Stept 13: Amish vacation, Tap dancing to work and Avoiding what you love.
The Amish set up their lives in a way that they have everything they need and they are doing it in a natural way, like it’s something they are born to do. In natural rhythm and therefore they don’t get burned out. They don’t feel the need to go somewhere else to escape.
There seems to be a principle here somewhere, but I don’t know what to call it exactly… maybe the fine tuning of life. Set up what you have in life in a way that it’s part of you and you don’t get sick of it and need to get away from…
Examples: The job, preparing meals, communication with others, cell hydration, etc – all can be done in a certain way that it feels obvious to do because it’s there.
Tai says that if the end game of life is a vacation that is a pathetic life. That somehow people live like there is an end game and that is a vacation. He calls this “The Amish vacation, tap dancing to work”.
Oh! I hated it since I was little. Looking at those adults around me hating their jobs and talking about next summer.
Maybe that is why I don’t always run from a typical job where you work all day and have no time for something else and I’m reluctant about the typical approach of a vacation. Anyway, this is making so much sense to me now…
I’m going away from something that I can see that is not working and I don’t want it. I don’t want that life…
My coworker is talking about the next vacation immediately after she comes back from one and she counts the months, then the weeks, then the days until the next one.
In a way the Anna Karenina principle is represented here. The Amish are eliminating a lot of the distractions of the modern world and they keep a relatively closed and close community so that they can deal with what is there and nothing else.
The Amish are taking Sunday off or they work less. Tai reads and does some movie reviews, Sophie reads a lot. They integrate into their lives things that are important for them and that way they live a happy life every day.
Tai says that downtime that is part of a cycle is natural and can be integrated into everyday life.
No matter what someone does at the job, it can be done in a certain way, with a certain attitude that could bring joy. Maybe this is a principle… oh! Maybe it’s that the context is decisive, like you say. To what end are we doing all those things?
Alan Nation says: don’t do what you love (lust for) for work, because you won’t love it anymore. He says to do what you like.
Ooooh! Once something you lust for becomes a job, something that enters into the category of having to do, and then it becomes a chore and that was it!
OMG! All my life goes into this category somehow… Since I can remember, if someone told me to do X, even if I thought it was a good idea or I liked it, I refused or I would find a way to sabotage it somehow.
Then I had to negotiate with myself to do something that is obviously beneficial and I can see now that I rarely did.
I wonder why or what makes me do that in all situations… Oh! Yeah! I’m trying to make the other wrong. How dare they tell me how I should be or what I should do, or something like that. This is the first time I see it like this and I’ve been chewing on this attitude of mine for decades…
In my case, if it doesn’t come from me and, let’s say, if the dots don’t connect in a specific way I don’t want to do it. Fuck! This must be the reason that I’ve been fighting you, Sophie, with all I had.
When you are not tap-dancing, consistently, out of bed, then it’s time to make a change. I see this as a principle in the sense that it could be applied in all areas of life. Going to work, doing things around the house, talking to family members, loved ones, taking care of yourself… everything.
All that comes to me at this moment is context. Maybe there are many other things that contribute, but from what I can tell, from my own experience, if I manage to have an appropriate context, a powerful one in a specific situation, then everything changes, the world seems to be different.
Ooooh! Tai talks a lot about the dichotomy, that it’s not ideal.
All of us tend to separate parts of life, parts of ourselves (maybe because of how we were raised, how we let ourselves be influenced), but all is a whole and it works only if you integrate everything. He talked about this in some previous steps as well… we can’t take separate elements of our lives and say they make up for a good life, they work together and only if they sustain each other, then there can be a whole.
If the end game is to live a good life, then there can’t be any regrets, that is a missed opportunity.
Charlie Munger says that there is no tragedy in missing out on an opportunity that made someone else rich. The tragedy would be, Tai says, to miss on the opportunities that mesh with you, not with the outside.
It seems to me that he talks about the fact that if you don’t do what is yours to do, don’t work with what you have and waste yourself in a way, then that is… let’s say, the ultimate sin.
These past few days I was looking at life and this is what we can call hell. Here, on earth, I punish myself in a way, by not doing what I’m here to do, soul correction, gaining light… If I’m not moving, even a little bit, in that direction, then all I can create is chaos and suffering throughout my life.
Doing this step I saw that even though I don’t like this concept of living life as a vacation and that I tried to get away from it for many years, I saw that it doesn’t apply only in the area of work. This also applies to the fact that sometimes I feel the need or have excuses to take a break from everything. For example, and you won’t like it, but it’s not like you don’t know it, I wanted a break from this work, so I do live in a vacation mentality.
I have the inclination to not switch to the soul correction coaching now, but after I went through the 67 steps once… I saw that you said that you realized it’s a hard process, a PhD process, but I don’t know… maybe this is what I need now. What do you think?
The soul correction is something that I need guidance with, no doubt, but at the same time the 67 steps is a process, if it’s done the way it’s designed, that can take you on a journey, all over the place and for me, it’s very challenging… maybe a good challenge and kick in the ass from you is what I need at this point :))
Thank you,
Adriana