Let's Fight (our) Mediocrity, One Round at a Time!
All in Life
One of my LinkedIn contacts recently tagged one of his posts with “Daydreaming, after all, is just a form of planning.” When I saw this line, I knew it was the missing piece for this article that I have been pondering over for quite a while. As it turns out, I have without knowing prior to writing this article, practiced what NYU Professor of Psychology Gabriele Oettingen calls “Mental Contrasting for Goal-Fulfillment.”, a framework to tap into daydreams for motivation and more productivity.
In the eye of giant issues like a global pandemic, social injustice, institutional racism, or climate change, it is easy to feel powerless. It seems that our voices, even our votes do not matter. We are all just small potatoes.
And it is true; it is unlikely that any of us will cause a revolution or change the course of the world significantly. But it would be too easy and convenient to give up and accept everything around us as it is. In many ways, we are powerless and yet powerful.
Thanks to the still rampant COVID-19 / SARS-CoV-2 pandemic out there, Easter is just one of the many things in early 2020 that has been moved into the safety of your home, just like Marathon running, children’s education and office work. With the time spent at home massively increased, new things start to matter: for example indoor air quality. So, I decided to dedicate one Life-Sparring Round to indoor air quality and the setup we run in our crib, using the Kaiterra Laser Egg+ air quality sensors.
I suggest that instead of just pressing F5 on the Worldometer Coronavirus Live Update, you get your butt off the couch and get your blood pumping with a proper “prison-style” home workout. And afterward, do an online course, clean-up your clutter, call family and friends or practice a musical instrument. Just do something!
As I believe in the power of music, I thought I’d share my “Life-Sparring Fight Music” playlist with you. Two hours of tracks with the sole purpose to push you to your limit that has served me well over the past few years, every time I needed a bit of a kick in my behind.
I could follow the example of Liverpool Manager Jurgen Klopp and leave writing about Corona to the professionals, as I am apparently neither an epidemiologist nor data scientist; but, let's be real here, if I would only write about topics, I am an expert in, there would be no articles in this blog.
The whole idea of Life-Sparring is trying to live up to your potential as a pretty average person, with average talents at best. So here are the (preliminary) takeaways from the current COVID-19 pandemic, from an unqualified non-expert.
I am not a medical professional, and I am sure there are forms of pain that are so agonizing that they can only be held at bay with severe pain medication.
But I also believe that the human body can take a fair amount of pain and that there are ways how to manage our relationship with pain. Inviting pain for occasional sparring rounds might be one of them.
Haruki Murakami’s 2013 book “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage: A novel” drew mixed reviews. Some people loved it; other’s accused Murakami of relying too much on his proven plots and recipes.
I loved the book, so much that I read it in a single day.
But this article is not supposed to be another book review (if you like those, check out my “Food for Thought Posts”), it is a reflection based on an idea that was mentioned in passing in the book, but that I found quite profound. The idea of the “Three Places” that define our lives and our happiness.
Do you live the life of an “human oxygen molecule”, reacting to everything life throws at you? Or are you fully in control of your life?
