Pay the price

Yesterday I published three posts, and another around 1 AM—technically today, but I’ll count it as yesterday. They were the first things I’d published in fifteen days. What changed?

The answer, I think, was facing my fears.

My mind tries to keep me safe by guiding me away from paths that lead to discomfort and keeping me on comfortable paths. Reading is comfortable. Writing is comfortable. Deciding to publish a post is the beginning of a road to discomfort.

The discomfort begins when I decide to start the process of publishing. The post’s not done, of course. It’s never done. I can always do more. So I’m basically giving up.

Then I have to run Grammarly to spell, and grammar check it. No joy in that.

Copy/pasting it into blogger isn’t hard, and not exactly uncomfortable, but there’s no pleasure in it, either.

Then I have to decide whether to tell my friends and family that I’ve published a post. If I tell them, I’m bragging. And they might not like it. Or they might not read it.

The only way to get a post—like this one—done is to accept discomfort as the price for producing something. Some Future Me might appreciate what I’ve created, but I’m the one that has to endure the discomfort.

Fortunately, I’ve made peace with Past and Future Me and no longer resent doing things for his sake.

Accept the unsatisfactoriness of life. I’ve learned that lesson—or ones a lot like it—before. Then I’ve forgotten them. Then I’ve had to rediscover the same lesson again.

What can I do to make this the last time that I have to rediscover it?

On my left arm, I’ve got a tattoo that says, “I’m not dead yet.” Maybe I need one for my right arm? If I did that, what would it say? LIfe is unsatisfactory? Memento more?

Adam Robinson, a guy I discovered recently, quotes Rudyard Kippling on an episode of Tim Ferris podcast. “If you did not get what you want, it’s a sign either that you did not seriously want it or you tried to bargain over the price.”

So maybe what I want on my right arm is “Pay the price.”

Maybe I’ll end up like Leonard Shelby, the guy in Memento) who has lost his ability to make new memories and has the things that he wants to remember tattooed.

What else would I tattoo?

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Experience is the best teacher...

I heard it this way first, from Daniel: “Experience is the best teacher.” Why? “You get the test first, and the lesson later.”

But the quotation is attributed to Vernon Law, a baseball player. Vern Law is arguably the baseball player with the second greatest impact on modern philosophy, the first being Yogi Berra.

Law’s version:

Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards.”

But no one compares to Yogi, even though he says:

“I really didn’t say everything I said.”

Here are some classics:

• “90 percent of baseball is mental; the other half is physical.”
• On why he no longer went to Rigazzi’s, a St. Louis restaurant: “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”
• “It ain’t over till it’s over.” In July 1973, Berra’s Mets trailed the Chicago Cubs by 9½ games in the National League East. The Mets rallied to clinch the division title in their second-to-last game of the regular season, and eventually reach the World Series.
• When giving directions to Joe Garagiola to his New Jersey home, which was accessible by two routes: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
• At Yogi Berra Day at Sportsman Park in St. Louis: “Thank you for making this day necessary.”
  “It’s déjà vu all over again.” Berra explained that this quote originated when he witnessed Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris repeatedly hitting back-to-back home runs in the Yankees’ seasons in the early 1960s.
• “You can observe a lot by watching.
• “Always go to other people’s funerals; otherwise they won’t go to yours.”
• “A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore”
• “If you can’t imitate him, don’t copy him.”

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