My views on god are different than most. I’m not a theist and I’m not an atheist. I’m agnostic as far as I can tell. I don’t see any absolute facts either for or against the existence of a god that created the world and all that we know. I don’t see as truth old books written by writers I didn’t know and edited & influenced by rulers and societies I didn’t know or experience.

I don’t see any proof here in the present that proves or disproves a god. In my mind there is a possibility that there is or was a god, but whether or not a god is acting in response to anything happening here is without a doubt, a resounding…

NOPE.

There is nothing I’d like better than to have a very strong faith in some god that I can’t see. I’d like nothing better than to be able to ignore statistical probability and instead blame someone for things that go wrong. There’s nothing I’d like better than to be judged on what I’ve done – and given the opportunity to redeem myself in case I slip up. An eye for an eye sounds reasonable to me. I could live my life according to that. I could even follow the 10 commandments with relative ease, though it’s taken me until I was 39 years old to say such a thing.

Reality tells me there’s nothing like this going on. If there is a god that made the world he-she-it is not available for conversation, debate, blame, or changing what’s going on here. A god could be watching this whole show – waiting to intervene when the level of horrorshow reaches some climax in the future. I could go for that. I can’t imagine what a god like that could possibly be waiting for though. The world seems like a big scab that gets peeled and re-scabbed over and over to me. At what point would it be enough?

I could also go for the idea that there never was a god that made the world and that this world has very little significance in the big picture. I could be fine with the idea that this world is only important to those of us in it. Life seems important to most of us for some reason.

My idea is… I don’t see life as important. I see it as something I’m not thrilled about having to go through – to tell you the truth. I’d love to blame some idiot god for screwing up the game. I’d love to have a god I could talk to and ask for explanations about why the world is so profoundly twisted. I don’t ‘get it’. Often times I can’t get beyond the simple idea that life is some god’s twisted idea of a joke or having fun.

If the world is god’s idea of fun then he must be having a blast. Why stop it? Just keep cranking up the horror volume and see what people do in response. Surely there can’t be many clicks left on god’s volume control knob.

Could there be?

So, though I don’t see life as important – in it’s self… I’m very aware of the pain and pleasure dichotomy of life that defines all we do. Or, appears to.

There are people in extraordinary pain – physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually… There are people suffering thousands of times more than I ever have in my life. I consider my life to have been quite easy in comparison. I’ve experienced little pain compared to what I could have. I’ve escaped the horrors of war during my childhood and adulthood. I’ve had a mental, physical, and spiritual health that’s been going quite smoothly over my lifetime. There have been bad times but I’ve experienced much on the positive (pleasure) side and overall I can’t say I’ve missed anything I should have experienced in life.

Life could end today and that would be fine. Life could end next week and it’s not necessarily better that it takes any longer than it could. I’m quite apathetic about life – and yet, when I have fun I really can have fun. When I laugh – which is everyday, many times a day – I really enjoy the moment.

When it’s time for this silly self to go away – then it’s time. I’m not looking to prolong anything except the avoidance of pain. Technological advancement to prolong the number of years we live here on earth is just about the biggest waste of time I could imagine.

Instead of trying to heal all that ails us, I think putting all those billions of dollars into creating new and innovative, non-addictive pain meds might be the best focus of our energies.

If everyone with a fatal illness could pass away without pain – what a cool thing that would be? If everyone could realize – time’s up – time to go, it’s been fun – not real fun, but it’s time to go now… and have that sort of nonchalance about dying I think that would be the coolest thing ever.

Of course that’s my own private logic.

Why is life viewed as so important to other people?

How can you think that this life has any profound meaning to it when it’s basically a free-for-all? It’s completely unfair. You might be born to a crack smoking mom and a pedophilic sadomasochistic father and the baby born next in time and space was born to Mahatmar Ghandi and Mother Teresa.

Who we’re born to sets the stage for life… and there’s no rhyme or reason to it that anyone can prove. So, it’s unfair to a sickening level. It’s atrocious – criminal even. If we just start with this one premise – it’s tough to get past it.

How could a good God explain this one?

I’m at a loss. No reason could ever get me over this simple fact… Life is unfair from day 1.

So, while I’m Aiming for Awesome I’m well aware that the world is in a profound state of suck. Life for each of us is a mix of suck and fun that repeats itself over and over. Some of us are on the left side of the bell curve of life… they’re experiencing heaps more suck than fun. Some of us are in the middle of the curve and experiencing some of each. In fact, most of us are here – that’s what a bell curve is… the majority of people fall well within a couple standard deviations around the mean. Some of us at the far right side of the curve have apples growing out of their nether-regions and experience much more fun than suck – and will for all their days on the earth. That’s reality.

That’s life.

To me, the unfairness of life – of the disparity between individuals living it – couldn’t possibly mean anything other than…

Our individual lives mean absolutely nothing in the big picture…

What do you think?

Best of Life!

Vern
If God lives here on earth… she’s in Hawaii.

Why human beings need to involve themselves in games of strategy and adventure online, effectively playing games within a game I don’t understand.

What better game to play than the one you’re already playing – the game of life? Why sit in front of a computer and play Quake, SIM City or some other video game with limited choices, experiences and outcomes that you need to pay for with time, and mental effort that will lead you absolutely nowhere.  Playing such a game over the course of a couple hundred hours will give you a final screen that turns into a mediocre fireworks explosion or says simply, “Congratulations, you’ve conquered the game.  Don’t miss our next game, Quake II which will arrive in stores just before Christmas 20xx.”

Why do some people spend hundreds or even thousands of hours pitting themselves against fictional characters in a game with a meaningless outcome? The big picture is that there’s no real goal or good purpose to these games. They’re mind-candy designed to stimulate some basic human interest. In SIM City its creating functioning cities. In Quake its about exploring unknown places, conquering enemies and extreme violence that we couldn’t otherwise partake of in reality.

In 1995 I think it was, I became interested in adventure video games like Doom II and Duke Nukem. They were novel at the time. It was an amazing concept to be able to play people from across the USA in ‘death match’ tournaments.  It was glorious fun and I spent a couple hundred hours playing, sometimes all night until I had to drag myself away to attend graduate classes the next morning.

When I think of the couple hundred hours I wasted I can’t believe I took part in it.  Why did I play them?  What did I get as a result?

Maybe some relaxation in a schedule filled with school, work and relationships.

But hundreds of hours?  What if I’d meditated instead?  What if I’d written a book?  Learned something online that mattered?  What if I spent those couple hundred hours learning some programming languages that could have been applied toward the year 2000 scare? I knew guys making $150/ hour updating old code from 1998-2000.  What if I had tutored someone and saved up some money to buy a mountain bike and get a different type of fitness (I was running a lot at the time)?

What if I would have spent the time talking to friends?  Volunteering somewhere?  Starting a business?

There are thousands of choices in this, the most awesome game.  There are infinite choices available with infinite possible results. This is the real game. Real life – as real as it gets, and yet some people don’t want to play THIS game. They are afraid of this game. How sad is that?

This is the only REAL game worth playing. This is the only one that matters even a little bit. In the big, big picture this entire game of life might mean the outcome for our future for the next 30,000 millenia. Or it might mean nothing. Better to act like it means a lot, than the other way around since there is always this chance that this life is what all future experience will be based on. That’s a sobering thought.

Isn’t life on it’s own thrilling enough? The outcomes, the rewards are infinitely more compelling than reaching a screen that says, “Congratulations! You killed 78,667 fictional chunks of code designed to attack you weakly within a GUI 2-D interface.”

TV is the all-time greatest waste of time affecting more people in more cultures than computer games probably ever will. In a way, computer video games are even less purposeful than TV. That’s saying a hell of a lot. Computer games have less intrinsic value than TV.

I challenge you today to stop playing any kind of computer game or watching TV. These two meaningless time wasters are better replaced by… well, anything.

Instead do something like…

• Learn a new sport or create one.
• Take part in a sport or exercise you already love.
• Start a stretching program.
• Use the computer to research something you want to learn about.
• Learn meditation, the ultimate relaxation and stress reliever. Download my free meditation course e-book.
• Question your religion… there must be something bugging you about it – see what others are saying about it.
• Teach your child how to do something s/he is interested in – not that you’re interested in.
• Read one of my favorite books Children, the Challenge; Think on These Things; or No Religion, by Buddhadhassa Bhikku; Hannibal, Thomas Harris.
• Start writing a book!
• Get a RSS Reader from Google and subscribe to some interesting blogs with it. It’s an amazing time saver. What’s a RSS reader?
• Start researching how to position yourself for the Ultimate Job.
• Every time you want to play a video game or watch TV get out a sheet of paper and write 10 things you could be doing instead.

Choose one or two and do them!

Best of Life!

Vern

For most of us the ultimate job would be to collect a huge salary for doing something fun. My penultimate idea of the ideal job would be surfing. No, not competing, that’s hard work. I just mean just soul surfing at say, Launiopoko Beach Park in Maui every time the urge hit. A woman would stop by my two-story beachfront hut and hand me a million dollars each month. That would be the ultimate job and no, it doesn’t exist.

But an acceptable, close to perfect job does exist for me and for you though you may need to accept a lower income for a while (or forever). See the “How little do you need?” series if you’re having trouble coming to grips with that concept.

Straight out of college or high school and looking for work most of look for a job working for someone else’s company. It’s safe. Sometimes it’s too safe, the money is good enough and complacency kicks in. A person in this situation might stay in that same job until they retire in 40 years. Others will get bored and try another job probably again working for someone else.

We go after everything we want – the best of everything in so many areas, but not our jobs where we spend eight to ten hours a day doing something we probably don’t want to be doing if we had a choice. We DO have a choice, but we continue on mindlessly accepting it.

WHY is that?

In one word, fear. Fear of the difficult path. Fear of not making enough money. Fear of trying to get the job you’d love and being rejected over and over or facing ‘insurmountable’ difficulty trying.

Everyone knows what their ultimate job is. We’ve all spent time thinking about it. But most of us haven’t taken even one step toward it. Usually our self-talk is that there are so few people doing it in the world or we’d need to take a profound pay cut. Maybe your idea of the ultimate job is skydiving out of planes and filming a team doing aerial stunts. Not many people in the world are making that happen for themselves. But I know one thing, YOU could be one of them.

The world is a big place I’ve been finding out the last 10 years. Even if you exhaust your efforts to find the perfect job in the USA you could go abroad and try there. I think the USA provides opportunities for anyone that is motivated to get their ultimate job. If none exist, you can make the opportunity yourself. A driven person can do anything. Look at this guy who strapped jet engines to his back and flew around in circles at almost 200 mph. Since being in Thailand I’ve met other full time bloggers and two guys that had fishing guide businesses in Alaska. Their ‘job’ was to take tourists fishing in some of the most pristine natural streams and lakes in the world. How strange is that to meet two different guys doing that across the planet in Thailand? There must be more of those opportunities than I ever would have thought.

Over time my idea of the ultimate job changed a lot. Currently my idea of the ultimate job is what I’m doing. You’re reading it. Blogging is my ultimate job and I’m making it work. I’ve written in a journal since grad school and I never stopped writing fiction, e-books and long articles for web sites I’ve had. I decided about a year ago to focus on blogging full time and that would be it. This is my ultimate job but I’ve sacrificed a lot to make it work… for instance, I’m not living in Hawaii where the cost of living is outrageous, I’m living in Thailand where my electric bill was $3 this month and water bill was $4.50. Rent was $100. Food was about $100 this month. Gas? I have a motorbike so, at $5 a gallon gas was just about $40. Will I ever make enough money blogging to move from Thailand back to Hawaii? I don’t know. Does it matter? No, not really. If I can just continue to write articles and survive – that’s what I’m doing. I’m happy as a turtle in mud.

Some Ultimate Jobs:

Blogging about anything you love.
Fishing guide, anywhere.
Hiking guide, Maui, Oahu, Kauai, Fiji, Samoa, Tahiti, Western USA, Alaska, Canada, Swiss Alps, Thailand.
Test driver for new sport super-cars.
Dressing room attendant for Charlie’s Angels movie set.
Travel photographer.
Travel writer.
Actor, Actress. Seriously – this must be the best job in the entire world. Nobody on the planet gets paid more for doing less.
Movie extra that acts only as the recipient of massages.
Professional sports player (any sport).
Astronaut.
Artist of any sort.
Comic strip writer.
Joke writer.

If income was the only area you had to sacrifice to be doing what you really want to be doing, could you make it work?

Best of Life!

Vern

My good friend from Sweden is doing Hawaii Appraisal of residential real estate on Oahu, Maui, Kauai and the Big Island. He is living his dream. He came to the USA with little and has carved out a niche for himself in a very competitive market. If you need an appraisal in Hawaii – contact him!

I wrote a post recently about the types of people that I meet and interact with when I’m trying to get an online venture going. I noticed that there are people that are set apart from the rest of us. They are people that are on TOP of the game, whatever particular game they’re playing. I wrote about the online world, but there are many other games people of the world are playing…

What about people that seem to be on top of the big game? You know, the “Game of Life“. Do you know anyone like that?

I know just a couple of people that seem to be at the top of the Game of Life… and you know what? Not all of them are wildly successful at business. What I mean by being on TOP of the game of life is this…

People on Top of the Game of Life:

Wake up nearly every single day in a happy mood. Unless there is a specific and terrible tragedy that occurred recently they are, without fail in a good mood every day they wake up. Seem to wake up earlier than the rest of us too.

Are optimistic about the future every single day. They realize that the future holds the key to continued happiness and being on top of the game. They realize that the future is changeable. The future depends entirely on the actions that one takes in the present. They know that and they love that idea because it gives them power, control over the future.

Are realistic. They understand that, according to probability – which NOBODY escapes, there are both positive and negative events that happen that are outside of one’s control. As much as we want to control EVERYTHING, we cannot. Some things are beyond that. One can choose to attribute these things to a higher power, or, like I do – as just probability. Accept reality and the Game of Life is that much easier.

Love to take action. They like to be doing something that is leading to more happiness, more optimism, more possibility in their lives.

Love to encourage and help others. They love to share something of themselves to help make others’ lives better in some way. It might be just with a certain group of people (family), or it may be that the person has the same attitude with everyone he or she meets. What a wonderful person THAT is, right? Have you met strangers that seemed like they wanted to help you – and you couldn’t understand why? I have. It’s scary, because initially I’m trying to figure out – what is this person’s agenda? And sometimes, there just isn’t one. Some people love to be helpful to everyone they meet. I like that kind of person myself!

Reduce daily stressors. Nothing has the power to bring someone down, bring your life to a lower level than when you face repeated (daily) stressors that don’t seem to end. People on top of the game will eliminate these stressors as quickly as possible, realizing that they are taking valuable time and effort to keep facing day after day. If you have this type of stressor, take steps to eliminate it immediately.

Take care of their bodies. They found a balance between eating what they want and exercising to keep the body in decent shape. They might eat whatever they want – and exercise often to keep their weight steady. Or, they might eat little and exercise little. They might work out on the weight machines at the gym 5 days per week or 1. They might ride a bicycle a couple times per week, walk, or jog. They have found the optimal state for them which allows them to feel good about their body and not have it be a concern that stresses them out day to day.

Take care of their minds. Our minds need a rest to function at maximum level. People who are at the Top of the Game of Life have found a balance between work and stressing themselves out. They allow the mind to recoup when it needs it. These times of relaxation might be some sport, walking, laying down with eyes closed, meditating, yoga, listening to music, or even watching television.

Don’t put much focus on money as providing the ultimate happiness. Maybe in most people’s lives there is a time period where money seems like the most important goal. It seems like, if we just sacrifice everything in pursuit of this goal we’ll find happiness in the end. It’s like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow idea. There probably is no pot of gold, and attempting to create one for yourself is going to take shovel fulls away from the other areas of your life… and the lives of those that are important to you.

Are typically over 50 years old. I’ve noticed this to be true. Rarely does someone in their 20’s or 30’s figure out the key to being on top of the Game of Life until they are in their 40’s or 50’s or older. Why is this? Something to do with having tried a lot and learned a lot more. By the time one gets older there is a life intelligence that kicks in. It’s kind of a reality check that puts things in the right perspective. At 50, if you’re the average male you’ll die in about 25 years. There’s not much time to keep getting it wrong. Naturally the mind has matured and put things in perspective at about this age. Is it possible to be on top of the game of life at 20? YES!

Are eager to share the secrets they’ve learned over their lifetimes. Just ask! When I think of how many times I had the chance to ask people on Top of the Game of Life what they thought about certain issues, or the most important things they’ve learned in their lives… and I didn’t… well, it makes me want all the more to do it now!

If you know someone that seems to have it all – not just money and financial success, but a real peace within themselves and a happiness that is present every single day…

wouldn’t it be cool to ask them…
“WHY are you on top of the Game of Life?“

Best of Life!