Joyful Mediocrity

Joyful mediocrity. It's a thing. It's what I feel when I’m playing my guitar, amped to the max. I don't need to be the best at it. It can bring me joy even if I’m just Ok.

How about you?

Do you really have to strive to be the best at everything you do? Can’t you just enjoy whatever makes your heart sing, regardless of how good or proficient you might be? Is everything necessarily about improving, and fighting to be better than others? Is life optimization a constant duty and demand?

Maybe not. Perhaps the truth is very different from that. We should consider the possibility that life is really not an endless competition in every one of its nooks and crannies. It’s not in all respects an Olympic track where we’re supposed to be racing and struggling to beat everyone else, or even our own past and fleeting personal best. It’s often a buffet, a playground, a quiet river, a dance, a meditation mat, or a comfortable room where you can pick up that musical instrument and just mess around.

Do you have a mug that says “World’s Best Dad?” Or “World’s Best Mom?” Guess what. You’re not the only one who was presented with that noble award. And you could then ask: Was it really something like a 3 million person tie? Or is it Ok to just be a wholehearted, kind, supportive, loving dad, or mom, or spouse, or friend, or boss, regardless of any competitive metrics that might be conjured up and imposed on you?

Don't get me wrong. Personal growth is one of the reasons we're alive. Getting better at anything can be enjoyable. Getting great can be just that—great and soul stirring. But it's not necessary to import this perspective into absolutely every area of your life.

I love Frisbee, and I'm average at it, at best. Mediocre would be the right word. But it's fun, even joyful.

I love to joke around. Am I a world class comic? Not by a long shot. Do I care? No! How about throwing a football? Fun, fun, fun. How good am I? Passable. See what I mean about the humor? I like to grab my wife and dance terribly until she makes me quit, about 5 seconds into the first awkward twirl. And I could go on. But she won't let me. Just kidding.

Fun. Soul elevating stuff. My heart sings while I recite Shakespeare. And I'll never be cast. But downcast? Never!!!!!

Am I alone in championing this concept of joyful mediocrity, or do you also have an experience of it in your life? If so, what’s it for you? What’s your love and joy—regardless of talent, acumen, praise, or skill?

A friend told me recently that he’s really bad at golf, but loves it. It’s his joyful mediocrity. I know people who love to play cards, but don't even think about winning. They relish the experience, the chit chat and just the time together. Sometimes, I get a kick out of whipping up a meal. And I usually dive into the result with enthusiastic gusto, although I wouldn’t expect anyone else to do so, and I’d really hate to see any review of my culinary achievement on Yelp.

Our entire culture seems to goad us on to work hard at everything, hone our chops, and rise to the top. But what if there’s a different way of rising, altogether, and it has nothing to do with any top?

In a culture of striving to be the best, perhaps sometimes it's best to just be.

So. Cultivate joyful mediocrity now and then. Unless you're my airline pilot on the job. Or a president in the Oval Office. But in other things, it's Ok to be average, or even bad, if what you're doing gives you joy. And if others can take joy in it, as well, even by laughing at your wonderful, delightful incompetence, then that's good, too.

Joy and Some Random Thoughts

Joy isn't properly viewed as an endpoint, but as an energy like no other, a fuel that can propel us to our best and highest achievements.

Love and justice should be the currents along which our spirits flow. Only those waters will take us where we need to go.

The philosopher Epictetus reminded us that we all need liberation from something. We're all chained down by something. Wisdom breaks chains.

Habits of thought underlie habits of action, and either can imprison us in a small dark cell, when the broad bright world outside awaits us.

If half the energy devoted to crime and scam was redirected toward productive good, the world would change quickly for the better.

We've always known that love is the most powerful force in the world. So why do our leaders proceed so often through threats that sow hate?

When will the world wake up to understand that anger and violence never themselves improve anything? They plant seeds for more problems.

The greatest gift you can give yourself is time to be quiet, relaxed, and peaceful. That gift, in turn, can give you all that you need.

The best doing arises out of the deepest being. Constant busyness will not allow for peak excellence or the highest joy. Learn to just be.

It's important to be able to calm your conscious thoughts, make your mind a blank, and get out of your own way now and then. Then, the magic.

Your Natural Stoic Joy

When I was growing up, I often heard the word ‘stoic’ in the context of not showing emotion, or even not feeling it. I had to become a philosopher and read the stoics to learn that was wrong.

My favorite stoic teachers—Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus—seemed to think that we have, as our deep natural state, a sort of joy. This joy in living, in being a part of such a wondrous world, in being with others under the warmth of the sun, or amid the nightly spectacle of the sparkling stars, should be our default position, our resting state, and our ordinary possession. But many of us, they suggested, have allowed it to be lost because of worry, fear, concern, anxiety, upset, irritation, anger and a host of other negative emotions that rush at us, day after day. Some of us are even pulled away from that natural joy by what we might think of as positive emotions like exuberance and excitement and passion. When even positive feelings become too strong, or are sparked by the wrong things, we can be dislodged from the joy that’s meant to be ours.

So the stoics urged us to be guardians of our souls, protectors of that natural joy. We should be skeptics and doubters in the face of anything that might take it away. And that’s a challenge. I just went through one of those medical tests where, for a man of my age, there could have been something that severely challenged the joy. But there was what we call by contrast good news instead. And yet the stoics cautioned us on thinking any news was in itself either good or bad. They wanted to reserve those terms for the states of our own souls, and never apply them to externals. While we may not be so extreme as they were in this regard, I get their point. We too easily rush to judgment about what seems good or what seems bad. And this alienates us from our joy. But in the end, what is good for us or bad for us may turn on what we make of it in the long run. And we can act best to be spiritual alchemists when we’re in that state of joy.

As you read the news today, or hear someone say something that disturbs you, don’t grab it and hold it close, but loosen your grip on it emotionally. Let it go enough to return to that state of mind and heart our stoic friends would wish for you. Then, you can be your best as you do and feel and create.

The Joy of the Deeper Mind at Work

Joy awaits us all. When we work with the ordinary levels of our mind, everything's harder that it could be. When we clear away the clutter and get beyond the chatter of the normal conscious mind, joyous magic can happen.

I recently posted on social media that I had, a few days ago, finished the final major editing of the eight books that now exist in a series of novels that I've been working on for five years, since February 2011. It's the first experience of writing where I wasn't working hard in my conscious mind to think and compose. It was all a gift of the deeper mind, a layer of mentality or soul, if you will, that we all have, but that we don't often enough draw on, day to day.

These books and the stories they convey came to me, as I've said before, like a movie in my head, a translucent screening of an action and adventure story far beyond anything I could ever have created out of my ordinary operating resources. In fact, when I first started reading the manuscripts out loud to my wife, she interrupted to say, "Who are you and what have you done with my husband?" It was all that different from my nineteen previous books, all non-fiction.

One reviewer of the prologue to the series, The Oasis Within, suggested that a series of conversations between people crossing the desert wasn't that big a stretch for me, and not that far out of my comfort zone as a philosopher who is always talking about life wisdom. And he was right. But there are all these little details and plot points in Oasis that I never would have thought to develop. And there's a reason that The Oasis Within is a prologue to the new series and not a numbered volume of it. It's mostly great conversations. It prepares one of the characters for the action that's to come. And it prepared me for it, as well. But a younger reader, or a reader who just loves action can start with Book One of the series, Walid and the Mysteries of Phi, the book that's now recently out by the title The Golden Palace, which is full of action, adventure, mystery, and intrigue and brings us philosophy in an entirely new key. And all the other books are like that one in this regard, too. It's like slowly walking up to a door, and opening it, and what's inside takes you completely by surprise and launches you into an adventure that just won't stop.

Early in the process, when I learned to calm my conscious mind and just relax and release, the magic would happen. With the deeper mind at work, you feel more like a receptacle, or a conduit. I've mentioned here before, I think, Elizabeth Gilbert's new book Big Magic, where she tells several stories about this remarkable kind of creative experience. It's joyous and practically effortless in its level of self-perceived exertion. How often can we say of our job, paradoxically, that "It's the hardest I've ever worked" and "It's the easiest thing I've ever done" and "It's been pure joy" all at the same time?

This is a hallmark of the deeper mind at work. There is amazing persistence of accomplishment and a sense of ease, and an overflowing of joy to match. The joy is wondrous, deep and high, wide and focused, inner and outer somehow at the same time. It animates everything else you do. It's remarkable, and it's maybe meant to be our most natural state—when we've peeled away all else, all the accretions of consciousness and contrary emotion, when we get down, deep to our most fundamental resource, one that's both natural and transformative at the same time.

I heartily recommend working from your deeper mind and experiencing the joy that's there awaiting you. I'm hoping that another book will also come to me the same way. After a million and two thousand and five hundred and more words, I feel like I'm just getting started. And isn't that the way our work should feel?

The Superfluity of Worry

I have an old friend who once told me that it's his job to worry. My first thought was simple: That's not a job I'd ever apply for or aspire to have.

Worry never adds anything positive that can't be had more directly and without the anxiety. Does worrying make you more cautious? Just be more cautious. Does it make you really pay attention to a situation? Simply pay more attention. Does it goad you to double check, or be more creative, or get in gear and take action? Ditto. Ditto. Ditto. Anything we think worry produces can be had without the worry. So: Why worry?

As an emotion, it's superfluous, redundant, and useless. And it takes energy. Plus, I really believe it erodes the calm clarity of thought required to unravel a complex challenge and arrive at an optimal solution to a knotty problem. It's also unpleasant. And it makes you no fun to be around.

So, I've decided to shed it as much as I can. I'm on the lookout for it. I try to become aware of it, as soon as it creeps into my sensibilities and dismiss it as unneeded. "Thanks, but I can get on just fine without your help today."

And when you think about it, so many of our negative emotions have the same problem. Any good they produce can be had another way. So, perhaps we can appreciate what they're trying to accomplish for us, and yet briskly send them on their way.

Their particular companionship seems not to enhance my enjoyment of life or my positive impact in it. I think that a moment's introspection may deliever to you the same realization. And then deliver you from worry.

I hope so. And hope is something that's not at all superfluous to a good and happy life.

Letting Go of the Past

Imagine life in the present moment as a flame, a blazing fire that lights up the dark. The past is just all the ashes from what has come and gone and been transformed by the universal blaze of living. I don't know about you, but I suspect that, like me, you don't collect the ashes from your chimney, or any outdoor fire, pile them up, and spend time staring at them. By contrast, I can watch a roaring fire for a long time. It's mesmerizing. But ashes? No. not at all.

Trying to hold on to the past is like collecting the ashes from the fire of your life and grasping them in your hands, and watching them, and taking in their aroma. What's the point, or the enjoyment of that? We all have some memories of great things past. We also have recall of hurts and difficulties we've lived through. And such memories can often be a proper part of our present. But we should never allow the joys of memory or the rawness of some recollections to pull us back to times that no longer exist and things that are no more. We're meant to face forward in life, not backward. We're meant to let go of the past so we can embrace the present and reach out to the future. That's our calling, and our destiny. To do any differently is to impede our learning, and our growth. So, let go of the past. It was what it was. And now you have a present. It is what it is. Releasing what's gone allows you to relish what's here, or perhaps what's yet to come. The future is our destiny. But the only step we can take to get there is in our present.

Note: This is a second in a new series of blogs on topics of request. Have a concern for me to write about? Just let me know!

The Man in Black on Joy

I want to add something to what I wrote earlier this morning. First, again, one more quote from actor Will Smith:

The maximum joy that I have is when I can create something that makes someone else's life lighter, or brighter, or better.

To that, I can only say a loud, hearty, AMEN. 

I posted this earlier today, ending with the amen. I think I want to add a bit more. What Will Smith is talking about is creative love, or loving creativity, which I presented as the meaning of life in a chapter on Business and Meaning in the book If Aristotle Ran General Motors, back in 1997. You would not believe how many people have written me over the years about that chapter, saying that it's the most important chapter in any book on business they've ever read. Some say it's the most important chapter, period. And that knocks me out, and gives me a sense of great satisfaction. Because in that chapter, I was seeking to gather together what I considered all the world's best wisdom on meaning and dig deep to the root and then distill it all down to something that would be both simple and powerful. And that became:

Creative love. Loving Creativity.

That's why we're here. That's what everything we do should embody. And that's where joy comes from. It's all connected. If you want to ruminate on this more, If Aristotle is widely available in paperback, and the first edition hardcover is still floating around used, and there's an ebook available at Zolabooks.com.

A Lesson From American Idol

The other night, I was watching the first round of American Idol auditions in Hollywood. Yeah, philosophers have to take some time off, too, like everybody else. And one thing was clear from the segment. No amount of talent will show through clearly if jangled nerves get in the way. People who had been great in local auditions were close to choking in Hollywood. They forgot the words, or wandered off pitch. Some looked horrified just to be on stage. And there they were, chasing their dream, with a real chance to see it come true - if they could perform at their best. And many couldn't. The judges actually pointed out the problem. Everyone was too much on edge. They needed to shed the dread and relax a bit.

And here's the irony. We get nervous because we care. But because we care, we have to release the anxiety and learn how to have fun doing the job.

Long ago, before walking onto a stage in front of a hundred or a thousand people, or often a great many more, I would feel my heart rate increase and I'd say to myself, "Oh. I'm getting nervous." Then, one day, I learned to say instead, "Ok. I'm getting ready." The first interpretation of what I was feeling always concerned me and made things worse. The new interpretation will always boost me and makes things better. 

So when you're about to do something you really care about, try what I do. Don't get nervous. Get ready.

Stoic Joy. Natural Joy.

In preparation for a trip across the country not long ago, I did something I rarely do: I took one of my own books along to read. It was The Stoic Art of Living: Inner Resilience and Outer Results. It was published ten years ago, and I had not re read it since the early days after it first appeared on bookstore shelves. I tried to approach it objectively, as I would any book. And I have to admit that I really enjoyed it! I had forgotten various little discoveries I had made when I first wrote the original draft of the book, going back almost twenty years. The top three Roman stoics, the slave Epictetus, the prominent lawyer Seneca, and Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius had great and practical insights about life that can tremendously enhance our experience of the world today. Their wisdom, at its best, will never go out of style.

The stoics had many perspectives that can help us. Inner resilience is the best path for outer results. Things are not often what they seem. Most of our difficulties come not from the world, but from how we think about things in the world. Nothing can truly harm a good person. By changing our thoughts, we can change our lives. Nothing is to be feared. And I could go on. But, to me, perhaps chief among their insights was the claim that joy is our natural state.

Think about that for a second. Joy is our natural state. If any stoic philosopher was right in thinking this, then either you are experiencing joy right now, or there is some unnatural, unnecessary obstacle in your life blocking that joy, and it's an obstacle you can remove.

If you are, right now, in a state of joy, congratulations. If you aren't, then you should be asking yourself what's getting in the way. What's blocking you from the state of mind that should be your natural default setting? The possibilities are many. And you can't do anything about the ones operative in your life right now until you can identify them. The stoics were confident that, whatever the obstacles might be, you can eliminate them through controlling your emotions, and in turn, you can do that by controlling your thoughts. It's just that simple.

The stoics were philosophers who wanted to help us peel back the worry and anger, the suffering and agitation, the distraction and confusion that too often rules our lives, and get back to the natural state of joy. When we experience that natural joy, we flow forward with all the power that we're meant to have in this life. And that's the power, in the deepest sense, of love.

What's keeping us from it?

Fly Fishing Lessons for Life

"I've learned a thing or two about human behavior on trout streams. I've discovered that patience serves better than haste, that silence is a virtue, and concentration it's own reward, and that I, at least, like to fish alone; trout fishing should not become a contest." - From Charles Kuralt, America,and his time in Montana.

A friend gave me the book by Charles Kuralt,the great volume just quoted, America, in 1996. I'm just now reading it for the first time and enjoying it immensely. Kuralt had just recently retired from CBS Television where he was such a great teacher. He decided to travel our country, living for a month in each of many different places across the nation. He spends his first month of the new year, January, in New Orleans, then goes to Key West, Florida for a second month. Then he's on to Charleston, SC, and Connecticut, North Carolina, Alaska, Minnesota, Maine, Montana, and other great spots.

What's most amazing about the book are the people he meets and visits along the way, many of whom live in remote circumstances, and enjoy their lives in exemplary ways. The wisdom of ordinary people, and especially those who live outside the mainstream of pop culture, can be extraordinary.

I began with the quote I did because of what it praises:

Patience. Silence. Concentration. Solitude. And acting in a non-competitive way, doing something for its own sake, and for no intrinsic reason.

We need to incorporate more of these things into our lives. When we do so, we'll thrive and flourish, feeling a sense of fulfillment that's nearly impossible amid haste, noise, distraction, and an elbowing, pushing crowd of people trying to get ahead of each other, and us. It's hard to capture these elusive things in our world of hustle and flash. But they will bless us, when we make room for them.

So please remember today the benefits of patience, silence, concentration, solitude, and the rare art of doing for its own sake. Give yourself the room to just be. Then your natural joy, your proper bliss, can bubble forth and bless your spirit, allowing you to go on to bless others, in turn.

PS. And by the way: Search your shelves for some old book you haven't read yet. You may be surprised at what you can find within its covers.

Joy

Joy. It's a big concept bottled up in a little word. It's a big thing available to each of us.

One of the major surprises I had when I was studying the stoic philosophers, Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius, years ago, in preparation for my book The Stoic Art of Living, was that they were so different from what 'stoic' and 'stoicism' has come to mean in the popular mind. Most people think that being stoic is all about not feeling anything - that it's almost like philosophical anesthesia. But it's not.

The stoics wanted to help us to keep from being disturbed by fleeting emotions so that our natural joy could rise to the surface and be experienced and lived. Negative emotions like resentment, and bitterness, and anger can obviously prevent an experience of joy. But the additional insight of the stoics was that unreasonably strong positive emotions could, too, like that "irrational exuberance" that can come from hearing what we think is great good news. When we get too worried, or too excited, we can become unhinged from reality and our own inner poise and healthiness. The stoics seemed to think that if we could avoid such unsettling emotions, negative or positive, we could become peaceful enough in our surface consciousness as to allow a deep joy that is our birthright to bubble up into our souls and truly bless us.

Joy is not the same thing as happiness. It's not giddiness. It's not mere pleasantness. It's deeper and higher and more abiding. Most of us have felt it, at some time, if only in a momentarily taste or touch of it. But some seem to live it enduringly. Do you have it in your life right now? If not, why not? What's getting in the way? What obstacle to your joy could be removed or eliminated?

At its best, therapy removes obstacles to joy. At its best, self examination prepares the soil for joy.

What gives you joy? Can you integrate more of that into your life this week? Or even today?

It's meant to be yours. And it can enhance everything else you feel, and do.