The
Opposite of Love is Fear. For
a long time I bought into the whole love/hate angle, but it never quite rang
true. The “different sides of the same
coin” theory made more sense to me. So
if not hate then what? Why fear? Check
this out. Fear is a totally
self-centered emotion, concerned only about the safety or inferred safety of
the fearful entity. It is about short
term, self-survival and is one of our hard-wired emotions. Love on the other hand is completely outward
centered. (Note we are talking about
Love not Lust) It is all about the
safety and welfare of those around us.
It can be local, global, personal or social, but it is always about
someone else. Love is also a learned
emotion; we aren’t born with it.
Somewhere along the line we have to learn to care for others and then
make a choice to do so. Fear and Love
are complete opposites.
Aging
is all about accumulation;
money, debt, memories,
regrets, pounds, wounds, friends, enemies, etc. A natural consequence of going through life is that we acquire
things and then carry them around with us.
Anyone can attest that carry something makes walking around much harder
than not carrying something and the heavier or more awkward it is the harder it
makes life. It drains your energy,
vigor -- life. It makes you feel
old. The less you carry around, the
lighter, more energetic, younger you feel.
This works whether your stuff is physical, mental, spiritual or
emotional. When it gets into the
non-physical realm there may be something to “positive” things adding energy
rather than taking it, but that’s just talk at the moment. The trick is to go through your belongings
and make sure about what you are carrying around with you.
Other
people’s code is
crap, and anything you wrote more than 6 months ago is someone else’s code.
The
Complexity Threshold –
everyone has one. It specifies how complex a solution or plan
has to be in order for someone to even attempt to believe it. If a solution or plan is not complex enough
to meet someone’s threshold they will dismiss it, with no real reason why. “It doesn’t feel right,” “That can’t
work,” “I don’t know why, I just don’t
like it,” are all indicator responses. The “NASA designing a pen to write in
space while Russians just used pencils” story is a classic example. Once you start noticing you’ll see it all
around you and in your own behavior. It
is especially prevalent in the technical and management arenas. You can try experiments. If someone immediately or vaguely dismisses
an idea that does address some issue, try adding some extra bells and whistles
and pitch it again. This often butts up
against people not explaining their expectations/requirements well enough, but
it is still fun to try. And you can
monitor yourself and through diligence and practice change your threshold. This dovetails into the “Simplicity is hard”
topic.
Computers
and Paper -- Before computers we used paper, with
computers we generate paper.