Slow Down & Shut Up
The problem with following the rules is they're made up of other people's self-imposed limitations and have nothing to do with what's actually possible.
When I was a kid, I talked too loud and I ran too fast.
My ideas moved a mile a minute and it was hard for others to keep up.
When I spoke it sounded all kinds of manic.
And after being admonished over and over by the adults in the room, I learned to slow it down and adopt a quieter attitude.
But after decades of moving the way I was told is right and polite and acceptable, the only thing it has done is stopped me from acting on all the great things I had the chance to be a part of.
I’ve been taking baby steps back to the former version of myself. It’s new and strange, and when I hear myself out loud I think, “my god! I sound absolutely crazy!”
Except I’m still not certain those are my own thoughts, or just the ones implanted by all those adults when I was a child, bouncing around my brain as if an echo reverberating down an empty hall.
If I fill my brain back up with my own ideas, maybe there won’t be any room left for reverberations. The ghosts of people too afraid to live their own damned lives will be forced to move on and take up residence somewhere else.
There was a good reminder today though, be careful who you share your ideas with. Everyone is tightly attached to their specific set of limitations, and will unconsciously fight you at every step in order to reinforce them.
We’re only ever living in what has already transpired. Even “living in the moment” is a conscientious lie. Mental processing does, in fact, take some measure of time.
I wrote this a while ago (e.g. 2 years and some months’ time), and couldn’t land on what or why:
Truth is what the storyteller decides.
There’s your truth, my truth, and the objective truth.
All three can exist in exactly the same timeline, isn’t that crazy?
If 5 people attend a party there are at least six truths present.
And should something nefarious happen, who decides which truth is the right truth? The righteous truth? The worth-bending-the-back-of-justice-over-to-protect truth?
Truth is what the storyteller decides.
Which storyteller did you bring with you tonight?
But it’s making more and more sense to me now that I have additional context for it to share.
Our programming is always working double, triple-overtime to protect it’s existing set of limitations. And those limitations are quite often a big fat fucking lie.
We once thought it was impossible to sail West across the Atlantic because we’d certainly fall off the side of the earth. Humans can’t fly. Electric cars can never be a thing. A sub-2 hour marathon run is humanly impossible. The list goes on and on and on.
How many times as a kid were you told “that’s not possible,” and then you either accomplished it yourself, or saw it accomplished in your own lifetime? Yeah, exactly.
But now, we’ve grown into the adults who pass down the tradition. You can’t do that!
In every stupid scene. Relationships, careers, hobbies, politics, the environment, medicine, yada yada. When did you make the decision to grow impossible and old?
Our first gut reaction being, NOPE, instead of listening.
I think I’m over letting other people’s small minds become my small mind.