When people ask me why I don’t drink, I feel as if they’re looking for a story of tragedy. One where I ended up in a hospital or jail, a relationship being torn apart at the hands of alcohol. Upon reflection, this has already happened many times in my life. Some experiences have been at my hand, others I have witnessed. So, I tell them that drinking is too costly. That there is too much to be done to afford it.<\/p>\n
I went from reading Hindsight<\/em> to Unfinished Business<\/em>. The first was an academic view at retrospect and its place in our lives. The latter a number of stories about loose ends tied up by a successful man who turned fifty-five, lost his job, and realized that too many things had been put aside over the years.<\/p>\n While reading Hindsight<\/em> and thinking about Good, I was in a period where I was reevaluating the focus of my time. At some point I articulated to myself, or perhaps to someone else out loud, that I’ve long thought about what people would say about me at my death. As I thought more about this, I realized it was a vehicle for introspection regarding my own character, as if through a mirror.<\/p>\n Heartbreak of last year lead to a turning point in the fall of redefining goals. It is overwhelming to try to grasp time anymore. Ultimately, I think that is a sign of success. Hindsight got me thinking about this mirror. My notes have lead to this summary: Good is a direction you can go, not a place that you can be. Thus, I’ve begun to think more about this example of retrospect as a compass that one uses not to get somewhere in particular but to live.<\/p>\n I took today off work as I’m headed to San Jose tonight for the Velocity conference and I have a few important things to get done before I leave. I slept poorly and I woke this morning uneasy with heavy thoughts on my heart, and decided to read for a while first. From Unfinished Business<\/em>:<\/p>\n From reading his book, I knew that Tony liked to challenge his students at the start of each year by saying, “All of us are going to die — some sooner, some later. After you die, what would you like people to say about you? Your answer to that question,” he’d tell them, “should guide the way you live.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I’m reading two books that are coming to similar ends, but they are written in completely different formats. Granted, it is a interesting culmination to see these writings and my thoughts converge.<\/p>\n In closing, a quote of Lee Kravitz from Unfinished Business<\/em>: “As good as my life looked on paper, it was sorely lacking in the one area that puts flesh on meaning: human connectedness.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When people ask me why I don’t drink, I feel as if they’re looking for a story of tragedy. One where I ended up in a hospital or jail, a relationship being torn apart at the hands of alcohol. Upon reflection, this has already happened many times in my life. Some experiences have been at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.loftninjas.org\/rants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.loftninjas.org\/rants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.loftninjas.org\/rants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.loftninjas.org\/rants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.loftninjas.org\/rants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1218"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.loftninjas.org\/rants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1219,"href":"http:\/\/www.loftninjas.org\/rants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218\/revisions\/1219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.loftninjas.org\/rants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.loftninjas.org\/rants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.loftninjas.org\/rants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}