The Life and Times of Paul Geromini

Marcus Aurelius
is always good for some thoughtful quotations. I think this one is particularly
important:

“You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you
will find strength.”

Victor Frankl also
has something to say:

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to
change ourselves.”

Popular quotes to be sure. I make no claim of originality in regards to
them. I only want you to consider their meaning. Even separated by near to 1800
years they manage to express remarkably similar notions. What are they two
writers saying? First consider some brief history. Marcus Aurelius was a Roman
Emperor he ruled for almost 20 years. He oversaw numerous military campaign and
dealt with all manners of politics, legal disputes, and the administration of
running an empire. Victor Frankl was a neurologist, psychiatrist, and most
famously a holocaust survivor. What do these two have in common, aside from
being male?

They both experienced situations and events that they could not control.
That is not unique to them alone though. That is the situation we all find
ourselves in. Their experience however with lives so far out of their control
gave them great insight. Yes, it is true, we who live lives where everything
seems controllable also know this. We know, despite all our skill and power, we
can be found powerless. But we must internalize that lesson, make it part of
ourselves as Aurelius and Frankl have.

A personal example of how I have failed to learn their lesson. I am
controlling and by extension obsessed with the idea of staticity. The idea that
if I just work hard enough, try hard enough, act smart enough I can keep things
the same. That I can keep doing the same things, having the same friends, going
to the same places, experiencing the same moments. It is a tempting dream. Who
wants to give up what they have at my age. I have money and I have friends, I
have youth and I have time. Best of all though, I have the illusion that all
these things are mine to control. That applying the proper forces, using the
resources at my disposal I can have everything I want. And the absolute worst
part about this, the most depraved conclusion, is that so far this has been
mostly true. The exceptions though, the outliers, the systems and events that
resist my control are nothing short of rage inducing. You can see the flaw
here, childish in its simplicity, that this fantasy cannot be maintained and
the more I try to do so the worse it gets. I cannot control everything. The
more I realize this the more frustrated I become at the notion.

For me I have to learn what these two philosophers have to say. It is the
only chance I have left at sanity. I bet you do too. I wager you worry about
about something beyond your control. Health of friend? Politics? Sports? Stop
deluding yourself into thinking you can control everything. You can control one
thing: yourself. You can only influence everything else. Remember this the next
time you become agitated or upset. Most likely what has happened is beyond your
control. It is not your fault you only have control over yourself.

Let us close with Aurelius again:

“Is it not better to use what is in thy power like a free man than to desire
in a slavish and abject way what is not in thy power?”

Every night I go to bed happy to die. And every new day I wake up happy to
live one more. If you do not have that feeling something needs to change.

Let us break down these two points.

1. Happy to die

Near to oxymoronic, this should be the state you achieve every day. The
objective of your day should be to justify, to yourself, your continued
existence. Any day failing to accomplish this is a wasted day. Do not construe
this command to mean that you must always be engaging in activities others have
deemed worthwhile. Act as you see fit, as you are the only judge that matters.
For example, I have spent many a day playing video games and watching tv. I
could be learning some new technology or building something, but I did not feel
like it that day. Other people might consider this a wasted day. Their opinion
is irrelevant. I enjoyed that day; I thought that day was great. The point here
is everyday should end with you being satisfied. Satisfied you set out to do
something and accomplished it, satisfied that you enjoyed the day. Only the
satisfied can ever be comfortable with death. This is not to say that you want
to die. It is to say that if you do die, if today was your last day, that you
go to your demise happy with all that you have done. A personal example of
this: I am 23. I have lived a long life. Not by human standards, but by the
standards of other animals. Consider an ant or a fly or a house cat. We must
seem impossibly old to them. In the case of the insects whole generations are
birthed and died before we could speak. Their lives flicker in and out
unnoticed. I have seen a great many things, felt passion and fear, cried and
laughed. I have spent many a day being enriched by my friends. I have built
things, changed and altered the environment. I have lived a full life. Shorter
than some, but no less rich in my estimation. Have I done and seen anything,
no. Do I want to keep living, yes. Would I be sad to die, no.

2. Happy to live one more

The new day is a gift you give to yourself. It is the blank page, the block
of clay, the empty canvas. You do not have to fill it, that is not the point.
The mere fact that you have a chance to. Have an opportunity to create
something, be it your work, your passion, or something else. This is the
happiness of waking up. When you sleep you die. When you wake you are reborn.
This day may be your last, but at least you have something. One more chance to
live. Too often we think in terms of months or years. We allow the days to
slide on inexorably in the hope of a better future. You can make that better
future today, right now, the moment you wake up. You need only recognize the
potential of a new day.

Not all days are like this. I have had far too many where I went to bed
depressed having wasted the day. Plenty of times where I woke up and was
immediately crushed by stress and wanted nothing more to lay down and rot. But
if we let our worst moments define ourselves we could never accomplish great
things.

A quick parable today. Imagine a fire pit at night. Close to the fire it is
hot, smoky even. You get a limited view, but it is great if you like it
scalding hot. Back up a bit and you are in the sweet spot, a foot or two away.
Warm and comfortable with an excellent view of the flames licking the logs. Go
out a few more feet from there and it gets precipitously colder and darker.
This is the edge of the fire. Close enough to occasionally get some benefit of
the burning wood, but never enough to be satisfied. Beyond is darkness. You can
see the fire, but the warm feeling is lost.

The fire pit is analogous to the stages of life. Being close to the fire is
like childhood. Intense and emotional. It is easy to get hurt, and hard to see
with all the smoke, but exhilarating to be so close to something so energetic.
The sweet spot is young adolescence (teenager). A little more wisdom has taught
you to sit back a bit to get the whole view allowing you to enjoy the fire from
a distance. Then again the fire is not really why you are there, it is the
other people around the fire that brought you to the pit. The edge of the fire
is the intermediary stage from adolescence to adulthood. You can still see and
feel the fire, but the feeling is different, more distant. It is not so much
that the fire is less interesting from here, but you have new goals. You could
return to the fire, what you know, or you could venture out beyond the fire
into the darkness. The darkness is adulthood because you can never quite see
far enough to tell where you are going. Yet you still ventured out, there must
be something worth looking for in the dark.

What I am (poorly) getting at here is when all you ever know is one thing or
one lifestyle (in my parable, sitting around the fire) it can be very difficult
to move beyond that comfort zone (the darkness around the fire). This is the
area just on the edge of the fire where you have to make a conscious choice to
leave the fire pit. This choice does not have subjectively better options.
Plenty of people stick with what they know and live fine adult lives. Plenty of
other people commit fully and venture out into the night. You can even live in
the middle ground (with me!) and skirt around the edges enjoying the old and
the new. This parable does not exist to make you unsatisfied with your choice,
but to inform you that you have made one. More than that, that you actively
continue to make a choice on how to lead your life.

You will lose everything you love. Your parents, extended family, and
siblings will all die. Your friends and significant others will die. The house
you live in will decay, the art you make will fade, the words you write will be
lost, the pictures and film you record will go missing. Everything you know
will become unknown and everything you hold dear will be destroyed. Given a
long enough time span all will be
lost.

This is not something to fret or worry about though. This is something to be
celebrated! The knowledge of eventual demise is a gift because it gives meaning
to everything in life. Consider a personal example. A few Connecticons ago (the long distant memory that is
2012) I was standing outside watching everyone mill about. It was late (around
1AM) on a Saturday and the Convention hall had closed up, but no one wanted to
leave quite yet. There was a group of people near the doorway dancing to some
techno beats. I was standing with a couple friends idly chatting. People would
come by, take pictures of my friend’s cosplay. Others would walk by resplendent
in their various costumes just meandering around. It was a hot day, but the
night was pleasant enough, not chill enough to need a jacket, but cool enough
to be comfortable. Want to see what this looked like? Here is a picture I took
that night on my phone ‘s terrible camera.

What makes this moment important? Its uniqueness. All these different people
and disparate groups had come together to create this one particular moment in
time. Conventions like this happen all the time, but never with this exact mix
of people, with these exact conditions. This moment in time is unique and of
value because it can never be replicated. Each person in this photo made a
choice to spend a finite resource (time) on this event. They might have done
this only thinking of themselves, but they gave me that gift of their time. For
a fleeting wonderful movement they let me enjoy their company. It was only one
moment, but it was enough. You remember the bible story about
the lady who gave two pennies? That is the same thing that is at play here.
If you have an infinite amount of something then giving it to others has little
meaning because you never suffer a loss. The meaning is in the loss. The
willingness in people to spend some resource of limited quantity for the
benefit of others. Only things which are finite can have value.

Everyone in this photo will die. These buildings will become rubble, Given
enough time even the planet this photo was taken on will be destroyed. But that
is ok, I am fine with that, because I got to experience this one moment. I know
that all this destruction will come to pass and I chose to spend the finite
amount time of time I have to experience something. It is this experience that
occurs everyday. The time you spend with friends, or the time you spend
creatively. You know these moments are limited, you know all your work is
futile, but you do it anyway, not to fool yourself into thinking it can never
end, but because it will end, it must end.

You can only ever love something that ends.