KKVA

We live in an age of extremes.
At least, perceived extremes.
Magnified excitement.
In large part we can ‘thank’ the media we consume.

And to clarify, I’m not just talking about news, but popular things such as cinema, TV, games, and so on…

Media puts emphasis on the biggest, strongest, fastest.
Thinnest, fattest, most virtuous, least virtuous.
The opposite and extreme ends of the spectrum.
The cartoon caricatures.
The troughs on the bell curve.

Is it any wonder that our perception of normality is supposedly screwed up even before we’ve left childhood?

What the fuck is going on?

In fact, your kid years are some of the times you are most exposed to these influences. Think how many hours are spent with the TV, the games consoles, and when your mind is at its most receptive.

Body image perceptions, material ‘needs’, self concept – all fucked up by believing too greatly in the hyperbolic messages that come up day after day after day. Messages you’re exposed to so frequently that you forget that they’re not ‘normal.’ At least, not statistically normal.

(As in; you’re much more unlikely to run into them in the world beyond your TV/smartphone or computer screen)

Not everybody’s a millionaire entertainment industry playboy, despite what they’re telling you/selling you. And the rare few that do fall into that category probably still have the familiar cloud of doubts, personal problems and mental baggage that most ‘unenlightened’ humans carry about with them.

There is no perfect life, just incremental improvements and strong ideas some people try to convince us of.

Braggadocio ≠ reality as it is.

The more time we spend consuming this media, the more attention we expend on life’s extremes, forgetting that life *does* exist in ‘the middle’ and that the middle doesn’t have to equate to boring or inferior or anything else particularly negative at all.

It’s the same phenomena that makes it so hard to eat simple healthy meals when we are habituated to years of consuming tastebud beguiling, highly processed food products.

We are made to forget. We are deceived. Sometimes purposefully and sometimes by accident.

Yes, in reality the world’s more ‘boring’ and less skewed than the media make it out to be.

But boring doesn’t sell.

And excitement does…

It’s probably not a fashionable thing to say, but it is possible to ‘try too hard’.

And people do it a lot.

‘Trying hard’ shouldn’t mean burning yourself out. Or feeling horrendous, because you failed, despite your best efforts (having ‘should have tried harder’)…

Effort expended and attachment to outcomes exists in a polarity. There’s ‘too much’ and ‘too little’.

And you can take both of these things to their (il)logical extremes..

This is the neurosis that some call ‘Workahol’

Striving too hard, wanting too much, these things inevitably lead to unhappiness when things eventually fail or don’t go to plan.

True, a lot of people make next to no effort at all, and it shows. They’re on one end of the continuum. They’re never disappointed any specific failure, they’re usually just disappointed with life on the whole.

But it is possible to burn out and try too hard. A minority of people do this, but they do it spectacularly. They’re on the other end of the continuum. These are the unhappy workaholics.

Achieving nothing and working yourself into a grave are both taking this ‘effort’ thing way too far in opposite directions.

The Japanese, masters of obsessively pushing any skill or phenomena to it’s outer limits, have a phenomena called Karōshi – literally “death from overwork”.

These are people who give themselves heart attacks and strokes cos they’re trying so bloody hard.

So yes, surely there is a sweet spot between giving no fucks at all, and being too invested in achieving a certain outcome.

18 hour workdays might be a warning sign.

The recipe is perhaps to care, but not too much.

Never enter a situation or negotiation that you can’t walk away from. Never need too much from one thing or person. Never make yourself emotionally or spiritually vulnerable when you don’t need to. And never say never!

Burn brightly but don’t burn out…