I've been thinking now for a while to get back into writing here. I mean, I've had a tab open for months with a basically complete music theory-related post (way more interesting than it sounds based on that), which literally just needs a few edits. I never made it to those edits. I see the tab every single day just sitting there, waiting.

Waiting for me to change the little bit at the end. But no.

So I decided to try something else, something I can just write off the top of my head in order to trigger that process of writing more easily than a proper article. Hopefully that'll get my brain in the right mood and mode to finally slay that beast I named 'Jazz different'. (totally unrelated to the post itself somehow...)

So for now, I'm going to challenge myself to an online diary, a stream of consciousness I can perhaps post once per week of some thoughts I had on that day based on things I've watched or witnessed or read or done.

Clean your room

I've been going home the hard way from work for quite a few months now. I do this for two reasons:

• It's marginally faster (1hr 15 minutes rather than 1hr 30 minutes) and more reliable (easy way can surpass 2 hours on bad traffic days)
• I had a lot of chronic discomfort sitting on a coach for 1-1.5 hours with the new addition to my family we call 'Herniated discs'.

I learnt this could heal within 8 weeks or so, but was a weakness for the rest of my life. Well, it turned out to heal on and off for... maybe 8 months now. So the bus just wasn't a comfortable option. I would, instead, take the metro, transferring 3 times, followed by a 15 minute taxi or bike ride. At least most of this journey was standing up, moving about.

Although in these long, long commutes I make it a consistent habit to either watch/listen to podcasts and other youtube subscriptions, or listen to some new amazing music, it's still sometimes nice to sit back on a leather reclining seat and close my eyes, and let the bus take me home.

The last couple of days I gave it a shot, as my spine is currently in a good place, and I wanted to test the waters. So far so good.

Today, I stumbled across a new video, a live event with Jordan Peterson. This was a man I used to hate. Couldn't stand his voice, if anything else. I didn't necessarily disagree with his views, but I felt aggravated by his overly serious approach to things, his exaggerated emotions, among other things.

But as I said, I don't necessarily disagree with his sentiments, and I've heard him on other podcasts such as Sam Harris and so forth, so he pops up in my feed from time to time.

This talk he was having was not a political one, but a psychological one. Mostly a Q&A, but there were some things which, as is normal in a Jordan Peterson talk, hit home.

Be on the side of who you could be

According to one audience member, this is a common mantra of his but I'm not a follower so this is news to me.

In short, he describes his father as strict and not very agreeable, very hard to please. Not exactly a new description of a father figure, but he described this as both a gift and a curse. A curse because he is hard to please, but a gift because the meaning behind this is that he always thinks you can be better, do better, than you currently are doing.

So he described his father as not being on his side, but being on the side of who he could be. I think this specific framing has a deeper meaning than simply 'encouraging you to be better' and I think the value in this is to apply it to oneself.

Often, I think we side with ourselves because that's the thing immediately staring back at us in the mirror. When we consider the problems in our lives, we kind of skirt around our self, and start to point fingers elsewhere.

• Oh, I'm poor because the elites have set us up to fail
• Oh, I'm unhappy because people around me suck
• Oh, this political party is in power because literally 51% of the country are utter retards and also pure evil
• Oh, I'm single because the gender I like doesn't get me/are spoilt/are poisoned
• Oh I'm unsuccessful because my race/gender/minority description is oppressed

Well, all of these may actually be true, but these things set us up to stick ardently to the 'you' of right now. All of these reasons, which may in themselves be valid, are being bloated out of proportion to create huge blockades in our psyche, preventing us from overcoming them.

Because we feel they are insurmountable blockages, we can now justify the idea that there is nothing wrong with today's 'you', and we fight ourselves to protect that status quo, while simultaneously being bitter and depressed about it.

Well, I think they are, for most people, obstacles. I think for some people, some of these do set a certain ceiling that is ultimately lower than the dreams one might have.

But I do not think that for any of us, they should allow us to simply settle in a miserable status quo. To do that is to side with the 'you' of now. But if you side with who you could become, that gives you a path forward.

It gives you a route around certain blockades until you can figure out what the ultimate high ceiling is in your life, and how to maneuver around the obstacles to get there.

My phone has this annoying clock app which, when used, forces the phone's slogan in your face 'never settle' Well, that's basically what I mean.

That doesn't mean 'never relax' or 'never find a place in your life you want to stay in and be comfortable in'. But to me it does mean 'consider how you can make things better for you and those around you'.

If I truly think 51% of the population who voted 'wrong' are retarded and evil, well, that malicious mindset I'm holding might be worth re-considering. Using those words to describe total strangers sounds like the problem is with me more than it is with them.

Thinking inwards about my own mindset is a process of siding with who I could be, rather than who I am. Questioning one's beliefs should be a daily part of life, in my opinion. Which leads me to one more point he raised:

Never win

I think this statement is a little lacking in nuance but he goes into the nuance after the fact.

Winning is obviously better than losing, but it's not as good as a mutual evolution. (Unless you're playing sports, then winning is absolutely the best). If USA goes to war with China, it would be better for Americans if the USA wins with merely 150,000,000 dead and china with 800,000,000 dead. But it wouldn't be as good as both sides evolving their position with a combined 0 dead.

Realistically, the two countries are so far apart and stubborn, the idea of evolving to be mutually agreeable is laughable, But if we apply this to our sense of self, it makes a lot more sense.

Just like how winning a war is an oxymoron, so is winning an argument. Winning an argument is a nice, immediate feeling of satisfaction, but it locks you in to the idea that the current version of you is absolute. At the same time, it creates bitterness, resentment and a rather ugly picture of you from the other side, the loser of the argument. Thirdly, it molds you into a position of disrespect for the one who you now consider a loser, with that smug, internal grin on your inner face the whole time.

That's an ugly outcome on all sides.

Rather than aiming to win, dismantling that binary concept of winning and losing creates a new opportunity to build a greater understanding of that person having a disagreement with you. By asking, and listening, rather than demanding and telling, you no only enrich yourselves with more knowledge of that person's personality and position (or lack thereof), but you also disarm them and allow them to feel more open to hearing you out once you've established a more mature and patient mindset.

This, again, is siding with a future you, somebody who is improved and beyond the person you are right now.

It all comes down to being a better person. If you 'win' at being a good person, you might be considered perfect. But I don't believe that's possible. To idolize a person as perfect is, frankly, to be wrong.

This is the primary feature of religion that never sits well with me. So idolize a perfect being such as God or Jesus or whoever is to me no different than the cult followers, or those who idolize the perfect being of Mao Zedong or Kim Il Sung or Elon Musk.

A perfect God makes no sense to me, in the same way that a perfect heaven makes no sense. A place so perfect as heaven to be honest sounds awful to me and I imagine nobody I care about would ever make it up there. Miserable place.

So to me, there is no 'winning' in the end. Life has to be a continuous, even eternal effort to be better than you are. But never the best. Because the 'best' is an end point. If you reached that point, then you might as well kill yourself and make room for others.

Once that philosophy has been established, we can spend our lives doing so by increasing our selflessness and making other people's lives better. None of us are good enough until we can do that.

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Well, I guess that was all partially related to the Jordan Peterson talk, but I went off on a tangent.

But then, wasn't that the point of this blog?