn’t really matter. I’m not hereby taking up the title of “pessimist” just because it’s a slightly better descriptor. But the title I did adopt all those years ago made it impossible for me to see a problem that’s been putting sugar in my gas tank every morning for twenty-some years.

Well that’s my story. I’m still figuring out what it means, so take what you can from it. Hopefully it’s something positive.

Photo by David Cain

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2. How to Be Grateful When You Don’t Feel Like It
3. How to Enjoy Your Forgotten Superpowers

A private room at a mansion-turned-hostel in Nelson

Since I left home four months ago I’ve slept on 49 different beds, couches and other horizontal surfaces. I never quite know what the conditions will be like next, and sometimes I have to contend with an unexpected absence of privacy, internet access, or some other ingredient that is crucial to timely blogging. I think I’ve mentioned this once or twice. Attitudes and moods, too, are constantly in flux, with the plot and cast of my little adventure here changing all the time.

I’m typing this post quietly on while sitting on bed #49 (a creaky bunk in a small hostel room.) A Japanese teenager is sleeping on the other bunk, and my internet connection keeps going in and out.

So that’s my way of saying that today’s post will just be a post (as in “to keep you posted”), not the article I was planning. Thursday’s article, which was to be today’s, is important to me and I wanted to give it due attention.

But I do have a few things worth mentioning in the mean time:

Experiment No. 5 is going about as well as expected. My effort to stop griping is slowly working, but I’m discovering a lot about myself, as well as the nature of negativity itself. This one is going to be interesting. My progress is being recorded in the progress log.

Thursday’s article will contain a shocking revelation (!) about myself. Or maybe it’s not so shocking. Be sure to tune in.

The deadline is extended for the The Book of Awesome contest! To recap, I’m going to be interviewing Neil Pasricha, the man behind 1000 Awesome Things, for his book release this April 15. All you have to do is send me an interesting, thoughtful, or otherwise awesome interview question, via the Contact page. If I pick your question Neil will send you an autographed copy of the book, made out to anyone you like. You don’t have to do anything else!

I’m loving the entries so far, but I would like a few more so I can stitch together a consistent tone throughout this Frankenstein of an interview. So the new deadline is March 8, that’s two more weeks. Full details are here.

Raptitude’s first birthday is coming up. March 15th was a bad day for Julius Caesar, but I’ll always remember that date as the day I launched this blog. Hard to believe it’s only been a year. Thanks so much for reading! And your emails and comments! I always love hearing from you.

Photo by David Cain

Related posts:

1. Help Me Interview Neil, and Win THE BOOK OF AWESOME!

New Zealand is a black sheep among nations. Having spent the last 60 million years isolated from the rest of the continents — longer than any other major land mass — life has had a long time to do its own thing here. The vast majority of native trees and animals are found nowhere else. They’ve all learned their own tricks for contending with their unique surroundings. In particular, many birds, including the iconic Kiwi, found no reason to bother flying because there was nothing on the ground that would eat them.

An important lesson from a clever plant

One of the more unusual New Zealand plants is the Lancewood. Most of the specimens you’ll encounter look something like a tall broomstick decorated with menacing, saw-like leaves. They are rigid and serrated, and angled downwards towards you or any other potential assailant.

A young Lancewood

The Lancewood has a very bizarre feature: It completely transforms itself after reaching a certain level of maturity. Its long, toothed leaves give way to more lush, more conventional broad leaves. It actually begins to look like other trees. The plant’s two forms are so unlike each other biologists once thought they were two totally different trees.

A mature Lancewood

Biologists couldn’t understand why a plant would evolve to do that. When an organism develops a distinct quirk like that, there tends to be an evolutionary reason for it. In other words, it must help the life form out somehow.

Some scientists guessed that the serrated, downward-pointing leaves served as a defence against large, ground-dwelling plant-eaters while it was still small enough to be vulnerable. But there was a problem with this theory: New Zealand doesn’t have any large, ground-dwelling plant-eaters. The island nation doesn’t have any native land mammals at all, only chicken-sized flightless birds that couldn’t pose a threat to a plant that size.

The Lancewood’s odd behavior remained a mystery for some time.

In 1839, a natural history enthusiast named John Harris was given an unusual bone fragment by a Maori who had found it on a river bank. He was quite taken with the unusual characteristics of the bone — it looked like a large femur, but he knew there were no large native animals on New Zealand’s islands. Eventually it made its way to the paleontology department at the British Museum, where experts puzzled over it for years before concluding that it belonged to a gigantic, now-extinct bird that must have once roamed New Zealand.

Maori tales had long refered to a great mythical bird they called Moa, and this appeared to fit the description. Since then thousands of Moa bones have been uncovered and now there is no doubt that a large flightless bird — up to ten feet tall; not unlike Big Bird in scale — once indeed roamed the isolated island group we now call New Zealand.

It turns out the Moa — actually several different species — all went extinct sometime around 1500AD, primarily due to hunting by the indigenous Maori people.

Comparative sizes of a kiwi, an ostrich, and a moa

The Lancewood’s bizarre adolescence suddenly made sense. There was a creature large enough threaten the slender Lancewood, so it evolved a strategy to foil its beaked adversary. The rigid, downward-pointing barbs of the juvenile Lancewood would have made it quite unpleasant for a Moa to stick its face into the boughs to eat it. Presumably, the giant birds would learn to ignore the eye-gouging Lancewood in favor of plants that didn’t fight back.

Once the young Lancewood had grown to a height that was out of reach for the 3-meter Moa, it would be free to become what it always aspired to be: a splay of rich, leafy boughs that would be much more efficient for facilitating the tree’s growth and reproduction.

If this is true, it creates an interesting scenario. This plant continues to enact a defense mechanism against a threat that has not existed for centuries. Each Lancewood spends a patient 15 to 20 years in juvenile form before transforming and hitting its adult growth spurt.

It looks as if its stubborn anti-Moa feature is now only a liability. The Lancewood seems to invest considerable resources keeping itself safe from attack throughout its teenage years; it would likely grow much faster if it was willing to grow full, sun-catching boughs early on. To this day, each individual Lancewood pays the handsome price of a few years’ growth to combat a problem that hasn’t existed since Shakespeare was alive.

It might not have outlived its feathered nemesis had it not been so dedicated to thwarting it. The Lancewood’s obsolete ace-up-the-sleeve had its time, and did its job well, but now it’s just dead weight.

It will probably take hundreds of thousands, or even millions of years, for the Lancewood to adapt to the abrupt disappearance of the Moa — by laying down its arms, so to speak. Incidentally, Lancewoods are not found in great numbers, the way some of its less cautious competitors (namely ferns and beeches) are.

The Lancewood carries in its present-day behavior a relic of a bygone era. There are no Moa today, yet each specimen dutifully braces itself for an invasion of giant birds that will never come.

What our defense mechanisms are doing to us

I think the Lancewood’s scenario is similar to our own. It must now contend with the side-effects of its defense mechanism, even though it no longer confers a benefit.

Modern humans also bear the cross of costly behaviors that suit a bygone era better than the current one. Civilization has changed the playing field dramatically for nearly all of us, and so rapidly that evolution hasn’t a hope of keeping up.

A prime example is the abundance of food for those of us in developed countries. For most of history’s people, finding enough food trumped virtually all other concerns. But those of us born and raised in abundant, “first world” societies have never encountered any real danger of starvation. Getting enough calories is no problem for us. The problem now is stopping ourselves from getting too many.

Our bodies are still built from genetic information that assumes an ever-present danger of starvation. I don’t know about you, but my mind tells me to eat more than is really good for me. I have to be aware of this tendency and consciously restrain myself, or I’ll gain a lot more fat than I can use.

It’s actually quite a difficult impulse to deal with. Most Western countries have obesity problems. We find ourselves contending with an ancient urge to overeat whenever it is possible — and it’s almost always possible. Every year there are magazine articles and blog posts about how to get through the decadent Christmas season without putting on ten pounds, as if it just happens to us in spite of our wishes. Now we are defending ourselves from our defense mechanisms!

Handling the overeating defense mechanism alone makes for a lifelong struggle for many people. And it’s by no means the only one that causes us grief. Evolution’s residual side-effects have left us more than a little out of whack. A few more examples of defense mechanisms gone awry:

We get needlessly upset over losing face. Looking silly now and then doesn’t have a lot of long-term effect on our lives, though we often regard embarrassment like it’s a life or death matter. If we happen to make fools of ourselves, we won’t be cast out of the tribe to die in exile — but our ancestors might have been, and so today we remain disproportionately afraid of being judged.

We get needlessly attached to possessions. We have a very visceral attachment to our things, because in the past they represented our ability to survive. Today few material losses are truly pivotal. You can buy another one. Tear up a twenty dollar bill (less than an hour’s work for the average Westerner) in front of others, and listen to the gasps. Just dropping an ice cream cone on the sidewalk almost feels like you’re getting kicked in the heart. Imagine if we could let material things come and go freely, fully aware that we’ll be just fine, without that unpleasant yank on the heartstrings.

We get needlessly worried about controlling outcomes. We fret that we’ll miss the start of the movie, that the Colts will blow the Superbowl, that we won’t get this or that particular job, when at the end of the day we’ll still find ourselves alive and well, still enjoying loads of advantages and luxuries. The suffering caused by these little instances of uncertainty is often minor, but it’s still suffering, and proves to be rather needless when we realize there was never anything crucial at risk. Not getting what we want won’t kill us, but we still seem to ache for things to go a certain way. Imagine if we didn’t so easily let our preferences become burning needs whenever life and limb isn’t at stake.

The human’s unique advantage

But we humans are a clever bunch, and there is a ray of hope. Unlike the Lancewood, human beings are self-aware, which means we can look at our behavior and take steps to alter it if it isn’t really that helpful.

I think this is where we’re at in terms of our evolution. We’re built to do certain things, and now we must consciously do other things — ones that we might not be so good at, or that might not feel so immediately natural to us — but which won’t lead us to disaster like our impulses might if they remain unchecked. Following our instincts without question is exactly how we get into trouble these days. Addiction, self-destruction, violence, greed — nearly all of it born from unexamined, outdated human instincts.

Without this kind of self-observation and self-improvement, we’ll continue to suffer from our own outdated defense mechanisms until one of two things happens:

1) We hang on in our dysfunctional state for the millions of years it will take our biology to evolve beyond our current humanitarian woes, or

2) We go extinct.

Being a plant, the Lancewood can’t make decisions, so it’s bound to do what its genes tell it, whether that spells prosperity or death for its species.

Human beings have a say in what happens to them. The looming threats of overpopulation and climate change promise rapidly changing living conditions in our near future, and I think our troublesome impulses are going to make things even harder for us as time goes on.

So it really comes down to how we contend with what Mother Nature tells us to do. I believe if we really look at where our instincts take us, we’ll find we’re often better off disobeying Her. When it comes to survival — let alone quality of life — she doesn’t always know best. Or perhaps she eventually does, but she changes her mind very, very slowly.

Photos by David Cain and peganum

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Once upon a time…

At 3:45pm Friday afternoon, the corner of Fermor and St Mary’s was a busy place. The intersection is dominated by Glenlawn Collegiate, a brown brick complex that happens to be my alma mater. It’s one of the division’s two high schools, virtually unchanged in the eleven years since I graduated except for the addition of red LEDs on the sign outside.

I happened to be passing by right at that time for no particular reason.

The teenagers in the giddy mob at the bus stop looked a lot younger than I remember being in high school. At the time I figured seventeen was about a year away from being a proper adult, but these kids were definitely children. Loud and aimless. Maybe we were too.

The number fourteen and the number fifty-five rolled in one behind the other, brakes whining, and most of the mob funneled in. When the light changed, both buses pulled away, and that’s when I spotted him.

His identity didn’t register for a moment, but his hurried, self-conscious gait appeared so shockingly familiar to me that I froze. He was wearing grey, baggy cargo pants with ragged bottoms and a drab green t-shirt that was too big for him. His hair was a half-messed mop of gel-hardened spikes.

He was walking towards me, looking over at the departing buses, and we almost collided. When he caught my bewildered stare, I realized who he was.

It was me. At eighteen.

He was stunned too, but clearly knew who I was. Suddenly I felt a lot older than my twenty-nine years. Knowing him, I knew I would have to take the initiative here. I recovered, and smiled. He didn’t.

“You missed the fourteen.”

“Yeah I know.”

“We’ve got twenty minutes or so till the next one. We should talk,” I said, hopeful.

“Sure.”

***

Imagine if you had a golden opportunity to talk to your eighteen year-old self.

Really picture this younger you. Think back to who you were in high school — what you wore, who you were friends with, who you thought you were, what place you felt you had in the world. The more details you can summon, the better. You are sitting across from this young person at a diner, and they’re all ears. For twenty minutes.

What would you say? What advice would you give? And knowing how this person thinks, how would you say it?

(If you aren’t yet twenty, then imagine talking to your thirteen-year-old self. If you are thirteen or younger and you’re reading this blog, then you definitely don’t need any help from me.)

If I only had time to drill him with a few important points, here’s what I’d try to get across to my younger self:

1) Spend your time and money on things that make your life better, rather than things that make you feel good.

“It’s Friday. What are you going to do when you get home?”
“Play Civilization 2 on the computer.”
“Where will that get you in life?”
“If I’m lucky I can eradicate the Aztecs by suppertime.”

I grew up in a fairly comfortable environment. Not a lot of crisis, but regular ups and downs certainly. Like anyone else, I sought things that made me feel good and avoided things that didn’t make me feel good.

When it came to things like work or challenge, I dropped them categorically in the “things that don’t make me feel good” column. Anything in that column was to be avoided when it could be avoided, and endured when it had to be endured.

Not that I’m blaming society for my troubles as a young adult, but nobody ever seemed to have a very good explanation for why I actually might want to work hard and challenge myself. Not “have to”, or “need to,” but “want.” The reason was always, “It’s just something you should do,” or “You’ll be glad you did when you’re my age.”

Whenever I found myself working hard, or butting up against something that was difficult for me, I found it quite unpleasant, so why would I ever do those things when I could avoid them?

And man could I avoid them! I grew to be a very cunning bullshitter and effort-avoider. Work, planning and challenge took on the roles of necessary evils in life, rather than the voluntary paths to fantastic, glittering prizes I later learned them to be.

Even in my mid-twenties, once I learned how to avoid the worst of the woes that a gratification-based existence could create, I still was primarily concerned with feeling good as often as possible. This meant senseless overeating, avoiding any truly strenuous form of exercise, excessive drinking, video games, buying stuff I don’t need, and otherwise indulging myself while staying well within my comfort zone.

I never went into serious consumer debt, but I certainly squandered all my disposable income on various ways to feel good, none of which left anything useful in my life, or put me in a better position to take on the rest of it.

If I could have back all of the thousands of hours I spent playing video games alone, I could have learned several languages, built several businesses, saved a fortune, become a killer guitar player, and built the body of a Roman demigod.

It was a rainy afternoon in 2008 when I realized, “Holy crap! I’m boring!” I had never really built anything in my life. I made no determined attempt to get better at anything, to increase my earning power, to develop skills and relationships, I just spent my time and money on whatever promised to keep me feeling all right. In old-adage-speak, I was eternally buying fish, instead of learning to catch my own.

This is one of the most important things I ever learned, not that anyone ever flat-out said it to me. If only my 29-year old self showed up after school one day, bought me a milkshake, and slapped some sense into me, I’d be light years farther down the road.

At eighteen, young David doesn’t know what’s in store for him. He is still unaware of a smarter way to live, and is about to experience five or six years of fruitless pleasure-chasing and ailing self-esteem. In terms of new skills, assets and capabilities he will have little to show for it by age 25, just some real hard life lessons.

So, teenage David: Always try to get a decent return on investment for your time. Use your time and money to build assets and leverage in your life, not just to get to the next bit of time.

***

2) Every single day, get better at meeting people and developing relationships

“Why don’t you go out and meet some people tonight, instead of fighting the Aztecs on the computer?”
“I don’t like meeting people I don’t know.”
“Well you never know them when you just meet them. How will you make more friends?”
“I have friends.”
“But there are so many people out there who can teach you things and open doors from you.”
“Leave me alone, ok.” He appeared to grow impatient, and looked over at the door.
I waited till his eyes caught mine again. “Be careful what you wish for.”

These days I often describe myself as a “recovering introvert.” Comfort was the north on my personal compass, and talking to people I didn’t know was due south.

I was very much dependent on my existing friends to fulfill my social needs. I rarely took the initiative and made the plans. That I left to everyone else — because it entailed zero risk on my part.

Sticking to behavior with zero risk is a real tragedy, because it means there is no discomfort, and no discomfort means new ground is seldom broken. With that habit, social skills develop extremely slowly, because there is no need to learn anything you don’t already know how to do.

Teenage David, please don’t only do what’s comfortable! That’s a perfect recipe for mediocrity. The older you get, the greater will be the gulf between what you could be and what you are, and the more sorry you’ll be.

When it comes to meeting people, it’s easy to avoid it because they’re only strangers then. You can always write off a stranger as irrelevant to your life, as you know it right now. But you don’t realize that that stranger could have been your best friend, your mentor, your key to a fantastic opportunity, or even your wife. Everyone you know now was a stranger once.

A new person in your life can open a new chapter. They can lead to new lines of work, new passions, new insight about the world and a broader, more colorful identity for you.

Most of my life, I resented people with connections. I hated that I had to resort to cold calling to find a job lead, while other people could just drop a friend an email. Of course, I didn’t see that this doesn’t happen by accident.

I always waited for others to take the lead in social situations. I would always defer to somebody with more skills or more guts, and soon I began to identify myself as a second, a subordinate, a beta personality. Clawing your way back from a subordinate social role is a hell of a battle, and the later you start the tougher the climb. Don’t let yourself slip that far.

Again, teenage David doesn’t know what’s in store for him once he leaves high school. His high school friends will move, marry off and become otherwise irrelevant. He’ll always have some friends, but he’ll depend on them for a sense of identity and for social fulfillment. It will be ten years of sheepishness and dependence before he realizes what’s happened and makes a point of becoming socially independent.

So, teenage David: Be a figure in a lot of other people’s lives, and keep bringing new people into your life. Meet people every day. Initiate conversations. Don’t shrink away.

***

3) Don’t work for anyone else

“What are you studying in school?”
“Uh, computer science.”
“Why do you like computer science?”
“Well I don’t, but there are lots of jobs in that field right now.”

Oh teenage David. Look at me. I’m twenty-nine and currently hatching a plan to escape from my second career. It’s not horrible, I just don’t want to spend half my waking life helping rich land developers get richer. I never did, though I didn’t always think I could do better.

Before you sign on for a chunk of college loan debt so you can learn what others say you should, hear me out.

What is normal in our society is to sell your time (customarily, forty hours of it per week, in five eight-hour stretches) for an agreed-upon flat rate. This is what most people do and what most people will tell you to do.

This is your time on earth. We’re talking about sizable pieces of the only life you’re going to have, sold to a company that — and let’s be honest — is probably not doing for the world what you’d like to do for the world. Do you really want your role on this planet to revolve around smoothly-running data entry systems? Insurance policies? Widgets?

But most people don’t see another way. The standard way to make a living is to rent yourself out for the better part of five days a week to achieve someone else’s purpose. In the time that remains, the weekends and the fleeting hours of the evening, you can live your life, or at the very least recover from your workweek. Sounds like a regular deal with the devil.

Rent out your forty hours like that, and somebody else gets to decide:

• When that forty hours is (right through the prime daylight hours, almost always)
• How you are to be spending that time, and why
• What you are allowed to wear, do and say during that time
• When you can take a vacation
• Who you work with
• When you deserve more money
• What your purpose is, at least until 4:30
• Whether to continue to supply your income or not

Once you’re playing this game, the main strategy is to make a lot of money for your boss, and over time they will share a small fraction of it with you in the form of incremental bumps in your salary.

You may luck out, of course. Some people do find that their own purpose matches the purpose of the person they sell their days to, so there’s no conflict there. But that’s not reality for most of us.

Don’t get mixed up in this racket.

What can you do instead? Do what your would-be boss is doing. Create something of value, and find the people who value it most. A service or a product that people value, and that others aren’t delivering as well, or at all.

If you need help to produce it, you will certainly be able to find a lot of people willing to sell you their time for a flat rate. If you need a method, there are hundreds of established, tested models in the library, online (yes, online), and at the bookstore. Pick one that speaks to you and see what happens.

The idea of running my own business always sounded preposterous. I fell for one of the biggest entrepreneurial myths: that you must risk a large sum of money to start a business venture. I think I came under that impression by watching an episode of Roseanne in which a financial advisor tells her she’d never heard of anyone starting a business for less than fifty thousand dollars. I missed the part where they said they were talking about restaurants.

I’d heard most businesses fail within five years (or something) and of course I pictured myself becoming part of that majority, ending up penniless in a green shack at the corner of Baltic and Mediterranean.

No, I dismissed any entrepreneurial ambitions long before I was done high school. I knew that such an uncompetitive, unambitious soul would always have to work for someone else. That was just reality.

So I jumped on the lucrative professional field du jour, computer programming. Four years later, I’d racked up some debt, run my self-esteem into the ground, forgotten everything I’d learned about computer programming, and started again in the engineering industry.

Now it’s another six years down the road, and I’ve left my job to travel abroad. When I return, I’m devoting as much time as it will take to create a bossless income. I’d rather work twelve hours a day for myself than eight for someone else.

Without this advice, teenage David will be entering a cycle of employer dependence he may never know he’s in. He’ll go to school, rack up some debt, and get a job. He won’t exactly hate his job, but he’ll still dread the fleeting, final hours of Sunday evenings, and he’ll still think Friday is necessarily a better day than Tuesday. Over the decades he might eventually trudge his way up to high five figures, possibly even topping out at the low sixes. He will always depend on others for his income and will only be able to travel in two-week stretches for the first sixty years of his life.

So, teenage David: Don’t sell your time to someone else’s purpose. You can do better. Be poor for a while if that’s what it will take.

***

When I finished my spiel, he said “Thanks,” as if he’d understood, put his earphones in, then trotted out to catch the bus.

I suspect he went home, jumped on the computer, and proceeded to make every one of the mistakes I needed to make to be able to give him that advice.

Good for him.

***

What would you tell your eighteen year-old self if you had the chance?

Photos by foundphotoslj and John Steven Fernandez

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If you haven’t yet stumbled across a remarkable blog called 1000 Awesome Things, you may want to check your internet connection. Each weekday since June 2008, blogger Neil Pasricha has been celebrating one undeniably awesome thing everyone knows. Not awesome like the Hindenburg explosion awesome, but awesome like the first shower you take after not showering for a really long time awesome. Or the moment at the concert when the crowd figures out what song they’re playing awesome.

Neil has an incredible knack for identifying the tiny unsung miracles that make our lives glimmer, so it’s no surprise he’s struck a chord with a lot of people. 1000 Awesome Things has featured on such media heavyweights as CNN, CBC Radio, the BBC, Wired Magazine, and a humbling list of others.

Back in May, I wrote a post about three notable blogs, one of which was Neil’s. He paid a visit to Raptitude, apparently liked what he saw and dropped me a line, and we’ve been back-and-forthing ever since.

This April, Neil and his awesome things will emerge in book form as THE BOOK OF AWESOME, and he’s giving a few lucky Raptitude readers a chance to win their very own autographed copy. And not a Lotto 649 kind of chance, a seriously decent chance.

Here’s how it works:

To commemorate the April 15 release of THE BOOK OF AWESOME, I will be conducting a short interview with Neil.

I have often remarked that Raptitude’s readership is one of the most thoughtful and interesting groups of people in these parts of the internet, and Neil agrees. So we’ve decided to let YOU interview Neil.

I am seeking a few (3-5) interesting, intriguing or otherwise AWESOME questions to ask Neil during the interview. Send your question to me (one question only please) and I’ll pick my interview questions from the entries I receive. I’m looking for questions that will make for an awesome interview, so be creative.

If I use your question, you will receive your very own copy of THE BOOK OF AWESOME, autographed by Neil himself. You do not have to be in the US or Canada either. As long as you have an address, he will mail it right to you, even if you live in Yemen or Panama.

The interview will appear on Raptitude on Thursday April 15, the day of the book’s release.

The contest starts today, and I will accept entries up to midnight Sunday, February 21 UPDATE: Contest extended to March 8! Hurrah!

Send your question here! Please put the word “awesome” somewhere in the subject line, and include only your question and your name. One entry per person. And keep it awesome.

If you have a problem with the contact form, let me know via Twitter or in the comments below and I’ll get it sorted out.

Image from Amazon.ca

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Time for another experiment. This one I’ve been meaning to do for a long time. The idea behind it has made the rounds for a few years now and I’m not the first to do it, but I think the concept is fascinating and brimming with potential.

One day Will Bowen, a mild-mannered Missouri Reverend, challenged his congregation to develop their habit of gratitude by going 21 consecutive days without complaining or criticizing.

His method was quite simple and ingenious:

1) Put a silicone bracelet on either wrist.

2) If you did not complain at all yesterday, you go on to the next day. After day zero is day one, then day two, and so on.

3) Whenever you catch yourself complaining, criticizing, or gossiping, switch the bracelet to the other wrist and begin again at day zero.

4) When you’ve completed your 21st day, you can take your bracelet off if you want.

The act of switching the bracelet over reminds you of your intention to quit complaining altogether, and the sting of starting again should harden your resolve to drop the complaining habit for good.

It doesn’t matter how far you got, one complaint and you’re back to zero. Even if you are on day nineteen and you snap and say “You know, this lavender ice cream really blows,” then you are back at day zero.

Reverend Bowen’s experiment has since become a movement called “A Complaint Free World.” The idea is that non-complaining is contagious, and if enough people take up the challenge, complaining will go out of style. Bowen and his movement are now quite well known, featuring on Oprah and other A-list media spots.

Why do this at all?

Complaining makes for a crap state of mind. It keeps a person concerned with what he would like the world to be, while it steadfastly continues to be whatever the hell it pleases. Complaining triggers negative emotions that aren’t really fun to experience (resentment, craving, angst) and blinds a person to the parts of the moment that are perfectly fine. Gratitude is a subtler emotion than derision, so it gets overrun easily by even the slightest complaint. Less complaining equals more happiness. Few things are as simple.

If you’ve ever known somebody who complains constantly, you know that they carry their misery wherever they go. Most of us complain on an occasional basis, but almost certainly more than daily and probably more than we think. If nothing else, this experiment will show me how much I really do complain.

Like all bad habits, it does have a dubious benefit: it defends one from the responsibilities of either accepting or changing life as it already is, and this provides a bit of an ego boost to the complainer.

When you get into the mindset of how this moment is flawed, you’ve forfeited any chance at gratitude or happiness in that moment in favor of an uninvited analysis of how things “should” be. Some people derive a steady but dim joy from identifying what is wrong with everything, but I think you and I can do better than that.

I want to sharpen my ability to be grateful, and stop wasting any time wishing life was different than it already is. I also want to crush the “this sucks” reflex complelely, and leave an “Ok, let’s see what I can do with this” reflex in its wake.

Overcoming the complaint reflex is a path to becoming less uptight, less fearful and less prone to being overwhelmed, as well becoming more pleasant to be around, more resilient to adversity, and a better problem solver. Complaining is ducking responsibility for your experience, and responsibility is power. I want to take full responsibility for what happens to me, and the complaint reflex gets in the way.

I do share Bowen’s belief that non-complaining improves the moods and dispositions of people around the non-complainer. having said that, I tend to be suspicious of notions of an anything-free world, or any other mentalities focused on eradicating something. That debate aside, right now I am only looking to reprogram my own bad habits and unleash new and helpful good habits on an unsuspecting public. “The best sermon is a good example,” says celebrated quote-machine Ben Franklin.

So for now, I make no attempt to change the world here, I’ll just see what happens to myself. Any world-changing that does occur is purely coincidental.

Why didn’t I do this before?

Like many important decisions in life, it was a matter of color co-ordination. I bought Will Bowen’s book last year, along with four silicone bracelets. For some bizarre reason, the official bracelets are an awful purple color, which has probably hindered the Complaint Free World cause more than anything else.

Still, I wore one of them for a while to get into the complaint-monitoring habit, but I found myself trying to slip the loud purple bracelet beneath the cuff of my sleeves.

Third-party, non-purple bracelets might have worked, except that it needs to be easy to take off and put on again. Most of the time, my wrist-switching occured while I was still interacting with people and I didn’t want it to be a particularly conspicuous action.

Nor did I want to explain my experiment to everyone, so suddenly showing up in my regular social circles with an uncharacteristic purple bracelet, I had to do that a lot.

I had intended to order custom silicone bracelets online, but never got around to it before I left home and now I have no mailing address.

Luckily, there are substitutes for the bracelet, though I didn’t think of it at the time. For now, I’m going to keep a seashell or some other trinket in one pocket and switch it to the other instead of switching a bracelet between wrists. Once I’ve got an address again I’ll order custom (black!) bracelets.

What constitutes a complaint?

This is a matter of opinion, and I think it’s important for anyone attempting this to make sure they define complaining to themselves before they start. If it is ambiguous, you’ll eventually get frustrated with the effort and get nowhere.

Bowen defines complaining as “to express grief, pain, or discontent.” This is pretty good, but doesn’t quite do it for me. After all, there are times when you are actually attempting to change the situation by speaking up, rather than merely lamenting it. Filing a noise complaint to your landlord might be a perfectly sensible action in some circumstances, and doesn’t necessarily mean you are whining or pouting. I think the impulse-driven, emotional outburst is what creates the real problem. The typical complaint is of a compulsive, reactive nature that hijacks the mood without warning and accomplishes nothing. It is possible to express discontent tactfully and for perfectly good reasons.

Lifestyle design pioneer Tim Ferriss, self-described as a fan of constructive criticism, settled on this definition when he did the experiment:

“Describing an event or person negatively without indicating next steps to fix the problem. “

That works for me, though I don’t think there is necessarily a problem to fix every time I feel the impulse to complain. But the aimless negativity is indeed what I want to stop, so this will be my de facto definition of complaining for this experiment.

Ferriss also discovered an unexpected benefit from his refined definition. It conditioned his reflex for problem-solving, getting him immediately thinking about what to actually do about every complaint-inducing event that popped up, rather than what to wish for.

One question that always comes up is whether to count complaints that only occur in your head. Bowen says not to count them, because you will overcome the habit of complaining internally once you are out of the habit of articulating your complaints.

Most of my complaining does happen inside my head and I still think it is destructive, but for now I will take his word for it and begin without counting internal complaints. I’ll see if they cease naturally as I continue to call myself on the external ones. If not, I’ll make the necessary adjustments.

Any vocalization counts though, even grumbles, audible sighs, or “pfffts.” These little noises voice protest just like any articulated complaint, and I want to knock out these reflexes too. Nobody else has to hear it, it just has to come out of my mouth. Eye rolls will be interpreted as a stern warning but won’t require restarting unless I do it so forcefully that it makes a noise.

There are bound to be trickier instances as well. For example, what if I post a critical comment as my Facebook status with the aim of making people laugh, is it still a complaint? This will be part of the learning process, and I can’t predict every contingency. I’ll have to make up policies as I go. I’ll talk about these in the experiment log.

The Experiment

This one could take a while. It takes most people six to eight months to get up to that three-week mark.

The experiment will commence Monday, February 8th, 2010. I will keep an experiment log (to be launched Monday as well) in the Experiments section of Raptitude. Updates will not be daily, but will be fairly regular. I’m going to aim for less than a week between updates.

I encourage you to do this too. Probably best not to bother unless you are serious about making this pointed behavior change though. Most of Bowen’s congregation quit fairly quickly, effectively resigning themselves to a lifetime of compulsive complaining. I wanted to wait until I was ready before I did this experiment, and I wanted to do it publicly so you can help hold me accountable.

If you do want to do it with me, please drop me a note or leave comments in the experiment log. It’s always nice to have companions.

You may have recognized that this bracelet technique could work just as well with any compulsive habit. If I make strides here, I just might bring it to bear on all kinds of other terrible things I still do.

***

View David’s experiment log here. You can also publish your own updates there if you are doing the experiment too.

Photo by gf8

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Despite the earnest efforts of sixty years of Miss USA contestants, world peace has not arrived on our doorstep. The UN has not managed it, nor did John Lennon or Oprah or The Secret. Religion sure made a mess of the effort altogether, and I don’t hold high hopes for China to pull it off, despite their latest efforts.

Something tells me it’s not coming at all.

If that’s true, could we live with that?

I say let’s forget the idea of world peace. Let’s admit it will never happen and get on with our lives the best we can. It is naive to think that progressive government policy, awareness campaigns, and heartfelt pleading will bring about this holy grail of achievements, and that is because human beings are not capable of world peace. There, I said it.

Let’s get real here. Humanity will never co-operate. It’s far too big and varied for that; there is no way to even communicate amongst the whole populace, let alone get everyone on the same page at the same time. Just trying to get eight people on the same page to organize a camping trip is trouble enough for most.

The vast majority of us really have to work at keeping ourselves in a stable, pleasant mood, so why do we concern ourselves with a task that is so utterly beyond us? If we think we can engineer a change in the philosophy of billions of people we’ve never met, yet most of us cannot even manage to fulfill our New Year’s resolutions, we’re kidding ourselves big time.

The romantic notion of world peace is one in which the cart is light years ahead of the horse. It is an understandable desire, but no more sensible or achievable than living forever or never being unhappy. In the course of our species’ growth, we’re only now reaching the point where a small number of individuals are beginning to transcend the reactivity and addictive behavior that causes violence, and that’s only the result of years of intensive inner work.

Reasonable goal, or Deus ex machina?

Forget world peace, and get to work on yourself.

One cannot be at peace with those around him unless he is at peace with himself, and peace with oneself cannot be imposed by another. World peace cannot be achieved except as a byproduct of billions of individual efforts at cultivating inner peace, and most people — at this time, anyway — are just not interested.

The idea of a world in which everyone else behaves in ways that do not make us uncomfortable or afraid is nice to think about, but ultimately unhelpful. It keeps us focused on a fantasy, one that is forever the responsibility of others to fulfill. If you desire peace, devote yourself to finding it inside you. If you don’t find peace there, you’ll find it nowhere.

Who needs to change?

Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and history seems to show that that cannot be done. – Mark Twain

Knowing where human beings are at in their development, world peace is an indulgent, even arrogant pipe dream. If we aim at world peace, we are — unavoidably — aiming to change other people. Cries for world peace always carry the tacit suggestion that it is the others who need to get on our page. If you want peace, see if you can find it alone in your car while you’re in a traffic jam, before you look for it on a global scale.

It is smarter and less destructive to aim your peace efforts no further than yourself, because your authority can never extend beyond that, unless you’re prepared to use force. Changing yourself is the work of a lifetime anyway; let’s see if you can eliminate every hint of dysfunction and ill-will in yourself before you start working on everyone else.

If you can, you are an anomaly. Most people will go to their grave without ever getting a real handle on their own individual plight. The great majority of human beings do not make time for self-examination, and will die before ever learning how to deal reliably with disappointment, resentment, envy, selfishness and fear. It is possible to learn these skills, and indeed some devote their whole lives to it, which should give you some idea of how difficult it really is.

Seeking world peace points us the wrong way

“We must send a clear message to the rulers of outlaw regimes that sponsor terror and pursue weapons of mass murder: You will not be allowed to threaten the peace and stability of the world.” – George Bush

Send in the planes then, George.

When one considers the impossibility of getting 6.5 billion people on the same page, a common rebuttal is, “It may be impossible but it’s something we should aim at, because even falling short would mean we’ve still made the world a better place.”

I say no; it takes us in the wrong direction. Aiming at world peace immediately gets us thinking about how to change other cultures — how to take care of certain problem areas and problem groups. The problem too quickly becomes redefined as the people who seem to be getting in the way. Then we are back to “Us against them.” No peace.

After all, you didn’t build the bomb or fire the first shot. Maybe you’ve never even struck another person. It’s natural to imagine that if you personally have no history of violence, that you are necessarily peaceful, but this isn’t so.

Peace must be more than just an absence of violence. It also must be an absence of ill will and angst. Contempt that does not quite precipitate violence is not peace — fear, spite and suffering continue to exist. Even human beings who “wouldn’t hurt a fly” (and I am one) can still be resentful, selfish, and destructive. Just because you’ve never blown up a poll station or thrown a punch, it does not mean the world would have peace if everyone behaved like you. Even though some people make it through life without ever raising a hand to another, it does not mean the makings of violence weren’t there.

I do not believe I’ve ever met anyone who has never hated someone. Different circumstances might have pushed our normal, socially acceptable levels of casual resentment over the edge to physical violence. Many of us grew up in developed, democratic nations, free from any real persecution, and cannot comprehend what it’s like to live under conditions that really bring out the worst in people. Our animal impulses are still running strong, and with very few exceptions, human beings are still far too reactive and fearful to presume we are above violence. Until we are truly devoid of any form of ill will, we are not beyond violence.

And most of us are far from it. I’ve been working on becoming less reactive and less judgmental for years now, yet I still catch myself getting worked up when my computer freezes up for twenty seconds. I still get resentful at some point virtually every day. I am still selfish and petty sometimes. I’ve made worlds of progress, but I still find myself fuming at people for doing things I do myself. Such is the amusing curse of being human.

Clearly, a messiah of worldwide peace I am not — and I dare presume neither are you — but I can still make the cashier smile, forgive a rude stranger before my mood goes rotten, or smooth over tension between two friends. On a good day, I can deal with not getting my way, forgive myself for making a dumb choice, or take criticism in stride. Peace throughout the room I can achieve, and you can too. Most of the time. Maybe I’ve brought a little more peace into your room right now. And maybe you’ll take it with you when you leave.

Why do we fantasize about this half-baked idea called “world peace” anyway? Well, it’s a natural fantasy to have; we do enjoy peace on the small scales at which we can actually perceive it, so presumably a peaceful nation is even better than a peaceful house, and a peaceful world is the best of all.

Human beings, as they are today, are not ready for world peace, not even close. You can create peace in a room, peace at the dinner table, peace in your home, but the leap to nations and planets takes us out of the realm of reality and into our imaginations. Let’s not get egotistical about peace by shooting right for the be-all-end-all. We don’t need the Jerry Bruckheimer version. To strike directly at worldwide peace is to put the onus on humanity at large — an unimaginably complex system nobody can control — instead of yourself. In other words, it’s passing the buck.

The Real Problem

We hate violence because it represents to us something we all know and revile: intense, needless suffering. The reactive creatures that we are, we sympathize with the suffering of victims of violence, and we suffer too. If the suffering of others didn’t cause us to suffer, it would not compel us to appeal for peace.

Violence is sickening to us. We have such an aversion to it that it throws us into a distressed, reactive emotional state, which is precisely the compromised state of mind that is prone to impulsiveness and violence.

The real problem — the only problem there has ever been — is personal suffering. It is the illness of which violence is only a symptom. And we all have it.

We can address only our own suffering directly, and there are methods for this, everything from Buddhism to Yoga to EFT. Many people take up these or other paths with the idea of improving their own lives, but as they progress they can’t help but improve the lives of everyone they come in contact with.

“The best thing you can do on this earth,” my meditation teacher explained, “is to sit down every day and work on yourself. The best thing you can do for humanity, for peace, for starving children and victims of violence, for your mother and your relatives and your children and the generations that you’ll never meet, is to do your daily meditation practice and find an end to your own suffering. There is nothing you can do that could be more helpful to others.”

People who do not work on themselves might find that statement preposterous. But those who do practice self-examination understand that cultivating a peaceful, composed state of mind prevents more suffering than any number of international sanctions, weapons inspectors, war crimes tribunals or cease-fires. One single mind that is freeing itself from personal suffering is a colossal, resounding victory for peace. One person taking full responsibility for her state of mind leaves a sweeping wake of compassion and sense that improves the lives of everyone she meets.

This is the only way to move towards widespread peace: the gradual aggregation of individuals who are overcoming their own suffering. Everyone has to go through it for themselves, there is no “enlightenment en masse.” World peace can only be a byproduct of evolution, not a goal of individuals. So forget about it, it will never be up to you or anyone else.

Individuals who exude peace are highly effective people. They don’t trigger the reactive and resistant parts of others. They are more likely to be listened to and understood. They open people up, they stir up the best in people. One person of this level of peace goes a long way.

The human populace isn’t ripe for across-the-board peace, and will probably never be. If we ever achieve world peace, we can no longer call ourselves human — we will have become something else. As much as we’d like to be that something else, we’re still fallible, still vulnerable, still dangerous. Dissatisfaction and suffering are parts of our programming, and only the keenest among us are just beginning to unravel that mess.

As long as there are humans, there will be suffering and violence somewhere. This is a reality we are all going to live and die with. And maybe it is more helpful to admit that than to deny it. Fantasizing will not save anyone — let alone everyone — but living a peaceful life can save someone. If you want peace, you can have it by creating it in your own life, and you can be sure it will make its way into the lives of others too.

Can you have peace in every interaction you have with others? Can you come close? Maybe that’s all you need to do.

Photos by HikingArtist and Goodrob13

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