One of my favorite thoughts to come back to regularly is David Foster Wallace’s talk “This Is Water!” If you’ve never heard it, the video on YouTube is worth the ten minutes! It basically outlines a need to be conscious of your default thoughts because they can become invisible like water. They surround and permeate our lives in ways that we tend to not even notice. We run on a form of autopilot through situations. Seeing the world much like we did yesterday and the day before that. Problems arise when the water or picture no longer serves. In an effort to not throw out the proverbial baby (or fish) with the bath water, the picture metaphor works much better in this case. We can have a picture for different portions of our lives that can independently be reworked.
As a kid, one of the most pervasive toys that all kids seemed to have was the Etch A Sketch. It was a drawing toy that you used knobs to draw on a “screen” and shaking it would give a new surface to draw on. Perhaps it is time to shake the Etch A Sketch on different picture models that you have for your life. Seeing yourself, a situation or your life differently can be complicated and difficult. Some of the pictures we have of who we are can be decades old. Yet, it may be necessary to shake those longstanding ones up. Our beliefs about who we are and what we are capable of shape our thoughts and actions. The things that we will or will not consider are based largely upon these models. So take a look and decide if you need a shake up!
It’s far easier for me to say than for anyone to do! BELIEVE ME I KNOW! Some of the pictures that I have in my head seem like they are etched in stone, not a child’s toy. Even if they are, it is incumbent on me to fix it, redraw it and yes shake it up! (Not off, that’s Taylor Swift). So despite the discomfort and difficulty, take a look at your pictures of the world and decide if they work or not. Maybe you’ve actually had some of them since your Etch A Sketch days.
Give ‘Em a shake!
Pete
It was many years ago but I’ve still not encountered a better example. I was the field marshal at a youth tournament in Pennsylvania. The players were under twelve years old and engaged in a very back and forth game. One team was extremely adept at the offside trap. Late in the game, there was a corner kick. The cross was cleared out of the penalty box and the defense pushed up. The ball fell to the foot of a offensive player about 30 yards from goal. He shot. The ball rocketed toward the goal and hit the post. The rebound fell to a forward who was slow getting back onside and he scored. The referee instantly called offside and awarded a free kick to the defense. The coach of the team that had the goal disallowed went ballistic. He screamed about how “ridiculous” the call was and asked about the referees sight, etc. As the field marshal I felt that it was my job to diffuse the situation in order to avoid it interfering with the game. I said, “Coach, if you’d like, I can explain to you why that was the right call.” He responded, “I know it was the right call! I’m just blowing off some steam.”
During my sophomore year of college, my two younger brothers were in high school together. One was a senior and the other was a freshman. At one point during the school year, there were “Drug sniffing” dogs brought in to do a search of the school. Students stayed in their classes while the school was swept. If your locker was tagged, you were supposed to report to the office in order to have your locker searched. My freshman brother’s locker had a tag on it. Completely panicked, he went and found his senior brother. One question from the senior brother, “Do you have any drugs in your locker?” The response was “no”. The senior brother went straight to the office and reported that his locker had been tagged. He brought the officials to the locker for it to be searched. The school officials questioned whether this was really his locker or not because it was in a freshman hallway. My brother was adamant! This is my locker! Upon being opened and searched, the locker did not contain any drugs. There was however a half eaten box of crackers at the bottom which the dog must have smelled. I wasn’t there and no one has discussed that incident for years but I still get choked up when thinking about it.
This line is from the quite ridiculous but still entertaining Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. And it was co-opted by the band The Get Up Kids as a song title in the 90’s. The song outlines one perspective of a short term love affair where the singer refuses to give the relationship a chance. In his own words, “because I’m afraid to try.” It’s an old story that probably precedes Danny Zuko in Grease. Boy meets girl. Boy likes girls. Boy wants to leave while things are still fun and casual because a relationship is just too much work.
The 90s had many memorable events and people. Kurt Cobain, the OJ Simpson trial, Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton were all extremely noteworthy. Both for their own unique reasons and the media circus that followed them. It was not just that something happened but that it was perpetuated daily for probably longer than needed. One of the most ridiculous stories of the decade was the ice skating scandal involving rivals Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding. For those too young to remember, the major event was an attack on Kerrigan’s knee orchestrated at least partially by Harding’s ex-husband. There was a movie released last year called “I, Tonya” that chronicles the entire episode.
So I implore you. Yep! I’m talking directly to you because as I said last week, 
They are everywhere at the moment. With the explosion of the Marvel movies, Silicon Valley startups and overnight superstars plucked from the internet; origin stories are all around us. All of them, to a certain extent, are made up. The comic book authors crafted those of the super heroes. The others that exist in the real world cannot tell the story of every little thing that happened. So they have to delete and adjust to a narrative that aligns with how they want to be seen by the outside world or by themselves. Since all origin stories are created in one fashion or another, it may be helpful for your daily life to fashion your own. Not pluck it out of thin air but rather weave some real events of your life in with a narrative that propels you forward.
Huryk Unlimited 