I shouldn't let movies have such an affect on me
I recently was doing a lot of driving and listened to Avril Lavigne's Anything but Ordinary quite a few times. And it really resonated with me. Well, mostly just the line, "I'd rather be anything but ordinary please".
I keep thinking of the movie Dead Poet's Society. In high school, that movie had quite the affect on me. I even went out and bought a book of Robert Frost's poetry after watching it. Unfortunately though, I am not a poet. No matter how hard I try, I think poetry is boring. I don't really know why. Maybe I just haven't found the right stuff (not that I'm looking). Anyway, at one point Robin Williams says, "Make your lives extraordinary." I want to make my life extraordinary! Tell me how, Robin! Tell me how!
I have a lot of observations I have made about life, or rules as I like to call them. Two of them go like this:
Everybody seems like they have their shit together, but nobody does.
95% of all adventures stem from meeting two of the following three conditions:
- A stupid decision
- Having no responsibilities
- Having lots of money
Now, back to how to make your life extraordinary. I think one school of thought, is to try and have as many adventures as possible. People who are having lots of adventures do sure seem to have extraordinary lives. But I don't have lots of money, so I would have to make a lot of stupid decisions, and according to rule number 1, their lives aren't extraordinary?
Another school of thought is to try and do something that you will be remembered for forever. Like Aristotle, or Newton, or Marie Antoinette. But that sort of thing almost seems like it is out of ones control. I don't think Newton set out to solve the universe. He just did. Plus he was a fucking genius.
I guess, one last method is to try and have a meaningful life. But that seems problematic on two levels.
- The search for meaning seems almost as elusive as the search for the extraordinary.
- This could lead you down a rather normal feeling path. It could involve finding a job (albeit one you find meaningful) and a wife and kids and a house with a white picket fence (I do like white picket fences...). But what if you are like Avril and want anything but ordinary? That's quite the pickle.
I have always been a firm believer in the set your sights on the sky and you can achieve anything you want to philosophy. I'm going to make my life extraordinary, damn it. It would just be nice if this sort of plan came with a set of instructions. Maybe like this:
- Graduate from college.
- Float around for a little bit.
- Stumble across treasure map.
- Find buried treasure in the jungle.
- Die rich and fat of malaria at the age of 32.
Sounds good to me! Anyway, if you have any real suggestions for an extraordinary life, feel free to post them here.
30 September 2007 04:29am UTC • 373 views • 2 comments
Tagged with movies, life, plans, rules, achievement
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2 comments
Peon Peetie
30 September 2007 05:49am UTC
do you get fat when you have malaria? i always imagined you'd get super skinny from being horribly sick. no?
i think lately i've been going through the same thoughts. i'm not sure if this job i took was the right decision of if it was just the decision i should have taken. it's such a good opportunity (whatever that means), but it still feels a little off. and i feel like i'm leaving a lot behind, possibly forever, in exchange for this opportunity that may leave me with little more than some good stories and a bit of money. so, with this in my head, i've been trying to think of the long term. sure, i'd think, my day to day life isn't exactly what i want, but soon i'll be in china. and then i'll have a great time. and after that i can come to san francisco and really have a good time. and so on. always the next step. always with one foot out the door.
but maybe that's the wrong approach? maybe i should look at it more day by day. maybe an extraordinary life doesn't come from huge stories or big accomplishments. maybe an extraordinary life is, as george harrison once said, all in the mind.
either way, it's something to work on. and my oh my, that first "rule" of yours happens to be one of the wisest things i've ever heard. you may not be newton, but at least you've got that!
Boatswain The Fool
30 September 2007 08:43am UTC
These thoughts are very jumbled, and I am sorry for that:
Personally, I think that everyone in our socioeconomic position has felt like this at one point or another... or, almost everyone, at any rate. It's strange. I think that we're a bit like the Lost Generation, except they became lost because there was no clear meaning after World War II (I think), and we've become lost because there are so many meanings floating around us with mass media. Everywhere you turn (especially online), there is more advice on which paths you should take and what should be meaningful for you: people in computing demand that we become better with computers because machines can make our lives better, and the U.S. is losing intellectual ground to other countries; people in politics demand that we spend more time becoming educated about political affairs because the people in power affect everybody's lives, so we need to choose the right people; people in economics tell us that we could make more money if we spent more time learning about economics; dietitians and healthy people tell us that we would live longer and be happier if we spent more time analyzing what we eat and reading labels... &c. And, it goes down to the most minute level: people who have worked a lot with vim macros think that all vim users (and everyone else) could become a lot more efficient if they just spent some time getting used to vim macros; people who devote their lives to reading David Hume think that philosophers (and everyone else) would be a lot wiser if they realized that much of what Hume writes about is still relevant today... &c. And, each of these messages has an implicit value system associated with it: vim users should value efficiency above all else; humans should value good leaders above all else, or money, or intellectual power, ... In other words, we lack a direction to go because we are being told to go in just about every direction. It's like telling someone, "Okay, you have the option to move one tenth of a degree to the right, or two tenths, or three tenths or ... or 359 and eight tenths, or 359 and nine tenths, or not at all. What do you want to do?" The number of choices is so large that even if you, say, want to turn left, you still have about 200 choices (about twenty degrees) that would lead you pretty well to your left, and choosing between them is completely arbitrary.
To put this claim another way, the problem isn't that nobody has told us to be extraordinary. The problem is the opposite. Lots of people give us lots of ways to stand out and not fall into the common traps of this or that (including life). But, the fact that those people are giving us that advice makes the advice no longer useful for trying to live an extraordinary life. If it's so simple, everyone can do it. And, to mangle an "Incredibles" line: if everyone is extraordinary, then no one is.
Aside: what makes Robin Williams' character's claim compelling (to me) is that he doesn't ever give us a path to extraordinariness. He (kind of) advises everyone to read poetry, but that's only because poets are so obsessed with extraordinariness that they help inspire the characters to be extraordinary. Really, in that movie, all Robin Williams' character or the poets ever do is act as inspiration, never as a guide, to extraordinariness. (And, that's why, Benjamin, I don't think that you need poetry to be extraordinary, Robert Frost or otherwise. You just need a source of inspiration.)
So, that leaves us in the following predicament: we can find advice about everything that we're supposed to find meaningful, but that makes those things no longer feel extraordinary. So, the only ways to be extraordinary are a) to pursue something that we're told is meaningless or b) to ignore/surpass the advice that we're given. Most people, I think, choose a third option: c) to push aside the desire for extraordinariness and to pursue other goals. That option makes a lot of sense because you can use all of the advice around you to fulfill your other goals and then perhaps start ignoring or surpassing that advice to become extraordinary later on (which, I assume, almost nobody does). It's also useful because, in the end, very little extraordinariness happens in isolation. Newton was a physics student at an exciting time, not just somebody sitting under an apple tree. If he ever had the goal of being extraordinary, he would have had to put it off until he learned more about physics. Larry Page and Sergey Brin were computer science students before they founded Google. They (probably) couldn't have been extraordinary without the Internet and without putting aside any goals they had for extraordinariness to first learn some stuff about computer science. But, the problem with (c) (of course) is that it puts off extraordinariness, perhaps indefinitely, which is not what you or I want, Benjamin (I think). It might be okay to do it for a while, but not for too long.
Of course, as you might have guessed, to do (a) or (b) requires:
1) money (to support you as you do something unconventional)
2) time to pursue those things (i.e., no other obligations)
AND
3) the gumption to follow paths that other people would call stupid (since you're ignoring conventional advice and meaning)
(... which are the three things, of which two are required for every adventure, in Benjamin's post.)
.. Of course, none of this is really helpful for becoming extraordinary... but, I guess my point is that, if I could give you some really great advice to help you to become extraordinary, it wouldn't make your life extraordinary after all, because anyone could follow it to become extraordinary, which is self-contradictory. The best that I can do is, like, Robin Williams' character, give you the inspiration to be extraordinary, and let you handle it from there. Of course, I have no idea how to do that either, but at least it's possible.
... though, honestly, I really think that you should study quantum physics. And, try to listen to more Mozart. And, you can't really feel extraordinary until you've piloted a hovercar.
(P.S. If you're curious about having an adventure, I found two useful places to look. Here and here.)