TrueLife - Thinking out loud - Emotional Decorations

Episode Date: August 19, 2022

Can the thoughts we think become the decorations we use to adorn the symbolic nature of our reality….this is how I think…let me know if you think it’s crazy

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Hears through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. I hope your day is going beautiful. Hope the birds are singing. I hope the person that you love is waking up next to you with a warning. smile. I hope you got plans for the weekend. I hope you have something to do, someone to love,

and something to look forward to. What are we going to talk about today, George? It's a great question. Thank you for asking. I want to start off with the insufficiency of language. Do you know what I mean by that? Have you ever had a time in your life where you just couldn't find the words to express the ideas that we're running through your mind. Quite often, I have this happen to me. And it happens quickly. It happens so fast, but it seems like so long. A quiet pause, a silent pause.

Long enough just to grasp for the word. It's almost as if your reach exceeds your grasp. Is that possible? Well, you see what I mean? The words are insufficient. They don't quite fit. And it's this linguistic problem that keeps us from communicating effectively and efficiently. It's this linguistic problem.

It's the problem of losing something in translation. Many of us who can speak one, two, well, many of us who can speak two languages. and those who can speak even more, you often lose substance in translation because you have to interpret it. Interpretation, translation means interpretation. But it doesn't have to be just between languages.

Interpretation also happens between two different people, especially if those two people were born in different cultures. But they need not be born in different cultures for you to interpret what someone is saying poorly, wrongly, or insufficiently. It's our greatest gift and also our greatest liability is this thing called communication. And in a world that's made of language, be it symbols, be it words, be it body language. We are constantly interpreting, constantly translating, constantly translate.

how much of our desired communication gets lost in translation through social media how much of this new world emerging through Zoom technology and communications via the internet how much are we losing when we can no longer look into the eyes of the person we're communicating with. I'm not sure if 90% of communication is nonverbal. I don't know what that percentage is. However, I do know that the nonverbal communication plays a large part in feeling. It plays a large part in understanding. It plays a large part in the overall message. Some of that is do I movement. Some of that is through facial features. Some of that is through an exchange of pheromones. I think we're living through, and we always have been, living through this giant experiment.

And sometimes we jerk the wheel hard to the left. Other times we jerk it hard to the right. Very rarely do we go down a smooth straightaway and just get on the gas pedal. What do you think is happening right now in the world of language and communication? Do you think that it's so chaotic right now? Or might it be so chaotic right now? Because of the way we're communicating? Because of the way we're not communicating. Because we have attempted this new way of just blaring a message through the airwaves. Sometimes I think the way we're communicating right now through Zoom, the way the kids are being taught online, is simply, similar to just having a ghetto blaster on your shoulder and banging it as loud as you can. Right? Like the noise is getting out there. But I'm not sure anybody can really understand the lyrics.

Hey, everybody can hear my music. Awesome. Yeah. Woo! But no one is really thoroughly understanding what the song is trying to say. I mean, sure, if you're close enough to it, then you can understand it. But if you're far away,

all you can hear is a dull... Boom, boom, boom, boom, you know what I mean? And I wonder if that is part of the problem we're having that. Could we fine-tune the signal and get more signal instead of the noise? Probably.

But we're still missing out on the... on the message. We can hear the music, but I'm not sure we're getting the message. It brings me to this idea, and I'm just kind of spitball in here, so stay with me. Think about the way you think. Sometimes you're focused, and you're all in on a subject.

Let's just say you're thinking about a book. And for a lot of people, I'll begin thinking about the book, the story, the narrative, and then some random thought will pop into my head like, man, my coffee tree sure is blooming a little bit different. Or I will begin focusing on the book and the story and then, again, what appears to be a random thought about my daughter will pop into my head. Some people will see this as an untrained, unfocused mind, unable to think specifically about, one subject, the book. However, that's not the case.

I would like to propose to you that while you're focusing on something, these ideas that you think are random, the idea about your daughter's play date next Thursday popping into your head about the book is connected. It's not a random thought. It's not the untrained musing of the analytical mind. It is something that ties to that story. How could it not?

It is the next thought in the sequence of thinking, thus they are connected. Does that make sense? There's something you need to understand about your daughter's play date on Thursday that connects to the very story you're reading. The same way that someone training for a black belt does the same move a hundred times? Even though that move is the same, every move in succession is the next move. Right? Let me give you an example of what I mean.

I heard a story about a guy that was training for his black belt. And his sensei was training him and he made him do like a thousand kicks. And around kick 500, the guy is like, Sensei, I think I'm ready to move. I've done this kick 500 times in a row. I think I'm ready to move on to the next move. and the Sincay said, yeah, this is the next move. Kick 501.

Now do it. Just think about that for a minute. Even though you've done something 500 times, the next time you do it, it's not the same. It's a completely different kick. So by that token, whatever thought comes into your mind while you're focusing on something is the next move. It's connected.

your job is to understand how it's connected. There's gold to mine in that shaft. Does that make sense? I think so. But the point is, too many people steer away from that. Too many people all of a sudden get up and throw their pin down and like, I can't focus. No, that is the focus. That's the thing you're supposed to be focusing on.

And as I want to tie that back to start. social media. I think that what's happening is this, we've been over-analizing and so focused on trying to change the way we communicate. We've become so narrow-minded that we're having these new thoughts pop into our head and it seems like chaos. It seems like, oh no, the whole world is dying. But these are the next thoughts. Like, we're just now trying to incorporate the larger world around us. It's like we've been so narrowly focused and now we're pulling back.

Like we've been staring into the page for so long and now we're finally putting our hand on our head pulling back and we're seeing the bigger picture. So it seems chaotic. It's been this over-emphasis on verbal and directed thought. Let me try to flesh this out a little bit. So there's a lot of theories that say in order to become creative,

one must regress in the service of the ego. One must regress to a childlike state to embrace novelty, to embrace the creative spirit. One must think like a child. Think about how silly that is. Like sometimes we look at regressing into the mind of a child as a way to harness creativity. Who the hell came up with that idea?

Shouldn't creativity become better with age? Shouldn't one who is creative be able to build on that like a muscle? Why would people say you have to regress? Why would people even use the word regression to explain creativity? That's a problem with our society. That's a problem with the way we think.

Now, I'm not saying everybody thinks like that, but I've definitely read people who have said things like that. And I'm sure most of us in our time have heard that. Do you think that's a problem? In some ways, I think it takes us back to language. I read somewhere that the basic problem in understanding ongoing human thought has to do with the fact that we inevitably rely on

some aspect of language to determine the nature of our experience. So if we have, if our language, if the words we use to describe ourselves are insufficient, then the thoughts we think will also be insufficient. That's why it's so important to choose your words wisely. the more descriptive, the more imaginative, the more imaginative, the more full and beautiful and complex, the word you choose, the more full and beautiful and complex the ideas that you can generate will be. It's so important to factor that into your thought process, to try and make even at the peril of not being able to express yourself, you should struggle to create the most beautiful and complex idea in your mind

and use a vast repertoire of complex rub-goldberg-like ideas. Even if that idea maybe never comes to. to fruition. You should try to decorate your thoughts with beautiful gold flake-like creativity. Doesn't even make sense. Does that even make sense? You know what the hell I'm trying to say? Struggle to make things beautiful.

Not only in the world around you, but the world inside of you. Try and see everything. through a lens of beautiful imagination. I think if you can do that, if you can begin to decorate your words, if you can begin to use your words as decorations, to dress up everything around you, to look magnificent.

If you can do that, then I think you will build a world around you that is magnificent. And there's some tricks and some hacks. One that I use is that everything I see in other people is something that I recognize that I'm familiar with. If you can hold on to that, if you can know that the person that you see is simultaneously disgusting and angry, but also magnificently beautiful and full of life, then you can know that you are those things. And you can choose which one you want to accent.

If you can see those character traits as decorations, then you can take off the ugly ones and maybe change them, into scary ones or change them into, they're almost like clothes, right? The emotions we wear are almost, the emotions we wear are, are decorations. Interesting, right?

I'm just kind of spitball in here. I wanted people to take away from this particular podcast. I wanted to give everybody a window into the way I think. So what you're witnessing here is me trying, trying to understand how I think. Is that even worthwhile? I hope so. I hope it's worthwhile. This is me sitting down at my desk, trying to figure out how I can make my day better, how I can understand myself better, how I come to terms with the language I use. I hope it's something that you can use.

That's what I got for today, ladies and gentlemen. I love you. I hope your day is going beautiful. I hope you are able to find something beautiful in the words that I have, that I tell myself, that this is how I study my ongoing thought. This is how I analyze my daydreams. This is how I begin to understand the creative process. And I know this is a bit abstract, and it may seem like I'm rambling, because I kind of am. I kind of am. However, I think there's some beauty in there. And I do stuff like this quite often.

And I just wanted, I thought it would be interesting to verbalize my thoughts. And maybe it helps somebody along the way. Maybe I'll throw some music to this. I love you guys. Happy Friday. Aloha Friday. The world is beautiful. The people around you care for you and love you. And that's all week. Thank you.