After You've Been Expelled from Paradise, What's Your Game Plan?

 

Comments

[Ulysses]

It requires self-awareness. You have to be able to recognise that you just got lucky and that fame and wealth based on a fluke rarely lasts. What really gets on my nerves is when someone knows all too well they got lucky but nevertheless milk it, building up a mythos around themselves that they were destined for greatness. That's how a lot of celebrities get famous. Fame is a commodity - we idolise those who have it and we appear to completely disregard the manner in which it was acquired.

There is one aspect of "rising and falling" that is inevitable, and that is due to the relentless march of time. Time will inevitably leave us less capable, weaker, and less confident than when we were young strapping men. There's nothing we can do about it and it's not a personal choice, unlike the bums you mentioned, but it's still something that will get us in the end, so we should probably make hay while the sun shines. Humans are uniquely gifted in that they comprehend "the future", and are capable of planning for it.

I guess these guys who got lucky must first realise that their success didn't come from their own personal efforts, and that to re-enter paradise they're going to have to work for it. Most of us are never so lucky, so readily accept that we'll have to work our butts off to get anywhere. If you do get lucky, and if you're smart, you'll work your ass off to keep what you've got and never take it for granted. It sounds like common sense, but never underestimate the human capacity for self-delusion. The world we see around us is coloured by our own beliefs and desires. When we get what we want, we are often struck dumb, paralysed by it, not knowing what to do next. We become like a dog waiting for his owner to throw the ball; until we see something we want to chase, our life exists in a limbo.

In computing there is a model we sometimes use to design programs, called the Finite State Machine. As the name implies, it is a diagrammatic representation of a series of different states that a "machine" can be in. Transitioning from one state to another requires some event to occur. Maybe some people are like that; they lurch from one state to another, prompted by various changes in their lives, only to dwell in the next state they find themselves in - a crisis to crisis way of living. Only, it's not much of a life because it defers control of your own destiny to your environment - to luck, to flukes. The foolish man doesn't know where he'll end up next and has no plan for when he falls from paradise. The wise man knows his state will change at some point and prepares himself for it, knowing that his destiny is at least partially in his hands.

[Dave]

Jeff......I enjoy watching your girls climb all over you & interrupt your video/audio dissertations as opposed to your psycho/philosophical babbling! Just my 2 cents. :>)