Stay on Offense Climb Mountains

Attacking Adversity

Go Hiking and Get Beyond Order

by Leave a Comment

How do you get beyond order when you go hiking? Simple, as Jordan B. Peterson has said, nature is chaos. You can’t get much further from order than that.

Getting into the wild is, well, wild! As I write this I am planing a hike in a place known for lots of bears. When you’re out there in the woods, the bears and the cougars are the dragons in your world.

Lions, Tigers, Bears and Dragons

Here in North America there arena’t many lions or tigers unless you include Texas. Texas is the exception. I was going to say you wouldn’t find any real dragons in North America but when I think about Texas I am not so sure. After all doesn’t Tim Kennedy live in Texas?

Yes, I am digressing a bit. It happens when I talk about dragons. Peterson often tells a story of a dragon under a bed somewhere. He says we should kill the dragon when it’s small before it gets so big it can eat you. Good idea for sure. But with bears in the woods you actually want to stay away from the little ones because mom is usually close by.

Whistling In the Dark

It isn’t really dark when I hike before sunrise because I wear a headlamp. I tell myself that the bright light will scare the Sasquatches, bears and cougars away. So I Googled that and it says,
“Bears aren’t typically scared of bright lights because bears naturally have no negative association with bright light and don’t see it as a threat.” So much for that theory. I really wished I hadn’t looked for the information.

What’s left? Whistling! Noise does scare bears away. I am not so sure about cougars. I don’t think anything scares a cougar. If it’s hungry it just wants to eat you. I am not going to Google for an answer. Cougars scare me more than bears.

So go hiking, face real danger and then come home and the little dragon under your bed will seem like nothing.

Bookish Weapon Number Forty-Seven

by Leave a Comment

“My grandma kept cash in her bra,” is the opening line in “Everything is Spiritual,” by Rob Bell. Bell was a Christian pastor of a megachurch until 2012. I am not sure exactly how he sees himself today, but I am sure he has clarified that somewhere but not in this book at least.

He writes in bursts. A regular paragraph like this:

“I picked up on all that muted grief floating in the air between my grandma and dad, and from an early age I just wanted to make them laugh.”

To this:

“That’s what I remember.
I made her laugh.
I made him laugh.
If I could get them laughing so hard they were in tears,
I knew I’d done something.”

Then back to regular paragraphs.

Substance

He discusses tripping over what he calls a “spiritual talk thing” and decided that was what he was going to do with his life. So he retells some of what happened before his church voted him out. In this book, he really doesn’t talk about that. You need to read “Love Wins” to get that full story.

He talks about his dad’s father and how he died young and how that somehow influenced his sense of things. He says, “However solid life may appear, it’s also very fragile.” To be fair he says that on two separate lines. This style does allow him to emphasize things without putting them in italics, yet he does that too. Everything in the book has weight in this way.

More examples

In the following the first line is italicized:

“What do you do with the pain in life?”
“You keep moving, keep accomplishing, keep striving. Whatever you do, don’t be lazy. Don’t appear to be coasting. And whatever happens, stay a step ahead of the pain. Keep it buried. Keep it down.”

That is how he thought he should be living his life based on his childhood. Now he sees things differently. He says, “Through the help of a number of guides over the years, I begin to see a new way to be, one rooted in the enduring truth: There’s nothing to prove.” That’s italicized!

Lots more one-sentence paragraphs. Then he says he is telling us about where he came from and who he came from because we are like him. We all come from people and places.

“Our lives are loaded from the beginning with history and drums and love and wounds and tragedy and hope. I’m mysterious enough myself, let alone the ones I come from, let alone all the people I’m constantly encountering with your own hopes and fears and histories and mysteries, let alone this floating ball of rock we call home that’s hurtling through space at 87,000 miles per hour.”

Now that is some paragraph and it gets even more interesting, but you need to read the book.

Things to Remember

This is the kind of book that is free-floating and talks about a lot for things in a sort of order. Here are some items that stood out for me:

“Curiosity is the antidote to despair.” I agree! He says, “Despair is the spiritual disease of believing that tomorrow will simply be a repeat of today.” “Curiosity whispers to you, You’re just getting started…”

“We need forms. But that’s what they are – dust. Dirt. Earth. It’s the breath that gives it life. That gives us life.” “The invitation is to allow sprit to transform all these forms, so the they become everything they can be, guiding us into the fuller experience of the depths of life.”

He has a revelation while talking to Father Jack: “When we take ourselves too seriously it gets in the way of the thing that we are so seriously trying to do.”

He is telling Father Jack all the things he is doing etc.

After a time he stops me
He’s so kind and so firm
And so fierce

He tells me that I have a gift to give, so I should give it. He says that it is a generous gift that we each give to the world, and we should take good care of ourselves. To give a generous gift, we must be generous with ourselves. And to give generously, we must become very good at receiving generously.”

Finally, Death

“There is death
At the end of life,
But for you to be here
There was death, lots of it, millions and millions of times over,
At the start of your life.

He then discusses death and how a lot of sperm had to die to make you. That and a bunch of other things had to happen for you to exist. You are a miracle!

Go Hiking Because You Matter

by Leave a Comment

That seems pretty logical, doesn’t it? Hiking adds to your life and is one more thing that helps you be the person you need to be for the world.

Stay Screwed Into The Socket

Brian Johnson of Optimize Me fame, reviews books and one author asked if we were the light bulb or the light. Light is the energy source of life. Another author he reviewed said we all just needed to keep ourselves screwed into the light socket. The was our job. Exercise helps do that and that is one reason hiking helps with it.

Another reason would be that no other place has more energy than nature. So you are tightly screwed into that socket when you are out there.

Death Again

Yes, this has been a subject of these posts from time to time, but bear with me because it is important. It is one of the reasons you do matter. If you were immortal then your life would not be as precious. But you are not so you have a unique fingerprint that you have placed on life.

Now, during this COVID-19 Pandemic, we are all reminded of death. They have locked down the hiking trails at the state parks. No hiking. That is a sort of death for me. It will be another month at least before they open again. Nothing can be taken for granted. So when you get a chance go hiking. It might be the last time you are able to for lots of reasons.

More Life

One of the reasons hiking became so important to me is that as I aged I realized that a person needs to remain vital and active as long as possible. Many folks in their 60s and 70s are retired, sitting around waiting for the grim reaper. You have to have interests that stoke your passions.

I am very fortunate that I am not retired. That I am working every day, exercising and hiking. It makes life feel full. Now if they would just open the trails again all would be well.

Go Hiking Because “Everything is F*cked.”

by Leave a Comment

As I write this all of us are quarantined. We can go out of doors alone to exercise or for a walk as long as we stay ten feet away from people. I am not sure who determined ten feet as the magic number. I thought that a sneeze traveled much farther. Anyway, here we are waiting to see if we are going to die. I am 74 so the experts say there is a good chance I am a goner if I get this Covid-19 sickness. So I would say that everything is indeed fu*cked as the title to the book I reviewed says.

What To Do

So go hiking!! Just be sure you are alone. I go early enough that nobody is on the trail. If I encounter anyone I go by them pretty fast except for one woman and she blows by me even faster. They have closed the campgrounds, but I do not think they ave closed the trails.

So what better way to relieve the stress of waiting to die that getting out into nature. Getting some good exercise and letting the elements beat you up. You will come back refreshed and ready to take on the next week of being quarantined.

Walking

If for some reason your health will not allow you to hike go walking. Walking by yourself in a park with trees is in some ways even better the hiking. Did I really just say that? Well, think about it. It is less stress on the body and less stress means you will probably last longer over time. Hiking can beat you up pretty bad. It is bad on the knees, but even if you have bad knees or hips you can do a little walking.

Walking is my plan for when I am not physically able to climb mountains. My goal is to be able to keep climbing mountains until I am 85. Of course with this new virus trying to kill me I am not so sure I will make it.

The bottom line is if you can’t hike then walk! But if you can hike the, by all means, go hiking!

Bookish Weapon Number Thirty-Seven

by Leave a Comment

At the beginning of this book by Mark Manson with the hopeless title, “Everything is F*ucked,” he says, “One day, you and everyone you love will die. And beyond a small group of people for an extremely brief period of time, little of what you say or do will ever matter. This is the Uncomfortable Truth of Life. And everything you think or do is but an elaborate avoidance of it. We are inconsequential cosmic dust, bumping and milling around on a tiny blue speck. We imagine our own importance. We invent our purpose – we are nothing.
Enjoy your f*king life.”

That is nihilism!

Hope

He goes on to say that people need hope almost as much as they need air. That, “depression is a crisis of hope.” Then he makes the point that his book is “against nihilism.” He says by starting with it we can argue against it. You can build a case for hope.

First, he points out some uncomfortable facts, like…symptoms of depression and anxiety, are on an eighty-year upswing amount young people and a twenty-year upswing amount the adult population. Not only are people experiencing depression in greater numbers, but they’re experiencing it at earlier ages, with each generation.” Also, that “…the wealthier and safer the place you live, the more likely you are to commit suicide.” He says that is “Because the better the world gets, the more we have to lose, the less we feel we have to hope for.”

Then he says, “To build and maintain hope, we need three things: a sense of control, a belief in the value of something, and a community.” The rest of the book examines these three areas.

Self Control

The idea of having two brains is not new. He examines it here. The feeling brain and the thinking brain are how he describes it. The feeling brain is emotions and the thinking brain is logic. He says they don’t talk to each other very well.

The problem of self-control is an uneducated “Feeling Brain that has adopted and accepted poor value judgments about itself and the world.” Or as he says, “The problem is that, at some point, likely a long time ago, we got punched in the face, and instead of punching back, we decided we deserved it.”

Self Worth

I thought the hedge to this short section was perfect. It is “Our Self-Worth Equals the Sum of Our Emotions Over Time.” What an interesting way to look at it. He says, “Life kicks you around a little bit, and you feel powerless to stop it. Therefore, your Feeling Brain concludes that you must deserve it.”

He concludes this section by saying, “People suck, and life is exceedingly difficult and unpredictable.” However, he says we will encounter more suffering if we stay separated from others thinking we are either better than them or don’t measure up.

He goes on to discuss two more emotional laws. Did you miss the first one? The title of that section.

Nietzsche

The author discusses this philosopher and I thought what he discussed rang true. He said “ Nietsche called the elite the “masters” of society, as they have almost complete control over wealth, production, and political power. He called the working masses the “slaves” of society because saw little difference between a laborer working his whole life for a small sum and slavery itself.” Isn’t that soothing to think about! Another idea accompanied this one – that people get what they deserve. He called it Master Morality.

Then he says the slaves (laborers) of society generated a moral code of there own that they were righteous and virtuous because of their weakness. “Whereas master morality believes in the virtue of strength and dominance, save morality believes in the virtue of sacrifice and submission.”

Kant

Manson says Kant “argued that the most fundamental moral duty is the preservation and growth of consciousness, both in ourselves and in others.” And Kant presents us with a “Formula for Humanity” which states, “Act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.” Kant is so hard to read.

This is when Manson throws “hope” in the ditch. Says if we act unconditionally then we don’t have to rely on hope. You just love someone not expecting anything in return.

Pain

Manson has some interesting things to say about pain. The first one has to do with the biggest pain, death. He says, “Death is psychologically necessary because it creates stakes in life.” I suppose you didn’t have something to lose you really don’t appreciate it. I know at my age death is at least a weekly thought. He goes on and says, “Without the pain of loss (or potential loss), it becomes impossible to determine the value of anything at all.”

Nassim Taleb wrote the book “Antifragile,” and Manson brings up that theme. He says, “the more antifragile we become, the more graceful our emotional responses are, the more control we exercise over ourselves, and the more principled our values. Antifragility is therefore synonymous with growth and maturity.

“…the quality of our lives is determined by the quality of our character, and the quality of our character is determined by our relationship to our pain,” says Manson.

So he says not to pursue happiness. Pursue pain. You want to be able to decide what pain you are going to pursue. He puts it this way, “When we pursue pain, we are able to choose what pain we bring into our lives. And this choice makes pain meaningful – and therefore it is what makes life meaningful.” That is profound! I choose the mountain. Go hiking. It is great pain.

There is more in the book, but this is a pretty good summary if I do say so myself.

Bookish Weapon Number Thirty-Two

by Leave a Comment

This book, “Awareness,” by Anthony De Mello was written some time ago but has received recent accolades from the likes of Tim Ferriss and others. There is a good reason for it. He was certainly one of the first proponents of mindfulness although he didn’t call it that.

The book is short with big ideas. Sometimes those are the best kind. You can just read them over and over again.

Sleeping

De Mello says most people are asleep. He says, “They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing we call human existence.” He goes on to say that “all Mystics, Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion – are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well.”

Insights abound in this book. Being asleep is discussed throughout the book and he makes a point that people do not want to “be cured.” “What they want is relief; a cure is painful.” “Most people go to a psychiatrist or psychologist to get relief. I repeat: to get relief. Not to get out of it.” So he says you need to “realize that you don’t want to wake up.”

You

Here is a passage that struck me and like I so often do I will quote the whole thing. It is an idea I think everyone needs to hear especially in this day and age where it seems everyone is running to therapy over even minor things. He says that we are “not ok” but it doesn’t matter. We should just observe (be aware). Then he says,

“This reminds me of the fellow in London after the war. He’s sitting with a parcel wrapped in brown paper in his lap; it’s a big, heavy object. The bus conductor comes up to him and says, “What do you have on your lap there?” And the man says, “This is an unexploded bomb. We dug it out of the garden and I am taking it to the police station.” The conductor says, “You don’t want to carry that on your lap. Put it under the seat.”

“Psychology and spirituality (as we generally understand it) transfer the bomb from your lap to under your seat. They don’t really solve your problems. Has that ever struck you? You had a problem, now you exchange it for another one. It’s always going to be that way until we solve the problem called “you.”

Suffering

“Do you want a sign you’re asleep? Here it is: You’re suffering. Suffering is a sign that you are out of touch with the truth.”

He says, “All suffering is caused by my identifying myself with something, whether that something is within me or outside me.” “Grief is a sign that I made my happiness depend on this thing or person, at least to some extent.”

He makes the case for enjoying people not for who they are but also for more than who they are and we are. He goes on to say that, Loneliness is not cured by human company. Loneliness is cured by contact with reality.” Then he talks about the “organized industry” designed to distract us from reality. I/Phone anyone?

How about some “bliss.” De Mello says, “There’s only one reason why you’re not experiencing what in India we call Anand – bliss, bliss. There’s only one reason why you’re not experiencing bliss at this present moment, and it is because you’re thinking or focusing on what you don’t have.”

Wisdom

The Bible says wisdom begins with the fear of God. I am sure De Mello has read this and agrees, but he says there are four steps to wisdom. First, you need to become aware of negative feelings you didn’t realize you had. Second, is to “understand that the feeling is in you, not in reality.” The third step is to “Never identify with that feeling. It has nothing to do with the I…don’t say, “I am depressed.” He says you can say “It is depressed.” You should not define yourself in terms of a feeling. That is a mistake. The fourth step is to change yourself. Don’t try to change somebody else. Realize that “the world is right because I feel good.” You feeling good goes first.

De Mello says, “There is no explanation you can give that would explain away all the sufferings and evil and torture and destruction and hunger in the world! “…Because life is a mystery, which means your thinking mind cannot make sense out of it. For that you’ve got to wake up and then you’ll suddenly realize that reality is not problematic, you are the problem.”

Life

“Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind.” How about that statement! I agree with him when he says. “Loneliness is when you are missing people, aloneness is when you’re enjoying yourself.”

Then he gives us a pretty good definition of awareness. It is like mindfulness without the wanting. He puts it this way, “When people say they want to experience every moment, they are really talking awareness, except for the “wanting.”

Death

“You are not living until it doesn’t matter a tinker’s damn to you whether you live or die.” Now that is something to think about. He doesn’t end there. “People mistakenly think that living is keeping the body alive. So love the thought of death. Love it.”

Then he suggests visiting a graveyard. Consider the people there. How short their lives were.

I must confess that I am asleep and hope I remain asleep if being awake means you don’t care if your alive or dead. I think his perspective may be due to the fact that he is old as he writes this and closer to death or I am just to stupid to grasp this idea.

Love

He says, “Give up your dependency. Tear away the tentacles of society that have enveloped and suffocated your being. You must drop them. Externally, everything will go on as before, but though you will continue to be in the world, you will not be of it.”

And then he says something I can really identify with. “It will help, too, if you return to nature. Send the crowds away, go up to the mountains, and silently commune with trees and flowers and animals and birds, with sea and clouds and sky and stars.” “That is the cure for loneliness.”