Wanzology

 ” It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor. Would you be mine? Could you be mine?”

How's it going? Wanz here…The Wanz, for another episode of WANZOLOGY and another chapter from the fabulous book Hashtag-THE-BOOK-OF-WANZ…all one word available at Amazon as we speak. So today, yeah today it's a matter of consequence and this chapter is called:

LIFE CHANGES US. WE HAVE TO ROLL WITH IT OR GET LEFT BY IT

It goes on to say, every experience is just that, an experience from stubbing your toe to getting married, having a child or getting into a car accident. Every action you make in life brings a reaction and therefore an experience. Experience is the best teacher, the old saying goes, and I have learned about paying attention to a lot of the smaller experiences, just as much as I do the big ones that smack me in the face. Some of these experiences that we go through are not fun. Some are downright painful. And some can even debilitate or kill us. It all depends. Time and life, therefore, only move forward. To sit and not attempt anything for whatever reason, fear of the outcome, physical handicap, or just plain fear of one's own abilities only leaves us alone to contemplate in a twisted pool of pity and self-doubt.

Doing nothing lets many experiences pass us by, as well as all the lessons that might come from the experience. Before you realize it, hours, days, sometimes weeks or months have passed, and you feel like you haven't gone anywhere or done anything. For some, the inactivity becomes a festering, bothersome itch that can't be scratched. A feeling like there are things that need to be done yet have no real path toward execution or accomplishment. These are the times when doing nothing is the best thing. These are the times when patience can and sometimes must be focused on.

It's very difficult to be patient sometimes, to ignore the feeling that life and others in it are passing you by. But your time will come. Time always reveals all, if we have the patience to wait for that next indicated right move. There's an old saying, uh, “Never make you move too soon.” You ever notice that sometimes you’re too early for something, and sometimes you're too late for something? And you miss, you know, either something tragic or something opportune. Yeah. Having a good sense of timing is kind of key, and lately, I've been discovering you should trust those feelings that you get, not the really big ones that say, “Hey, you gotta go, you gotta go, do it now! Do it now!” It's not a Schwarzenegger thing, “Do it now! Go to the chopper! Let's go! Hurry!” Nothing like that. That little, teeny voice that goes, “Uh, excuse me. Are you sure? Wait, I don't know. Maybe we should wait a little bit or maybe we should hurry up and get out of here.” You just never know. Right. But I'm a big proponent of paying attention. There are a lot of things that are happening around us all the time. And if we're paying attention, we stand a better chance of understanding when to do and when to not do. Know what I mean?

Turn the power switch off before unscrewing and sticking a screwdriver into a light socket. Simple, but not for some. Always look both ways before crossing a street. Difficult for many, and some of those get hit by a bus or a car or a bicyclist or a scooter or whatever. Right? Part of being self-aware is also being aware of one's surroundings at any given time. I've been trying to meditate lately, and what's really interesting is when it gets started. And after I closed my eyes and I've taken a few deep breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth, I am asked to connect with and try to feel what it feels like to have my feet on the ground, and what the top of my feet feel like. And then where I'm connected to the chair, and then that feeling rising up my torso and how my arms are hanging. All these little awareness things. And once I get to the top of my head, then it's what's going on around you? Now, with your eyes closed, depending on where you are, nothing's going on. Unless you're paying attention. Cause if you are, there may be tiny little noises, maybe something coming from a downstairs neighbor or something happening out on the street, outside your place, or someone walking down a hall, I mean, there's always something going on in this world. Always. The question is, can you, will you, or do you pay attention? It's hard. It's, it's just simply not very easy to be that diligent about what's going on all the time. I get that, I get that. But the whole, the whole purpose is not to be perfect at it, right? The whole purpose is to do it the best way you can and ascertain what the results are of doing it the best way you can.

Remember, this is an inside job. Right? Understanding what's going on around you so that you understand when to move and when to stay or whatever. You ever been to a hotel that has, uh, the revolving doors that aren't automatic and you have to wait for it to come around before you step in and push the bar and then the whole thing as you walk, you're all of a sudden able to walk into the lobby. Now picture that being the way that life is, and here's a great example, you're at the grocery store, and you're halfway through your shopping, you're looking at your list, and you're looking into your cart to see how much room you've got as you come to the end of an aisle. And as you come to the end of the aisle, before you know it, there's another person and you hit them with the cart. Now would that have happened if you would have stopped while you were looking at your list or in your cart? Probably not. Now, transplant that to, you’re in public transportation. Train, car, whatever, someone's walking down the aisle. You see him coming, but your foot is kind of in the aisle way. And before you can move it, they step on your foot. Now is that their fault? Or is it yours? If you would have been more aware, you could have moved your foot. Has really nothing to do with them. But then again, it's also a matter of chance. They could have totally missed your foot in the first place. See, this is what I mean by complicated. There is no one way, it's very, very, very objective. It might be, it might not be. Something is going to happen, but it might not be dangerous, it might not be advantageous. You don't know. So how do you do this? What do you do? How do you prepare? I don't know. I know for me, what I, what I try to do is I just try to pay attention.

Having grown up watching way, way, way too many television shows, cop dramas and detectives and whatnot, figuring out what's going to happen just became a way of life. It just takes longer than an hour to solve. The bad guy doesn't always get it in the end. And you don't understand who done it in the last 10 minutes of the program. Hopefully your life is a lot farther than 10 minutes from ending. But in case it's not, you have an idea of what's going to happen, hmm?

In an earlier episode, I challenged the logic of Yoda. Remember that? Yoda in Empire Strikes Back says, “Do or do not, there is no try.”, and I respectfully submit that that is incorrect, because to ‘do’ or ‘do not’ is the result of a try. So you have to try in order to find out whether you to ‘do’ or ‘do not’. Don't believe me? See that cup on your desk? ‘Will’ it over into your mouth? You tried it and it didn't work. Make the raindrops not fall on you. Yeah, that didn't work either. So, this isn't a hard one to figure out. It's the after part. Like it says, LIFE CHANGES US. WE HAVE TO ROLL WITH IT OR GET LEFT BY IT.

Something is going to happen to us all. What is it? Don't know. That's why we gotta pay attention. So, we can figure out when to move, where to move, or not. Why to move, or not. It's those pesky actions. Life is a verb, right? And after you do something, there's gonna be a result, a consequence of your action.

The things that go on inside of your head, yeah, I don't wanna, I don't wanna see that. Nobody wants to see the inside of my head. It's scary as heck. Still, how do you deal with the consequence? How do you deal with the consequence of leaving your place to go to work and not taking a jacket with you and it rains later that day? How do you deal with the consequence, somebody ran a stop sign and is heading right towards your car? How do you deal with the person who bumps into you while you're waiting to get into an elevator and doesn't say “excuse me”? Or my personal favorite, you hold the door open for someone and they walk through it, and they don't say a word? I still say, “you're welcome”, because I did something. And I want somebody else to acknowledge that it benefited them. But if I don't stand up for myself, it's like being walked on, it's like being bullied. Sometimes people need to be reminded that they're not alone, and what they do impacts other people. That's why I do that. “You're welcome!” Some of the looks I get are kind of funny. That's a whole nother topic. Anyway, the results of your actions will be obvious. Most times, the results will be obvious. If you're paying attention and doing what you're supposed to be doing, and you have a lot of information, and you make a decision, and then you act on that decision, the odds are pretty good your result is going to be a positive one. But if it's not, what next?

I have the idea for this equation, life is 75 percent paying attention, 20 percent making a decision, and 5 percent acting on that decision. And then the whole thing tips upside down. Now that you've acted, you think about what you did, and then you have to evaluate what happened. What was the outcome of that action? And then it starts again. Every time you make a choice, every time you make a choice. Like taking a sip of whatever beverage you're drinking, or looking at whomever is around you, or all these are all these tiny little choices. There's a billion of them. I mean, if you paid attention just in five minutes and counted all the decisions that you make, up, down, left, right, no, yes…it's amazing. This is why I always say choice. It's a human superpower, but you have to be aware of what's going on. in order to get the information to make a choice that has a positive outcome. And I said it before, we’re not perfect. That's not the idea. Being perfect is boring.

Remember grade school, you didn't always get it ‘right’. So, you learned what ‘right’ was, and next time you had a better chance of getting it correct. How did that feel? Remember? I do. Felt good. It always felt good to get the right answer. Sometimes it did not feel very good at all to get the not right answer. So, if you get the not right answer, then what? Well, you can just, like, ignore it. Or, you can learn from it. My experience has been, life is pretty cyclical. That old phrase what comes around goes around if you're paying attention You're already smiling because you already know it’s like there's a lot of familiar situations that the longer you live, the more often you see them, if you're paying attention saying, “excuse me” or “thank you”, when someone opens the door for you, those are simple ones. You can be left wondering, why the hell did ‘this’ happen? Why the hell did ‘that’ happen? And if you ignore it, what are the odds you're actually going to see it the next time it happens? This is what is meant by, YOU CAN EITHER GET LEFT BEHIND OR ROLL WITH IT. “Rolling with it” means, “you know, that happened and, oh well, and you go on to the next.” But that doesn't mean you forgot how you got to where you are. It could mean that you paid attention and you'll be ready for the next time and make a different choice. And end up with a more positive result, or a more negative result, or the middle, whatever that is. The point is, this all involves paying attention.

The things that happen to us can, and sometimes do, change us. “I'm never gonna date someone like that ever again!”, “I'm never gonna eat broccoli ever again!” “I hate beets!” Well, those all have reasons, right? “I'm never going to that particular venue for a concert!”, “I'm never gonna buy anything by that person who made that song!”, “I am not talking to that person because they're going out with…”, fill in the blank. See what I mean? And like grass grows. But you ever notice when you try to see grass growing?
You never do. You only see it after it's grown. We are the same way. Humans are exactly the same way. Sometimes it's really easy to miss changes and all of a sudden you look back and go, “God, I remember when I used to do that and screwed it up and I don't screw that up anymore!”, or, “everything used to be so easy and now it's really difficult because I seem to be messing up.”

Change, bound to happen. My pops used to say, “Change is the only thing you can count on.” You just never know what's going to happen. Do you? None of us do. And that's exciting. For some, it's totally exciting.

That's all we're going to do today. Going to have another chapter ready for you next week. I hope you're digging on this because, you know, I'm reevaluating perspectives and life, how you go through it depends on how you look at it. It's different for everyone. To me, that's fascinating. You know, the way I do things may not work for you, and vice versa, or anyone else you come into contact with, same thing.

Okay, be nice out there, okay? I'm pretty sure that more times than not, if you're nice to someone, they'll be nice to you back. That'd be a great experiment. Be nice to ten people and, are ten people nice to you? Or are all ten not nice to you? What's the percentage? Remember, we're hitting for average, okay? We're not swinging for the fences every time. Because we're human and we're not perfect.

Thanks for tuning in. I will see you next time on WANZOLOGY!

Later!