gochess

Elvis Costello had a very catchy song where the hook was, “Everyday, everyday, everyday I write the book.” The first few chapters were about falling in love . . . and so one skims along and wonders about the final chapters in the book.

A surgeon named Sherwin Nuland wrote an amazing book entitled HOW WE DIE: “Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter.” It is written with such clinical exactitude, and yet it is so philosophical and poetic – - while telling a compelling story about death, about how we are likely to die.

Society understandably represses the presence of Death (instead, seeks refuge in all-out consumerism), and this avoidance has negative psychological consequences.

Buddha, on the other hand, leveraged our inescapable bondage to death in a constructive effort to purge unwholesome ways of living, in favor of wholesome alternatives with socially ethical implications.

Coming to terms with the inevitable final chapters gives a sense of urgency to what we will “write” everyday in our book. * There is no luxury for a draft in progress. Clarity of plot is essential. We as writers are truly under a dead-line . . . *

If you accused me of being a fanatic about Time or Project Management, I just might admit to that, provided there were no penalties. But unfortunately, under some circumstances, there are severe penalties. Being efficient for the mere sake of efficiency can be detrimental, and could paradoxically be diagnosed as a form of procrastination.

I have subscribed to many methodologies (and acronyms: e.g. PERT; GTD, being the latest), and have seen advocates take refuge in refining their meticulous methods to indeed escape what really needs to be done. Steve Pavlina made a very interesting observation:

“Time management systems are seductive. They lure you in with the promise of greater productivity, more free time, faster income generation, and higher self-esteem. And some of those benefits may indeed be realized. However, another possibility is that your system becomes a distraction that prevents you from achieving real gains. You find yourself investing more and more time in meta-activities like getting organized, prioritizing objectives, and learning the latest productivity software. Actually doing the tasks that your system is designed to manage becomes almost an afterthought . . . perhaps even an annoyance. Instead of helping you increase productivity, your system becomes a means to disguise low productivity. This is a common problem for people who haven’t yet identified a purpose for their lives. The system provides the illusion of productivity [ . . . ] How do you know you won’t look back on your current goals a decade from now and conclude that you were on the wrong path all along? What a waste of time and of life to put so much effort into achieving goals that ultimately won’t even matter.”

So what does this mean? It’s a wake-up call. Our goal of “be more efficient when working” needs to be re-examined, with the emphasis on the purpose of the work behind the “working.” In brief, we should be more concerned about “doing the right thing than doing things right.” [ibid.]

Priority and urgency levels should not be confused with degrees of purpose in life. To test the meaningfulness of any given purpose, I ask myself how much of my love is involved. The acid test of theory perhaps boils down to: am I doing what I love? and loving what I am doing? Once the love is there, then I believe efficiency becomes a mere by-product of my complete absorption into the (Csikszentmihalyi) “Flow.”

Sometimes there is a tremendous gulf between the meaning of a word and the quality it is supposed to represent. A simple example is color: “blue.” How is the particular shade of the ocean (which one? at what time of day?) ever representable by language?

A monk once wrote about some of his teachers along his path: « On peut reconnaître la perfection humaine et spirituelle quand on la voit, mais ce n’est guère lui rendre justice que de la limiter aux mots qui viennent ordinairement à l’esprit : sagesse, connaissance, bonté, noblesse, simplicité, rigueur, honnêteté . . . »

One can perhaps recognize human and spiritual perfection when one sees it, however, ordinary words by its limitations fail to do justice in its characterizations. If you did not comprehend some of those French words, that’s good because it would be a good exercise to look them up in a dictionary, « sagesse, connaissance, bonté, noblesse, simplicité, rigueur, honnêteté », like a child learning in school.

There is vast distance between definitions and the ineffable qualities of a person. One might then ask how one becomes characterized as “X.” This quality “X” is not a permanent label affixed to us at birth. What actions need to be demonstrated to qualify as having this quality “X”?

I wondered why I was so moved by that monk’s utterance. They are the very qualities which I hope would describe myself. But yet the words themselves are so inadequate, and I feel I must break through language, and reach the other shore . . .