I’ve been thinking tonight…. that it’s all about INCHES.
Okay… so I stole that line off of Al Pacino and Oliver Stone, but it’s been in my head tonight, so I’m claiming it.
Life is a lot about timing.
When you meet someone special, if it’s a month too soon, or a month too late, it doesn’t work out.
If you start a business, and you’re a year too soon or a year too late, it can make all the difference.
I don’t know how you know when the timing is right. Maybe people smarter than me know. Or maybe we don’t ever know. Maybe it’s just chance, or the holographic universe frakking with us. Maybe things are either meant to be or not. Maybe it’s all a cosmic joke.
All I know is that timing is a magic ingredient that either makes it work… or not.
I’ve been very lucky in my life. I’ve had good and bad timing with a few things. I started working at an ISP in 1996. That was good timing. I started working at Microsoft in 1998. That was bad timing – the share price that had climbed for 12 years climbed for another two years – then plummeted. I started podcasting in Nov 2004 – that was good timing, too. Maybe sooner than the market was ready for it, but early enough to get an opportunity to study the market from the outset and build a bit of a brand in an industry from the ground floor.
“In any fight, it’s the guy who’s willing to die who’s going to win that inch.”
In my personal life, too, I’ve had good and bad timing. I’ve met people exactly when I needed to and I’ve met people when it was too soon or too late, either in my life or theirs. You can’t predict that. And you can’t do much about it when it happens. It’s just timing.
In retrospect though, perhaps when I thought the timing was bad, it was actually right. The person/business/job that I thought would have been perfect for me, actually wouldn’t have been.
I know people will say “you make your own luck” but that’s VERY unscientific. It might sell self-help seminars, but it doesn’t stand up to examination. There is no free will. There is only physics. Or the hologram making it LOOK like there is physics. Either way, we ain’t in control.
Perhaps it’s like poker. Sometimes you get the right cards in the right hand and if you know what to do with them, it works out profitably. But if you get the right cards in the wrong hand… well, you can lose your wallet.
I don’t know. Too deep for this time of night. I just thought I had to get it out there. Timing. Inches.
Interesting, Cam. I’m not sure there’s such a thing as ‘bad’ or ‘good’ timing. Whatever is IS..no?…you seem to be labeling and judging the situation according to your wishes.
I recently met someone special who was already in another relationship. Despite mutual feelings, she said, “The timing is wrong. If only I had met you sooner…”
But I couldn’t agree with that. Because we met when we did. That was reality. To label it “bad timing” is to question and resist reality, which can drive you insane.
Byron Katie – check her out if you haven’t already!
ROFL, you’re pulling out advaita on me Mark?
Sure it’s “what is”. Everything is ‘what is’. Okay – now what? We can’t say ‘blue is different from red’ because they are both ‘what is’? We can’t say we prefer jazz to country music because they are both ‘what is’?
If I want to talk advaita, I do it on the advaita site mate. This site is for everything else. Get outta your head and enjoy life a little. 🙂
Ha! I enjoy life more because of Advaita!
Of course we can have fun with preferences – I was merely surprised by your non-Advaitan-like post about good timing vs. bad timing!
hey Cam – have you read Outliers from Malcolm Gladwell?
Interesting perspective on ‘success’.
No haven’t got to that one yet mate, still reading Blink! I’ll pick it up though on your recommendation.
Mark, its always been my feeling that once you know everything is part of the “what is”, then it’s best to forget all about it and get on with life like it really matters. The only times I feel the need to talk about the ‘what is’, is when I’m trapped in a room full of advaita geeks or when the shit REALLY hits the fan and I need to take a chill pill.
Don’t mean to get off the subject , ok ok, actually I do, but I thought you’d like to hear this interview from salon.com
http://static.salon.com//media/mp3/2009/01/conversations_conley.mp3
http://www.salon.com/books/int/2009/01/30/dalton_conley/
you might call it timing, you might call it destiny, you may call it about fucking time,it’s a holographic universe for jebus sake, particles converge to make what ever the fuck they, them,want. Do particles want?
Answering a question like timing suggests one believes in time…and that is something humans made up and care about, well lots but not all. I believe that things come when they come, and that we bring them to us with how we act in the world, but you have to be open to see them,and recognize them ..If you live a life that is closed, and you put up walls around evenything, you are negative about things then life will bring that to you, and on the other hand if you are kind, and careing, you attract a much better energy. I’m not just talking hippy here.. I meet hundreds of people everyday running the vet clinic, lots of them in person, and some over the phone, never mind about the hords of animals…and all the personality types are there, some closed, some open, and frankly some nuts ! I help them all..what I’m getting at is you can make life as you go…everyday you get a new chance….and choice is always there….physics action and reaction….life is always revolving and evolving…and it is up to us how we see our life.
I don’t believe in god
I don’t believe in following any Group
I DO believe in Energy, and that we vibrate and some people vibrate fabulously together and some people’s energy repells so fast like 2 north magnets it’s not funny
I don’t know what’s next, but I do know what happens to these bodies when we die, decayed flesh, to carbon atoms absorbed by the earth, BUT that energy…where does it go?
haven’t the foggiest and the day I find out I won’t be able to tell you, but we all will know some day…and in the end the only thing that matters is how we lived our lives…
so eat, drink, be merry, love lots, and laugh even more, sing silly songs, draw funny pictures, be nice, think and do nice things…because if you aren’t genuine…life will take care of that too 🙂
It always amuses me when people say that we are ‘energy’. The only definition of energy that I’m familiar with is ‘a thermodynamic quantity equivalent to the capacity of a physical system to do work”. It’s a measurement, like a kilometer. Saying we’re made out of energy is like saying we’re made out of distance. I never exactly know what people are talking about.
Cameron,
What I wonder about is how 2 people can be so in love, so much so, that they pledge their lives to each other “til death do us part”…blah blah blah! Then before long that so called love turns to hate!!
Should TIMING or ENERGY BE BLAMED?
Julie, sure, I think timing is at fault. People meet at the right time in their life for them to be together but then, time passes, their individual needs and desires change, and the relationship they romantically thought (hoped) would last the rest of their lives no longer meets the needs of one or both of them. Timing.