There is no The Thing
Book of TREE 1.85
Have you seen those articles about ‘The 94 Things You Must Do Before 8 AM to Win The Day’? Turns out, you don’t. My days contain plenty of ‘Win’ (whatever that means). But the only thing I ‘Must Do Before 8 AM’ is sleep because I was working until midnight yesterday. There are many different yet healthy patterns of work, play and rest.
4,200 is the common estimate for the number of religions on Earth. Christianity is the biggest. It comes in around 30,000 flavours.
Some people drink Pepsi on purpose.
The Thing does not exist. Your thing does though.
Some thoughts:
When someone is selling The Thing, it is merely ‘the thing they are selling’. If it doesn’t resonate with you, move on without guilt or FOMO. Move on with haste if the seller is full of charisma and authority. The last thing you want is to get sucked into a thing that isn’t yours.
Don’t define your thing too quickly or rigidly. You have more to discover about yourself and about life.
Let other people have their thing, even if you don’t get it.
There are deep patterns that are true for 99.9% of us. Unless you are a Margaret Thatcher-like freak of nature, you need 7–8 hours of sleep at night.
I was in the pub on Wednesday night at the start of a long weekend after three very hectic days of work. I was with Christine. The beer was good. The atmosphere was warm. The Wednesday musicians were doing their thing. Then one of them struck out on his own. He played and sang this song about life being beautiful. I wish I could somehow email that moment to you because it was rather perfect. This is the song:
I originally wrote today’s post 3½ years ago and things have changed since then. Because there is no The Thing. After 50 years of being a night owl, now I am usually in bed by 11 and up at 6 so I can go for a run and do some personal work before I start my job work. What I do now is not objectively better than what I did before, it’s just the thing that works now.
Grow slowly
Jeff
So the thing is the thing, now. Now the thing is I stay up in the wee hours. 2 years ago, the thing was to go to bed at dark, rising before dawn in my rv. The thing changes. I rise late morning which is the thing now. I have resisted but it has persisted to be the thing now. I am leaning into it finally and it’s really a good thing. Things change, often🌳🌲🍁🍂
Margaret Thatcher may have got by on very little sleep but she also got Alzheimer's in later life and was a shadow of her former self. I wonder if the lack of sleep contributed towards that?