Reaping what you sow?

When you make the mature decision to switch to judging actions rather than words, you will find that the two do not always tally, people will say they are cynical and living for the moment, and yet these same people will act in the most optimistic way possible by investing in the future. Whilst at the same time others who worship at the shrine of hedonism, they say they are affirming life and yet pay no attention to any future consequences of their actions or who they hurt as if the world was ending tomorrow. Anyone who abandons their future self is giving up on hope and joy for a better tomorrow, and are instead feeding their desires and escapism fantasies of something better being delivered to them by fate who is kind of unreliable at best.

Now whether you believe in the god of fate or not does not really matter, as that goddess expects a glorious welcome, she goes to where the party is, she does not send out invitation card, she only grows in fertile ground and it is up to you to do the digging. It is your responsibility to build your future and the goddess only blesses those who have put in the work of becoming someone worthy of the kindness of fate. We are the ones who are responsible for being ready to make the most of the gifts that are given to us, to be able to both take advantage of opportunities and recognise them in the first place.

Every lucky person has put in the work, luck does not do all the work it gives you a chance and you have to know when to go all in and when to edge your bets. There is a time and a place for all strategies, when you are young, you can take bigger chances, ones that take time to recover from, when you are older, security and insuring against disaster becomes more important, and that is just one dimension that effects what risks you are willing and able to take. It is useful to know about the sunk cost fallacy, that people get invested and blinded to the fact that they are pouring good money after bad, and that previous investment should not alter your current decision, this happens in relationship as well, you might have been friend for years but that does not mean things can not change, that they will always be good for you.

As we do not wish to repeat the mistakes of others, it is important to know that we live in a world of incomplete information, and most of that information that we do have will probably turn out to be false or not quite true, theories are altered, new information comes up. We can only act on what we know in this moment, but to act in certainty is probably wrong, a decision might turn out to be right or wrong, that does not make it the correct decision or not, it just turns out alright and then sometimes they do not, it might not be a fault in your logic, just bad luck or you did not know everything, that is what incomplete information means, and that is why everything carries a risk, that is the nature of the world, things beyond our understanding or expectations happen, every day and year.

That is what makes life so difficult, tactics and knowledge only takes you so far as they are always incomplete, the lack of certainty is what makes life interesting, exciting and terrifying, it is the essence of unknowing, being able to live with that lack of knowing, not as a fault but as a deliberate part of the nature of reality. It is intrinsic to the process of life, time and space, to have an effect there has to be a range of cause and vice versa, only in mathematics do we have the certainty that one plus one equals two and that is probably only due to the limitations of our understanding and dimensional reality, there might well be an universe where it is not true and they would laugh at our feeble perspectives.

However that does not mean we should roll a dice and obey pure randomness, that is giving up on your personal agency, that is saying you do not matter which would be to deny the happening that is you. You are real, the ego is real, it might not be you in the sense of the witnessing presence but the world is happening whether you want it to or not, effects and cause is in operation, the body and mind is linked, sensations, feeling and everything that you are or perceive is real though everything does rise and pass, it is just that it not you are having a subjective experience, rather it is your objective experience that gets caught up in the ego that is having a subjective one. It is such a powerful experience that it sucks you into to believing that it is the only story that matters. Whereas the objective one is the one that matters and is real, it is the you that is actually experiencing things, that is seeing that cause and effect, the mind ego only responses it does not direct and appreciates the play that is life.

In such a case, why not write an epic story, the mind is powerful enough to change your perceptions of the world, it is what it is there for, to perceive the world, and that perception changes through your life. The child does not have a sense of self, it relies on the external world to provide them with it, we take the world on one step at a time, literally, we learn to walk and talk separately, one after the other, everyone is else a walker or talker when they are young, they are both massive tasks, requiring the whole of our attention, it takes time and no one really knows why the drive to take on these task are inherent. It would be the strangest of child (or a traumatised one) who chooses not to do so, who refuses to learn and it is not even really learning, it is the pure kind of curiosity that can not be learnt but it can and does get taught out of us.

Can you imagine the joy that would occurs if we could still learn like an infant instead of requiring concentration and will power, to be able to explore something out of pure joy and the curiosity of finding out what happens if I do X. That cold mathematics value hides it's infinite nature and is a reflection of the nature of the person who is deciding what X could be, that is a choice for you, to find your X and keep on finding it, find the one that makes you grow today, the one that your future self will be grateful to you for doing now, like you are grateful today for that small child who learnt to read so that you could learn today. Sow the seeds of your future so that you can reap bumper harvest in the fall, and the great news is that today is always spring, so get planting my little farmers and reap what you sow.