Zen: Compromise

I haven't blogged in weeks and weeks, after 3-4 posts/week for almost 2 years.

I haven't played online poker for weeks and weeks. After playing nearly DAILY for 5 years.

What's that about?

It all started with the arrival of a long-awaited week-off from work, after months and months of 7-day workweeks. I made solid plans to do exactly nothing during that week, and by the evening of the first night, I was transformed. Silence, emptiness, and timelessness all converged and allowed me to take one giant step inwards.

The single largest schism in my life up until then could be described as "attempting to do everything all at the same time." Instead of being a gourmet burger joint, carefully tending to the few most special customers in my life, I had become McDonald's. I was capable of giving 125% to anything, but was instead allocating that across 25 things, and giving them each 5%. Believe me, no one was satisfied, especially not me, and it wasn't because of the lack of effort on my part.

But, you may say, with the world we live in, and the technologies and social connections available to us, are we not capable of doing 25 things simultaneously, and doing them at 125% each?

It is possible, it is easy. The difference is in the choosing. How you choose your path in each moment.

There are two "flavors" of choosing, let me see if I can contrast them.

Abstract ('Mind') choices

1. Choosing to maintain grass in the front and back yard

2. Choosing to give one's child a good/great education

3. Loving one's wife

Specific ('Moment') choices

1. Choosing to cut the grass and water the shrubs now, or hire help to do it

2. Reading to one's child, tonight, and each night before bed

3. Writing a small note to one's wife and putting it in their wallet

Do you see that these are both sets of what we consider "good choices". Both may appear to lead us to the same conclusions, same destinations over time.

Let's look again at the first set. When I ask you how long it takes to do #1, or #2, or #3, in hours per week, you have no answer. When I ask you for the exact cost of #1 or #2 or #3, you have no answer. Any such question about the second set is easily answered.

Living life guided by abstract choices leads to compromise. By not choosing in each moment what to do, it's a subtle version of 'turning it over to a higher power'. And your time, your resources, your essence, you, will be divided up among the abstract choices and the commitments you have based on those choices. And if you are reading my blog, without ever meeting you, I can guess that you have over-allocated your time, energy, money and resources. Hey, it's the American way! It's something we poker players do best!

Choosing a set of abstract choices leads to an uneven amount of "choosing" to do in a given day, in a given moment. What to do if the lawn needs mowed AND the cat got sick AND the car needs an oil change? What to do when the next day none of these happen? To truly fulfill all your commitments and choices, does it take most or all of your waking hours? Do you still fall short? You see how every choice, every moment in this reality is choosing one compromise after another. Every time you choose to act in accordance with one "idea", you are neglecting the rest. And when nothing is pressing, you are bored. How can you possibly be bored, with the life that you live and the commitments you make and honor?

So, enough said, you're ready to make the change, ready to upgrade to the new view, the new way of choosing with me. Do you see the transformation you require making? Please feel free to pause here and answer this one for yourself. It's a skill you can develop, recognizing stories and their roots simply by going into them. When you are ready, proceed to the next paragraph.

It is about having your courage, your trust. You will have to trust that by doing each of your individual acts, it will lead towards the abstract goals that you are aiming for. Instead of starting from a destination and walking blindly towards it, you are looking at the step in front of you in each moment.

Trust that you will choose to read to your child, help him with his homework when he needs it. The courage to be present with him when necessary. Trust that by acting this way in each moment, his long-term education will meet all of your "abstract requirements" you may have set up at the beginning.

Do you see how living life by the abstractions is like a security blanket? It's creating process where none exists, and getting to the point in the most backward way possible. Deflecting the responsibility, and the blame, by allowing you external universe to make your choices for you.

You can start with a combination of your moral values, combined with your life experiences, to make a general judgement about how some "thing should be". "Should" is crap, believe me. "Should" could be defined as an antonym for "Zen". Anyways, so you've chosen that a certain thing should be a certain way. "My child should have a good education." Great.

Now you combine it with your own personal experiences, whether lived personally, or taken on from someone else through stories or parents or TV or other programming. So you come up with a basic set of ways to evaluate how this concept might be "accomplished". But, see already we don't have any tangible way to define whether it was actually "accomplished" or "not accomplished". Ignoring that and moving on, we take the "history", mix it with our "should", and out come the rules by which we can live our own lives. Take the kid to school every day, encourage extra-curricular activities, pay for soccer cleats, etc.

Rules? RULES you say? Why should we live our life by rules, even if they're supposedly our own? (They're not.)

Trust that you are aware, and capable of making the best choice in each moment. In this example, trust that your child is capable of handling his own education if he seems to be doing just that. By being aware in the moment, you will be there to help in the exact moments he needs it, which we all know will lead to the aforementioned "good education".

By making these choices, you are transcending the compromise that you had previously agreed with. It allows you to be complete in the activity you are doing, complete in each moment. If you are reading to your kid, you can be there fully while doing it. If you are instead "caring for his education", and "providing an income", and "figuring out that 'work thing' in your head" you will be complete in nothing. Never alone in one task, always spread out. Never complete in anything, never present in the true moment.

Courage, and trust. That if you act with completeness, in each moment, that your life will be exactly "as it should be". This is the Path of Zen, the ability to walk with courage one step at a time.

***

What does this mean for me personally? Blogging and poker were obviously two components of the giant compromise I was living. In my new reality, I do them when I choose to, instead of when I feel I "should", or when I was in the habit of doing it. I still enjoy both of them tremendously, and I will say that I am greatly transformed since taking the extended vacation from the tables. But I was tired of "5%" poker, I had proven time and again that I can be downright mediocre at poker without trying very hard. I would have had a tough time answering the "why are you playing poker, then?" question.

My energy flows outward now.

I feel joyful in each moment, because I am present with my choice to do whatever I happen to be doing. Incidentally, I am cooking more, and better than ever. I've started gardening a bit. I am excelling at work, and it's now fun while I do it. And while I've dipped my toe in poker a bit, I'm still mostly absent. Let's call that 'Expert Mode' for this new game, and I will upgrade that part when I am ready.

For now, I'm finding supreme pleasures in the simplest things.