As an adult the world is weird and turning all the time, you look for patterns over and over and over they manifest themselves right in front of your face so obviously, which reminds me of the quote “complexity is primitive, simplicity is advanced”
Here are some of them.
Love, get on it, love everything, the hill right outside of your door, the sun setting, the tree, the kiss of your wife, your kids dirty hair, the shower the bath the heat, the cool. If you have ever been through a period where you didn’t have any of these things you will love everything.
I remember being a kid on the boat, I loved showers and laundry, I loved clean finger nails. I just wanted to go to school with clean fingernails, I would bit them down. When I got divorced and moved back to Washington I had a little spell, went down to live with my mom, but you can only do that so long, so I got a job up at Snoqualmie, got my own place, it was great for a bit. Chris came up, Wes came up… but in the off season I had to make moves because there was no money. Went back to Friday Harbor, no place to stay, was crashing out at Cody’s Mom and Dads place. It was the worst, I would get up and bail out before they awoke. At one point I said fuck this and just started breaking into Roger Hoff’s boat and spending the night down there. It is funny that later Johannes and Pete would own the boat, but back then it was free game. I would sleep, set my alarm and wake up at 5am and clear out. Did that for a month. Finally, I want back to Cody’s and spoke with Carla. “Carla, I will get cody out of your hair if you get me a fucking apartment.” She was like “where do I sign” I needed two months rent, deposit, a couch, a bed… Carla gave it all to me… you have no idea how good it felt to have my own shower, bed, washer and dryer. I had Cody, but fuck that was a matter of time before I fired his ass off the roof.
Smile. How far does a smile go, it goes fucking far. Think of Eric Evenson walking into a room and saying “hey ladies” it is far it is big, how many times have you tried to get laid and a smiling mother fucker like me went home with your girl that you put all the effort into. sorry this is how it works. Smile, people gravitate towards pleasure, they avoid pain. Smile in the worst of situations, smile and love in the worst of worst situations. At a whole other level, smile in the worst of it. Every fight I have ever won I was smiling the whole time. I am talking primal stuff. Men getting in fights at a young age, just smile, it will thought the world off and in your favor trust me.
Self-humiliation. Make fun of yourself, get friends that make fun of you. My best friends Chris and Wes are great at this, fuck if I ever become something, they will tear me down in a hart beat. But this is great because I will always be balanced. I will always be “Spillane” Chris will always be “Holland” Wes will always be that spooky as fucking thing that crawls out of the well in “the ring” but we all have our roles to play, play them well my friend… actually Wes has always been something that we admired.
Read. Read more books for Christ’s sake, God wants you to read. It is the only way you can truly put yourself into other peoples minds you have to invest into the story, become the narrator, you have to feel what they feel, imagine and map it all out in your mind. Without a doubt this is the biggest predictor of true intelligence. Read, read read. Some more and fucking understand that you can never read enough. There is a reason Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Charlie Munger, Elon Musk all say this… fucking just read please.
Fuck. I mean that in the most nonchalant way. I don’t mean you have to fuck a bunch of different people, that is good too, but just fuck, really seriously, connect with another human being at the craziest level. i mean this, at a male on male, a female on female, a tran on tran , a male on female or whatever there is out there. Just getting naked in front of someone that you love is a big deal but being with them is a bigger deal. Go fuck something other than your hand, something that requires a real connection.
Run. I get the whole exercise thing. But there is nothing like running, we were meant to run. You can do P90x, you can hope over boxes, but we were meant at the end of the day to just run, run for some food, run from and asteroid, (joking) running is in our DNA. Run ever once and awhile, smell the trees, get it get out there run.
Hang. I know this sounds crazy, but hang from something grab a tree branch, hang from it, if you are in a hotel walk up to the door and just grab it and hang from it for a second. Your back will crack. Apparently, we are primates and this was something we did back in the day. It is fun to just hang maybe that is why it is still in our vocabulary on all the things I mentioned above. Just hang bro.
History. It repeats itself, go back to the reading bit, but you can really recall the patterns if you read a lot. I remember building a summer house for an Amazon Executive in Friday Harbor, I saw a book on his self that I read, Theodore Rex. We got in a good conversation with him. I asked him how the hell is he a top executive as a history major. Is said “I study, I know trends, its predictable” it is.
My wife constantly askes me, I don’t know how we do it but are we ok?, I say… I read a lot, fuck you a lot, run a little here and there, make fun of my fat ass self, constantly try to understand my history, and smile all the way to the tree that my kids are hanging from.
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