You Are Action, Not Thought. And That’s The Way It Is.

Suppose you were to look out of an office window, down into the street below, and see a man standing by the edge of the road. It’s a nice Sunny day, and not much appears to be happening at first glance, but as you observe the scene, you see that some way up the road a car is hurtling down the tarmac at too fast a speed, and that should it continue at this speed, it will knock down and kill another man who is crossing the road. You see the original man, the onlooker, look at the car, and look at the man, and frozen on the spot, he does nothing. Slowly you realise you are about to watch one man watch the murder of another man and do nothing about it.

The car strikes the man, and kills him on impact. In this moment, you would most likely be overcome with a sense of shock, and no doubt anger at the lack of action. You may even be inclined to ask him about it if you were given the chance, would you not?

You might run down the stairs of your office building, and stroll up to him and demand an answer, “Why did you do that? You could have helped him, but instead you did nothing?”

Well if his reply were to be, “Well I thought about helping him.” – It wouldn’t mean very much to you, would it? In fact, it would be fair that most people might even be angered further by it. As though it was as useful as saying nothing at all. Because at the end of the day, thinking about doing something, does not equate to acting upon it.

And yet, all too often we use this excuse for ourselves. We suggest as though thinking, or trying, or trying to think about something, somehow equates to having actually done it. As though thinking about taking some art class, is as worthy a statements as having declared you have completed it.

We did not work towards our goals today – but we thought about it. And so somehow this counts as an attempt.
We thought about looking for a job today – so we looked for a job.
We thought about improving a skill – so we are improved.

There is a disconnect here, between reality and sympathy. He can forgive ourselves, but not others. We measure the actions of others, yet we measure the thoughts of ourselves. Similar to when someone who has cheated on someone, justifies it by saying something to the effect of, “I’m a good guy. I don’t do that stuff.” This is because we all like to think we are good. And so despite our actions to the contrary, we define ourselves as such. We can justify our thoughts, regardless of whether the actionable outcome is zero or actively polar opposite; but if another were to do this, we would chastise them, judge them even.

It’s important then here, to remember the Philip K. Dick quote:

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”

Philip K. Dick

Therefore it matters not what sensibilities to the world you harbour, or that which you wish the world was. Rather; what is. It does not matter to what standard you wish to hold yourself. Rather; what you are.

WHY, is this so important?

Because we are living in a post-truth era.

It’s a polite phrase which conceals its connotations wells, so if this doesn’t frighten you; it should. The Orwellian age we’ve found ourselves in, actively perpetuates suppression or subversion of truth, to be replaced by truths that are convenient to hear or that align with a more satisfying agenda.

We are living in a time, where we (being a large proportion of us) are more likely to dismiss direct truth for facts that can easily coalesce with other information or to accommodate a lifestyle that is more convenient for us.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/7330986/Apple-admits-using-child-labour.html

Countless Apple products sell year on year, despite it being actively known they use factories that support and use child labour.

We are living in a time, where information is so readily available, that on a personal level it’s almost impossible to proof-read all that we hear; and so made up percentages and statistics can become as much truth as an actual fact.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-deal-news-theresa-may-rory-stewart-public-support-bbc-radio-interview-a8635386.html

A UK Justice Minister caught lying about Brexit support percentages, just to illustrate his point on BBC Radio 5.

We are living in a time, where even when companies and individuals are caught out lying to us, or targeting us without our permission, we don’t hold them accountable in any way, and arguably what’s worse, we don’t re-assess our standings to align with fact.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-facebook-influence-us-election

Cambridge Analytica caught actively targeting susceptible minds and specific groups with false truths to helps sway the votes on political issues.

You will notice I provided the links to the pages in bold and kept the citation smaller, this is because it’s more important that you make up your own opinions, rather than read my assessment of it.

Living in an age such as this; there are many things we cannot control. Many things we refuse to take control of, for real of retaliation or consequence. The one thing you CAN control, always; is you. Hold yourself to a standard, and be uncompromising of that standard. Integrity.

The social version of you, or some non-reality version of you that you’ve conceived or convinced yourself of in your mind; is a construct. It ISN’T real. No matter how much you would like it to be, or how well you’ve got at convincing people that is you. Thoughts and illusions are not synonymous with action.

If you are so sure of who you are; prove it. Think anything you wish, with reckless abandon should you choose to. There is no censorship on what you think. But it is what you do; that defines you.

If you want to be great, be great, and be great consistently. It is our actions, that define, who we are.

“You are, who you choose to be.”

– Ted Hughes, The Iron Man.

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Definition – A study of “Now”

It would be a presumptuous yet fair statement, to say that we all have a preconceived notion of what we want from our time in this life that we perceive as ours. An idea of what it would take for us to reach the plenum of existence, and consider ourselves “fulfilled”.

And yet, if you were to stop for a moment; put a pause of your life as best you could, and write a list of exactly what it is that you want from your time on this Earth, and make a conviction and a promise not to change that, you would run into two distinct problems.

One: while it is perfectly easy to suggest you pause your life, you obviously and unfortunately cannot. If you were to take your time and write this list, with the intention of completing it in totality and never changing it, you would encounter a problem based on an assumption you would have had to have made, in order to even begin writing the list. The assumption would have been that you, unlike everything else in the universe; are static. An assumption that while your body grows old and tires, YOU are always YOU.

When in reality, YOU are changing all the time. You are not some steadfast rock grounded into foundation which a river works around, rather you are part of its water. It just becomes difficult to define the water part, in the same way you can point to the whole river and say “water”, or pick out a single molecule and say “this too is water”.

It’s a result of a struggle to separate the “I” of the mind and the “I” of the body. Assuming they are not one thing, because one part thinks, and the other part is physical matter. We forget the physical matter provides the means by which the conscious thinks, and can therefore perceive the physical part.

The two are cyclical; perfectly chicken and egg. And the two are changing at every second of the day as you flow from one moment to the next. A great example of how ever fluctuating both your mind and body are; is you may have a memory of a time you were brave, and so you could define yourself as courageous – that you put your body in harms way to save another in some form. And yet, you will probably also remember a time when you were cowardly. When you stood and watched a bully, rather than intervene, for fear of reprocusion. So are you brave, or are you cowardly?

Or were you simply brave in one moment, and cowardly in another?

But while you think of that; you will come to:

The second of the two problems: you can write down the words, “I want to be happy” or “I want to have wealth”; but you must remember that these are just words, not the feeling as they are themselves.

That is to say, that to physically say the words, “I am happy.” is not the same as being happy itself. Being happy is an indescribable feeling, because once you are in a moment of happiness, you’re not thinking about how happy you are; you just are. Like all else, it’s like a flow. You lose track of time, and you simply are the experience you are living, and it’s one which through one way or another evokes happiness. If you are to stop and think “why am I happy?” or “how happy am I?” you have begun to detract from the experience, and may actually think “how could I be more happy?” which decreases the intensity of the experience further so that actually you can’t describe your feeling of happiness just now, because you’ve lost yourself trying to define it, and by comparing it to future or further happiness it’s now not as happy as you imagine you could be.

So you’re defining nothing.

In the same way you could say you “want wealth” and in one moment mean “money” and in the next mean “purpose.”

In summary; what this effectively means, is a “You” which is no longer “You”, is defining an experience of say, “Happiness” which you cannot define, because the “Happiness” you are trying to define has passed to the variation of “You” than you were, and the “You” that you are now because you spent the time to define it.

Classification and definition are traits of the intelligent entity; perhaps experience is the trait of the wise entity.

To live the moment; is better than to define it, for in defining it, you surrender it.

And while you could define a moment, retroactively, this is defining a memory of a moment, and not the moment itself. So it is subject to infinite complications and inaccuracies.

Definition enables comparison. Rather than experiencing temperature, you are now experiencing hot or cold, or hotter or colder. This applies to happiness and sadness.

Rather, live in the moment as it is. Do not fear it or long for changing of circumstances, simply bask in what is. And while you can choose to define, at least understand what you are doing to the moment by categorising it. Take the moment as it comes, as it is in its purest form. Do not long for more or less of it, or a greater or lesser intensity of it. Simply; be.

Regardless of what you do; I hope the moment you find yourself in now, is a happy one. Just try not to think about it.