From the story of a running man

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Among people who responsibly approach the purity of their thoughts, there are those who achieve order in their heads through meditation. Meditation is different: both indoors and outdoors, with or without music, both in a passive position and in active movement. I am one of the latter: I need to run a long distance in silence, so that no one interferes, at a certain speed, occasionally changing bursts of impetuosity, followed by calming down. The minimum for me is 15 km, but in most cases I have to run 20. So thoughts come in order, the nerves calm down, the frantic pace of mental activity becomes quiet and measured, but no less effective. So, it was an ordinary day and nothing foreshadowed trouble … Although no, it is better to start a little from afar, otherwise the whole picture will not be clear.

By the nature of my activity, I have to work in different areas: in science, education, take part in the educational process, somehow support half a dozen educational and scientific projects on the Internet, not to mention a number of everyday tasks that also lie almost entirely on me, and I'm not talking about some other activities of a personal nature. Somehow, former colleagues from the department tried to calculate the amount of work I did, they turned out that I exceeded "their" norm for one person, someone counted three times, and someone four times. No, I do not consider myself a guru, I just know how to more effectively distribute my own and others' resources. And, to tell the truth, in general, I feel the load on myself as quite feasible for one person, the difference is only in the efficiency of work. However, there is a price to pay for efficiency. The price is a very high psychological load, sometimes severe fatigue and even an inability to get down to business, then illness on the basis of nervousness. The solution to the problem is to streamline and calm the train of thought, that is, to put things in order in the head: to rethink something, to throw something away, to accept something new and build it into your system of ideas. The order on the desktop allows you to quickly find the right tool, and order in your head allows you to correctly set a problem and find a solution. This order can be brought about only in a special state of the psyche, which can be achieved through meditation. There are other ways, but only this one works effectively for me. Do you think I'm wrong? I will listen to your current vision when you demonstrate competent behavior when working with at least half of my tasks.

So, it was an ordinary day, nothing foreshadowed trouble. I planned to run 20 km and this time measured out a little more time for this exercise - 100 minutes. I went out on the track and ran. A couple of minutes later, an old acquaintance catches up with me on a bicycle and begins to wonder what I am doing and why.

- Oh, hello, Seryoga, and I'm running here, resting.

- How is it, running and resting?

- Well, thoughts need to be calmed, move away from the set of problems that I have to solve in my life. Now the situation has become generally difficult, the load has grown wildly, so I'm running.

- Ah, I understand … you run from problems - a favorite pastime of the townsfolk, you know.

- What are you talking about? I do not run away from problems, on the contrary, I want to solve them, and for this you must first move away from them, get rid of the blurredness of consciousness, if you like.

- No, you just don’t want to admit to yourself that you are running away from problems like a man in the street. Look: you are running - this is one, you have problems - these are two, only a fool cannot correctly compare these two facts. And you also have a torn leg, although it was easy to sew it up, so if you can't even do this, what kind of solution to problems are you talking about?

- The leg will be sewn in a specific sequence among other tasks. The fact is that the order of my tasks is determined in such a way as to minimize the costs of switching between them, retraining for another task, and in general, there is a very complex scheme with many variables. You don’t understand this at all, as far as I know.

“It’s not important what I understand or don’t understand, it’s important how you deal with your problems - you just run away from them, like a man in the street.

- Yes, I’m not a man in the street, you just don’t know the whole situation and the principles of organizing work in my life.

- You see, if something swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it's a duck, and there is no need to make excuses here. Okay, I leave you alone, run, philistine.

Suddenly Seryoga slightly breaks forward, sharply turns the bike perpendicular to my movement and slows down. I immediately stop so as not to crash into an unexpected obstacle.

- What are you doing? - I ask. - You understand that, firstly, you distracted me from the exercise for a whole kilometer, so you also stopped me, I will have to start over, because the exercise is precisely calibrated by the minute, taking into account my personal characteristics.

- Never mind, let’s better help you to run faster?

- How?

- Get on the trunk in eLika, I'll take you to the right place.

- You don’t understand, I need to run myself …

- The problem is that without me you will run too long, if at all, and I am on a bike, anyway better. You will get tired now, but I can go for a long time.

- Yes, shove yourself this great in one place! I have a clear exercise that I must do myself in a certain amount of time, not faster or slower. Now, because of you, you have to start first. Don't bother me, go your own way, I'll come to you later.

“You see, I’ll tell you a secret: a thinking person will not run away from a problem and avoid a conversation. The thinker will take the problem, deal with it and solve it, and not run somewhere for some unknown reason.

- That's right, a thinking person, before crawling into the soul of another, first takes note of the fact that his ideas about his work can hardly be reliably described by a set of private external manifestations. It works with the definition of a duck, but not with the definition of the motives of a person who knows how to work an order of magnitude more efficiently than you. Look at your rusty bike, lubricate the chain, tighten the spokes - from here I see that half is loose … wait, where is the front wheel nut? You lost it 4 years ago, as far as I remember.

- Yes, normal, great rides, and this is the main thing - the appearance is not important, the only thing that matters is how the device works. The nut is not needed, I stop from time to time and adjust the bolt with my hand when it starts to fall out.

- In short, I want you to understand one simple thing - I have my own methods of solving my problems, but you have your own methods of solving yours. And this is such a fundamental difference that any attempts to interfere with each other will end badly for both. And one more thing: even with all the desire to ride the bike, you will not ride as much as I will run until the first signs of fatigue. Well, this is so, by the way about your hypothetical help. You could also have time to pump up a flat rear tire while you interfered with me … but, probably, you did not see that it was flat, which is not surprising. But on the other hand, your ability to look into someone else's soul is very surprising.

I ran, resetting the stopwatch timer. While running, I wondered if it was right to explain to a person things that are, in principle, in a different plane of his perception of reality. Let him just think that I am a stupid man in the street who suffers from garbage - it would be even easier … but it so happened that now he will not only think so further, but will also be even more confident in his rightness, as he saw even more external features that coincide with its evaluation matrix.

“If he drives up again, I’ll just run and be silent. If he cuts it off, I'll take it and break it down,”I thought,“how he will interpret it, it doesn't matter to me, I don't have to prove that I'm not a camel, even if everyone thinks that I should”.

That was the day. You know, if you do the right thing, try in your work and know your worth, you don't need to waste time explaining your position. Any word will be distorted, interpreted as it is understood and launched against you. You will be provoked, but you should not give a damn. If need be - break a great man, let him rage.

I hope it is clear that this dialogue has never been exactly in this form. This is an artistic treatment of a discussion between one person, and a representative of the club of losers from which this person left (part of the story here, in the second part) to be alone, think and solve their problems the way it should be done according to the mind, and not how it is imposed members of the club who have not yet solved any of their serious problems, but are very confident that they can solve all strangers.