Denzel Maniple Everd
I donāt know how often this happens to you but have you ever had a plan to do something, then along the way you come up with another plan to do something else, then as you are going to do that thing, that other thing you told yourself you were going to do last week but never did comes up and then as you are starting it you remember that there was something that got you out of your bed. Yea, I suffer from that thing. And maybe there is an aptly worded description for what Iām suffering from but Iām sure I can do some research on it after I write this.
I am at that stage in life where Iām riddled and bombarded with the pressure to make the most of my youthful energy. To set my self up for success in light terms. Iām supposed to be honing a skill or starting a business or working for someone who will pay me wellā¦one day. Or learning a bit more because what I know now isnāt enough. And it has all been quite overwhelming. From childhood, I have always known myself to be a slow learner. Maybe because I lack discipline or maybe because I canāt process information at terrible speeds unless itās a moving image (a skill I have mastered through the countless films I have watched in my life). Never the less, I feel like I want to learn so many things that just donāt coordinate, or donāt make sense in a large institution. Even so, the speed at which I learn to a decent level of mastery means that by the time Iām competent at something, half my supposed lifespan will have passed me by. In which by then Iām supposed to have ālived and lovedā a little, things you canāt seem to do in this world without god, and by god, I mean Money. Without money you canāt even access the best learning tools and environment because you have to pay someone to provide that, and I must add, to a lesser extent, rightly so. This someone spent years learning what the best way to do something is and suffered all the failures so that you donāt have to, now you have to make their life better. A small price to pay for growth it would seem like.
Anyway, just like the topic for today, I got distracted with my own ramblings. I wanted to talk about the idea of an octopus mind. A place where your brain feels like it has the capacity to carry out eight million conscious tasks at the same time. I want to learn a new language, I want to learn how to become a decent cook, I want to learn how to write code, I want to become a better photographer, I want to learn how to become a better writer, I want to learn graphic design, I want to pick up a martial art and I want to become a better reader. In todayās world, each of these aspirations is an entire career, well-paying and impactful in their own way, with a libraryās worth of books to read and learn from. Where do you start? What do you start with? Especially because you are also living in the same world where the amount of control over elements you can exact your will on is limited to how much you donāt care about other people and about how much them not caring about you you can withstand.
My octopus mind grows legs every morning and finds a new path every midday. It has calculated and foreseen a new career path and all the amazing things you can and will do if you take this path in life and all the things you can suffer (you knowā¦ to humanize you). But it also means that your brain canāt rest on one idea and try to perfect it.
I recall coming across the Japanese idea of Kaizen in the 2003 film āThe Last Samuraiā, where people living the life of the samurai woke up everyday to do the one thing they loved and were meant to only get better at it. To be fair they also lived in communities where they had shared responsibilities such as farming or hunting for food and cleaning the houses or construction. But in my life, I have to wake up and make money for someone else and be paid less than 1% of what Iām producing and yes that is the whole point of Capitalism but it being such a wide spread idea that your environment bends towards that trajectory forcing you to slide in that direction or refuse and become a nuisance. It makes one think.
What can I do to get a hold of this Octopus? My inability to be really good at any one thing or even see how good I am at one of them blinds me from a potential path. The path that falls into another Japanese philosophy (Wow, these guys had time to think). The concept of Ikigai. Now I donāt know whether these guys were the brainchild of the concept but the idea is that finding your purpose in life should be measured by elements of āWhat the world needsā, āWhat you loveā, āWhat youāre good atā, and āWhat you can get paid to doā. The intersection of these elements is said to be where you can find your answer. Of course, as with anything in life, it is easier said than done but I think having a sense of the aforementioned ideas can be the first step in trying to tame your octopus mind and maybe even teach it to swim. As for me, I think mine will be in weird spiral until I find my bearings and being the slow learner that I am wonāt help much, but maybe I get to experience the events in my life in more vivid detail.
Anyway, until next time.
Written by Denzel Maniple Everd
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