Mikes Thoughts

Taking my life out for a spin

Yesterday was kind of a strange day for me. Did things I enjoy like eating a breakfast downtown. A Mexican omelette. A few coffees. It’s the start of the water festival here in town. When the rainy season supposedly stops and the boat races begin. We don’t do those things. My wife seems content to sit here and do what she does. I’ve felt at times something is missing with this whole thing. Like we re-invented our lives moving but pieces are left out. We have not gone anywhere out of Cambodia and finally perhaps in December we will. I desperately need to go to Vietnam. I’ve tried months but she will never just go to Saigon and I don’t understand it. It’s not some favored spot of mine but it’s an easy trip. So instead we have done these trips here in the country. I love Cambodia but I am not good staying in one place. There’s sometimes a restless stirring in me to move with no purpose. No central meaning.

What I’ve realized is I need to have vagueness, no reasons, just doing. Perhaps it’s spontaneity. I think instead freedom is it. The desire to not have a thing which holds us back when we want to take life out for a spin.

Having no direction is a direction

I used to count my steps walking or I used an app that measured my route using GPS or distance. I loved that on Friday I walked farther and then took Saturday off after an evening of beer and often pizza and no work. It was like this little deviation from often 16 to 18 hour workdays. It has dawned on me more recently that the counting and measuring was not so different than what I did at work though. We all seem obsessed with ensuring we get this number of things done, that far, so many minutes or hours of meditation or yoga. Why? Yeah why.

I think because our entire lives are built on measurement and goals. We pride ourselves on ensuring we meet the step counts or the life goals. So here’s the question:

what happens when there is no measurement and goals?

Does life just fall apart and become meaningless? Well no. I would argue it becomes more and better because we are able to lose ourselves in the practice instead of having it be dominated by our insatiable need to measure and control. I dropped all the things years ago and what happened? Well, I started enjoying the things themselves more and not finishing them. They became practices [1] to me.

I carried them forward like today I will. Someone could well ask if I finished a thing. I finish things like cups of coffee and sentences. I finished a life ago I feel sometimes when I lived in this haze of California freeways and overwork and personal disaster. Why would I want all the indicators around? Like I wrote before, life has simplified down. So I will take that out for a spin.

the spin of life

How sometimes we all seem to spin around like little tops on strings. When we then stop our little strings are all displaced and we wind ourselves tighter so we can reach farther. Yet we still spin in circles and the string dominates but gives. Like I asked in Retirement life, when do we stop and start a new thing? Some of us never. Our strings are intact and we periodically lament the limits but let’s face it. They are all self imposing. We choose what to be limited by and what we do when.

My take is by the time we retire we should be wondering not how we spin to another limit but to cut away limits. Find out that we have what this person Mike called “the final acts”. Should they not be free and let us get on with the business of not bean counting, limiting our spins to less than our horizons.

These things are not the spin of life. They are limits. We impose them with how we bean count. Our steps. Their meaning (or not). I’ll take you along for coffee next. Hope you enjoy the trip.

my coffee this morning and its thoughts

I left and turned right. Well not right away. Truth is I never really know what coffee place I wish for. There are plenty around where we live. Today I chose Star Coffee. It is the start of a walk I enjoy. Down highway 6 to a nondescript street. Past older buildings with few people. Some Khmer say hello. Kids wave. I did not walk really yesterday so I feel this need to just go today. Truth is I never do well without it. Feelings and rogue thoughts swirl.

Now I can sit with music I know. Star Coffee serves a variety. Including me. Its WiFi is known to my iPhone. A clear indicator I have been before and desired to use the service. I could do without. I have lots and lots of 4g service left behind with a little over a week until it renews.

I will also renew today. Won’t count. Won’t measure. Won’t care. Let’s get on with it. Shall we?

  1. the whole idea of practice is to do a thing for its sake alone. For the joy of the doing. Not the achieving. We spend way too much of our lives senselessly believing metrics. We lose the practice in our lives. The doing of a thing do its sake. The reward is not 10k steps done or a timer bell chiming. It’s your life answering to a beat far beyond doing for results. ↩︎