The Word of the Day is Moon
“The moon is a loyal companion.
It never leaves. It’s always there, watching, steadfast, knowing us in our light and dark moments, changing forever just as we do. Every day it’s a different version of itself. Sometimes weak and wan, sometimes strong and full of light. The moon understands what it means to be human.
Uncertain. Alone. Cratered by imperfections.”
― Tahereh Mafi
There are moments in this life when you step through a door and realize you can never go back. New knowledge that you cannot unlearn has a way of forcing us into a new adventure. This doesn’t have to be anything scary, or risky (although the root of adventure, the Latin “venture” does mean risk. I often find the best adventures, like love or innovation, are well worth the attempt). Then there are those times when the vision is so prophetic, that you simply must jump… and build your wings on the way down. I think I felt that way the day I met you, my incredible wife. That desire to just take a leap of faith. I know in a way we both did.
We have this way of approaching things in two different ways and finding the same result. Like traveling in opposite directions around the globe to meet again in a beautiful place. This journey separates our trains of thought, and the way we find comfort can mean one of us is on a terrifying arduous journey while the other finds themselves sailing through crystal clear waters as if drifting in a beautiful dream. The common thread is faith… Faith in us together, as well as faith in ourselves.
I often recognize that your faith comes from a place of defensive strength. My mother tree with roots so deep and so strong that, like the bodhi tree it has weathered every storm, sometimes with broken limbs and tested earth, but here you stand tall, knowing all the trials of the world. You have seen so many wars and sat and watched humanity’s ability to destroy everything beautiful you have ever loved. You have seen that human nature is inherently evil, and no one will stick the way you do. No one will commit the way you do. No one will follow through the way you do. In your journey you go all the way alone, while you carry the ones you love with you, and you suffer and bleed for them, and in the end it isn’t enough. I have seen a strength in you, like no one I have ever known. Moments when any other person in the world would have walked through that open door, where you slam the door to keep me in, while I feel like you may believe I am one of those people who would watch you walk away, or leave myself. I don’t even know if you consider that doorway is there for you too. This has made me realize that humanity has hope. You for me, are hope. In your world the word “Sorry” is virtually meaningless… A husband who beats his wife says sorry, every time, says “I’ll never do it again” until they do. It makes sense then that action is the currency in which relationships are formed… To win your trust, one must move near the speed of light and never fail… You are the moon, the light in the darkness that shines when all other light has faded, as the earth is engulfed with the predators in the night ready to strike at anything defenseless.
My faith goes the other way. Like the monkey king who has defeated every foe he has ever entered a battle against. Like you I have an unwillingness to quit but my method is like that of Odr the frenzied one… I attack rather than defend, sprint at challenges as fast as I can run to break through, instead of stand and let the problems break around me as you do. I have reached a point where I am not willing to never back down, but my strength comes from fighting back. It comes from being pushed into corners so many times in my life, finding myself locked in a place where there is no escape and the only answer is to charge through with lightning speed and agility and rely on my metal and my skills at wielding it to keep me safe and see me through the next challenge. I have no roots to hold me to the ground when the storms come. Everyone close to me, just like you, seems to abandon their tasks when they need to close the line, or go silent when I need their council. I rally troops and find that when the battle starts I often, if not always… stand alone. Through my life, I have never done well when I need to rely entirely on someone else to do their job. There are a few who I have looked over at the close of the war and found them sticking by my side. Before you, there were only two. Dave and Kevin. Those two, I can put blind faith into. I know, when they say “I’ll handle it” that I can turn my back to any foe if they still face them. “One’s back is vulnerable unless one has a brother”. When I was younger, quicker, more naïve… I found myself charging into fights I won alone, but as a result, I lost valuable ground or valuable partners along the way… I have found in my campaigns, that if you drag someone through battle, and block blows that would have killed them, and kill enemies for them whenever you feel they may not be able to handle the foe themselves, the result is so often that those comrades will reveal themselves as enemy when the battle is won, and use my victory as an opportunity to seize the army for themselves… in the next battle that leader forged only from opportunity to gain power, fails, and destroys all that I have built.
Doubt creeps into people’s minds, often introduced by someone standing shoulder to shoulder, who throws out “what ifs”, questions my leadership, or has never been through a fight with me to see that we emerge with everyone safe. A roller coaster, that seems scary when we hit the first drop, as if that drop is the first of an escalating number of falls that will eventually find its way to the earth in a crash no one survives. Imagine someone who’s never been on a coaster, blindfolded and sat in one… This is how so many react to new adventures. So many cannot see the track ahead and recognize that I have designed it and know the twists and turns. That rise and fall is not a sign of a problem, it is a sign of still moving. That my strategy has always been to put the largest drop first so that once the car starts to move, nothing can stop it. Physics dictates that you must build potential energy by climbing up… then accelerate at the start if you are to ride the entire thing… coasting. This first fall may seem like it will exhaust us, but all we need is to push through that climb to the top, which is sometimes too slow for many to gain the confidence that the entire journey is just momentum from the first thrilling drop. They want me to prove that the hill ends before they take the climb, but how can you prove it without either climbing yourself alone to show them? If I climb that hill myself, I would then what? Return to the bottom and once again try to convince them? No, I’ll just begin the climb and they can follow or not. I am once again (as I have been many times before) reminded of the poem that hung on my wall since early childhood…
If while pursuing distant dreams
Your brightest hopes turn to gray.
Don’t wait for reassuring words
Or hands to lead the way.
For seldom will you find a soul
With dreams the same as yours.
Not often will another help you
Pass through untried doors.
If inner forces urge you
To take a course unknown,
Be ready to go all the way,
Yes, all the way alone.
That’s not to say you shouldn’t
Draw lessons from the best;
Just don’t depend on lauding words
To spur you on your quest.
Find confidence within your heart
And let it be your guide.
Strive ever harder toward your dreams
And they won’t be denied.
-Bruce B. Wilbur
When you are blind to the path and have doubt in the reward, especially if you believe that road to be impossible, like we once believed this kind of love was (just an impossible fantasy). You encounter so many non-believers, those who just take you on a grueling uphill climb riding on your back, and collect their photo at the peak, shout “look what I did!” and then walk right back the way they came without even promising you a piece of what you have done the work and earned for them. There are those who believe celebrity is impossible, breakthrough is impossible… Those are the ones who enjoy the security of quitting when things get difficult, who believe that failure is not something you overcome through repetition but rather a decisive moment in life, and something you walk the other way from. I prefer the fall on the other side of a difficult climb, and as we reach the trough, we feel safe, and while the rest of the ride is a thrill, knowing we survived that first fall allows us to raise our arms in the air and follow through to the end in awe, and enjoying the thrill. This is why I have never missed a deadline or failed to deliver, not once in my career. I don’t leave the climb for the end, unfortunately it means those who make it must have faith that I know where it goes… those who have known me for 20 years will take those steps at my side now, rather than being dragged. Those who then won’t jump will never know the thrill… but for you, I sit at the top and wait for you to stand by my side and take the leap with me… normally you shove me off and I am falling for you before you then decide to follow, I have learned not to panic anymore when I feel that gentle push of the cliff.
In business you don’t exit at the peak or the trough. Both lead to disaster. You exit at the easiest point where you reach max acceleration, and you splinter off with an investment in innovation. Here it is key that you commit to a vision and push forward with immense speed to see it come to light before the next peak. Then profit just comes from the fall… each fall branching at the point of maximum acceleration to make another climb. Like the physics of a roller coaster this allows you to constantly break new ground and in good, agile corporations it can become a habit that allows innovation with such ease that few even notice it was an innovation to begin with. I have done this many times over my life… at the prime of one invention pivoting to the next big innovation. Often people without the end vision in their minds (one that has existed in my mind since childhood), see this as me “losing interest” in one thing to seek out something new and shiny. To me it means that piece is complete, and it is simply time to let it run on its own while others man the walls and I set out into the unknown, ready for the next great adventure.
The hero’s journey does eventually reach its conclusion, however. At some point, you take the final leap. The final hill to climb may seem like the tallest, but we know our strengths, we know our skills, we have been tested over and over and have never failed, we shouldn’t take this leap at our weakest, when we are too old and too weak. This is the final journey… we must make it when we are strongest, and our will has found its way to that door, where there is no turning back. There can be no “there and back again” this is setting out for the new world across the sea where we will find something no one has ever found before and sustain the fall, it is a leap into an abyss where revolution is the only answer. Cold fusion… a self-sustaining source, a perpetual motion machine fueled by the innovation, vision, and talents of the world… We will not only have the ability to crowdsource creation, we will crowdsource awe. Open pandoras box the way the internet did, the way the iPhone did. Why not us? Why not the people who have proven to succeed against insurmountable odds time and time again… why not those who have done the impossible and waited for the world to catch up to us (and in many of our inventions still hasn’t… inventions like “word of the day”… or my work)?
We reach a point in all things, where we realize there are others who seem to succeed without our skills. It is easy (and boring) to win a fight when you put yourself in situations where you will almost certainly win… So, someone learning never fights to win, they fight to improve. Through life I have learned that it is far more valuable to take on those things you may not immediately succeed at, and through perseverance I have survived them all. This builds far more skill and confidence than constantly doing tasks that are easy… it is also far more rewarding. I find it fascinating that people will both refuse to try something new, and simultaneously complain of boredom. When it came to my first innovations, I wasn’t taking a leap of faith, I had spent my life slowly climbing the hill before the drop… The fact that I jump them makes everyone panic and claim I am taking “huge risks”.
“When you give Simon enough rope to hang himself, clearly he will hang you with it” – the former CEO of EA.
“Fun is derived from learning a skill or tool and applying it to learn a new skill or tool or improve an existing one”… “frustration is derived from not having the proper feedback loop to learn from failure”… “Boredom is the point in which knowledge has been obtained and learning slows or stops entirely”. While old is comfortable, comforting, safe, and feels like home… New is exciting, fun, challenging, invigorating and creates ecstatic awe. In love as in innovation both the old and the new must be maintained, renewed, and updated with relentless passion.
Faith in us creates that bond that carries the moon with us everywhere we go where darkness might surround us. This brings comfort and support, relaxation, and peace. Faith also lets us howl at the moon, collect our people and become those hunters in the night… The adventure, which leads us to pleasure, joy, passion keeps the flame burning as a bonfire and as a hunt for meat fills our bellies a hunt for soul food fills our existence. Both of those things are needed, peace and adventure… only the strong and faithful can have them both. By definition… adventure has risk… by definition then, so does pleasure, so does fun, so does inspiration, so does all change in the world. There is always going to be balanced risk/reward in this life, there is no quick fix, no silver bullet, no golden hammer, no hacks and never guarantees. You can spend your life “safe” locked in your home with bolts on every door and bars on every window as a slave in a hell of your own creation believing that the chains that bind you are external ones from a master (like an ex husband or wife, or a corporation that once believed they owned not only your life, but your soul, and all believed passion, adventure, and change was dangerous… when the only rewards come from risk). For them, curling up in the fetal position and dying inside is the way to live. That has never been our way and will never be.
You are my bull… rooted, sturdy, solid and unmoving unless you will it on your own (and even then when you are doing what you want, if you are told to continue… you will stop)… You take a whip on your back and will not move away… you step the opposite direction and if the whip is strong enough, you charge and kill. I am the lion, quick and agile, powerful and deadly, I will always fight when cornered, and act like a king of the jungle worshipping and protecting his world, and as you know that world for me… is you. I will always be your sun, shining down on you and lighting your life, and I know when I am in the underworld and we are living in darkness that you will be the moon reminding me of my light, feeling it still even when I am lost, and help me shine again.
As the tree, you will be giving us the air we breathe in the night until I nourish you once more. You know when you need to root yourself to weather a storm, that I will sit and protect you from those who would cut you down to selfishly build themselves a shelter out of your unwavering strength… those who never even consider that you too feel pain.
I see you… I see you for the strength you carry with you. I see you for all you give to this world… For the first time in my life I am seen… You are the first who stares directly into me without feeling burned, overwhelmed, or unimportant due to all the passions that I must chase…
Quánxīnquányì全心全意 (pronounced shiang shing, shiang yi) is a Chinese proverb that means “All of the heart, All of the mind”. This is the mantra of sorts, defining how to strive live your life in Vajrayana Buddhism… It means when you do something, you do it all the way with all of your focus and all of your energy no matter how small or large the task, commitment is absolute. In Arabic the same commitment is called “Jihad”, that is not “holy war” at all, that translation is a racist western twist. What it really means, is that when you commit to something, you will die for it before you give up. There is no such thing as failure. Failure is the choice you make when you decide to quit. I will never quit; it is against every part of my being to give up. You live in the moment, you direct your heart and mind entirely to the task at hand, you keep doing it until you succeed… This practice means pacing yourself and gathering all your strength to unleash it at barriers you may find along the way. But… you know me and have seen that in my life I have never promised something and then gave up on it. Sometimes other 4th dimensional realities creep in and must be devoted to, but the task is always there “like a splinter in my mind” until I have completed it.
You, like my work, will never be complete. For you and only you, it is a commitment that I will die doing with all of my heart and all of my mind one day, and that day will be peaceful knowing that I had my entire soul devoted to loving you exactly this way.
I love you my Lotus, My Queen, and my Goddess.
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TheGrayJedi 