36 - Distraction is the fear of facing yourself.
Life is a series of problems. Every action of it can either be a solution to or a distraction away from those problems. Will you engage with a depth of life or entertain yourself away from it?
Welcome to STONECOLDJACKSON, a show about becoming better.
Every week, Phill and I talk about our biggest challenges and mistakes, the lessons we’re learning from them, and then we bet on being better. This week Phill and I question whether sexual relations with your clone would be sex or masturbation. We talk about engaging with life vs. choosing distractraction from it, the difficulty of prescriptive education, and the magic of being an everyday storyteller.
BETA MENTIONED
Articles
Life Is a Video Game–Here are the Cheat Codes, Mark Manson
Books
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Nassim Taleb
Podcasts
Art of Manliness Podcast #462: How to Tell Better Stories
TOPOUT RECORD
Our failures have given $455.76 to Charity: Water.
QUOTES
“The only thing that consoles us from our miseries is distraction, yet that is the greatest of our wretchedness because that is what mainly prevents us from thinking about ourselves and leads us imperceptibly to damnation. Without it, we should be bored, and boredom would free us to search for a firmer way out. But distraction entertains us and leads us imperceptibly to death.” - Blaise Pascal
“As a kid, I spent my summers with my grandparents on their ranch in Texas. I helped fix windmills, vaccinate cattle, and do other chores. We also watched soap operas every afternoon, especially ‘Days of our Lives.’ My grandparents belonged to a Caravan Club, a group of Airstream trailer owners who travel together around the U.S. and Canada. Every few summers, we’d join the caravan. We’d hitch up the Airstream trailer to my grandfather’s car and off we’d go in a line with 300 other Airstream adventurers. I loved and worshipped my grandparents and I really looked forward to these trips. On one particular trip, I was about 10 years old. I was rolling around in the big bench seat in the back of the car. My grandfather was driving and my grandmother had the passenger seat. She smoked throughout these trips, and I hated the smell. At that age, I’d take any excuse to make estimates and do minor arithmetic. I’d calculate our gas mileage or figure out useless statistics on things like grocery spending. I’d been hearing an ad campaign about smoking. I can’t remember the details, but basically the ad said 'every puff of a cigarette takes some number of minutes off of your life.' I think it might have been two minutes per puff. At any rate, I decided to do the math for my grandmother. I estimated the number of cigarettes per days, estimated the number of puffs per cigarette and so on. When I was satisfied that I’d come up with a reasonable number, I poked my head into the front of the car, tapped my grandmother on the shoulder and proudly proclaimed, 'At two minutes per puff, you’ve taken nine years off your life!' I have a vivid memory of what happened next and it was not what I expected. I expected to be applauded for my cleverness and arithmetic skills. 'Jeff, you’re so smart. You had to have made some tricky estimates, figure out the number of minutes in a year and do some division.' That’s not what happened. Instead, my grandmother burst into tears. I sat in the backseat and did not know what to do. While my grandmother sat crying, my grandfather, who had been driving in silence, pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway. He got out of the car and came around and opened my door and waited for me to follow. Was I in trouble? My grandfather was a highly intelligent, quiet man. He had never said a harsh word to me, and maybe this was to be the first time? Or maybe he would ask that I get back in the car and apologize to my grandmother. I had no experience in this realm with my grandparents and no way to gauge what the consequences might be. We stopped beside the trailer. My grandfather looked at me and after a bit of silence, he gently and calmly said, 'Jeff, one day you’ll understand that it’s harder to be kind than clever.'" - Jeff Bezos
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If you or someone you know would be interested in being vulnerable for this podcast, I’d love to talk about it. I’m interested in your story of confronting doubt, uncertainty, and the mystery and mess of being human. If you want to reach me or just send me a good meme, you can email me at [email protected].
