Neil Sattin.com

As I mentioned in my last post (the Birthday Giveaway), my birthday is fast approaching. A couple of years ago, in a quest to gain some perspective on the life I’ve been living, I decided to start a “Birthday Book”. As you know, I’m very fond of journaling, but I was looking for an easy way to keep tabs on myself without having to thumb through pages and pages of old journals. Enter the Birthday Book.

The Birthday Book is a special journal, in which I only write on (or around) my birthday each year. I try to cover the important happenings of the past year, my mood, my current goals, the things that inspire me, and the things that terrify me. I also discuss the people who are significant in my life at this time (how interesting it is to see that change over the years), and, finally, I talk about what I think might be in store for the coming year with as vivid an intention as I can muster. There’s a lot to chronicle, but I keep it manageable by limiting the length to one page (front and back).

I also only read it once each year, as my birthday approaches. Re-reading what I’ve written allows me the chance to reflect back over what I thought my life might be like - and compare notes with what actually happened. It’s also a great way to review my successes (and less-than-successes) of the past, to see how I’ve been growing, over time, with additional experience. I look forward to having 10 or 20 years of entries to read, although even a couple of years offers me quite a bit of perspective.

It’s like I’m writing my own personal Cliffs Notes. You know - so that those who care to know after I’ve died (but who don’t care enough to know every detail as captured in my journals) will have a place to look for a simple overview. Perhaps I’ll even include a handy pie chart or bar graph once the yearly sample gets a little larger (any suggestions for what such visual representations could represent?). I haven’t gotten so far as to write an epitaph yet, but I have written a couple versions of my obituary. Purely hypothetical of course. And I’m getting off-topic. Sorry about that. How did that happen? Ah yes, I guess I was talking about summarizing my life. Back on track.

The best part is that the commitment required to get some serious insight into your life is minimal. Set aside an hour ONCE PER YEAR to write in your Birthday Book. Then forget about it. Of course over time it’ll take longer and longer to read through your previous entries, but the time that you’ll have available to read increases the older you get, right? Well…there’s always hoping! Or Photoreading. Just make sure that you reserve a spot on your bookshelf for your Birthday Book so that you don’t have to go hunting for it each time your birthday rolls around. Along with your own perspective, you’ll also earn the gratitude of all the future test-takers who are being quizzed on the subject of YOU - and who need an efficient way to cram for the exam the night before.

note - this blog entry is in no way meant to endorse Cliffs Notes as a method of achieving academic success, even if they did work perfectly fine (on occasion) for the author

One final note: I happened to see this illustration on the back of a Qtips cotton swab box, illustrating all of the uses for Qtips (click it for a closeup):

Now let’s talk about this for just a minute. Not only is my preferred (and, you might say, only) use for Qtips not illustrated, I’m not sure that I’d use a Qtip for ANY of these proposed tasks.

1. Illustration #1 - Brushing eyebrows. On second thought, maybe I would use a Qtip for that. Though I prefer a comb.
2. Illustration #2 - Typing. I don’t know about you, but I prefer using at least the index fingers of both hands, if not all 10 of my digits.
3. Illustration #3 - Cleaning a baby’s face. Unless that Qtip has a fresh booger on it, it’s of no use to me. Judging by the stunned look on that baby’s face, I imagine that he’s thinking “um, that Qtip is way too big for what you’re about to do, right…mommy…mommy!?!?!”
4. Illustration #4 - I pity the person who’s decided to use a Qtip to clean our bathroom. What were you thinking?

That’s it, just had to share.

A few years ago, I started a list of “things that I want to be able to do before I die”.  Some things on the list are useful (speak Japanese), while others are less obviously useful (spit an arc of water out of my mouth in a narrow continuous stream as if I were a fountain).  Apart from the utility (or futility) of the items on the list, what I really wanted to do was remind myself of three things:  my mortality, how interesting life can be, and how many things we can do if we just try.  Some people approach the reality of “eventually dying” in a “what’s the use of trying” sort of manner, while others (including me) like to look at life as a long adventure.  I wanted a list to support me in the moments when I was bored, or unsure of what to do next, or just feeling like I needed a reminder of the magnitude of individual human potential.  When I feel doubtful of my ability to accomplish the “grander” things that I want to accomplish in life, I pick something from the list and do it (or remind myself of something from the list that I have learned how to do).   

I can’t tell you why, but one of the items on my list was “learn to ride a unicycle”.  I did a little research about decent unicycles online, found one at a local bike shop, and…tried.  Initially I made it my mission to learn how to ride that unicycle, but a couple weeks into the process I had a close encounter with a gymnasium floor that fractured one of my toes, demanding a temporary halt to my one-wheeled education.  Still, over time I kept at it.  Even though there are all sorts of methods for learning to ride a unicycle, the one that worked the best for me was “try and try again”.  Much failure.  Occasional success. 

You could probably learn to ride a unicycle a lot more quickly if you stuck to it day after day.  As for me, when I needed a break from whatever I was doing and remembered that I had a unicycle down in the hall closet, I would grab it and head out to the playground across the street for an hour or so of attempts.  I alternately used a fence (to hold myself up and get a feeling for what it was like to sit on the seat) and would just freeform it out in the the middle of the four-square courts.  My occasional successes showed me that I didn’t need to think about the process of riding - much like the inner game of tennis, I just needed to allow my body to figure out what needed to be done.  Ever so incrementally, it happened.

Perhaps one day we have a revelation like “the purpose of life is to learn how to love one another” and then we do exclusively that thing.  Even when guided by such a unifying purpose, though, we humans are certainly designed to learn, grow, and expand our awareness of the world within and outside of ourselves.  We’re not meant to be robotic in a monotonous re-enactment of the same adventure day in and day out.  We have curiosity, after all, and that curiosity is what keeps the engines of society a-roaring.  Curiosity about how to create a zero-pollution car, curiosity about how that person over there thinks about the world, curiosity about what makes people laugh - our minds are literally geared to pursue unknowns to make them known, and our emotions are designed to support our endeavors (consider the flow state of being absorbed in an engrossing activity, or the “high” of actually accomplishing a goal).

Sometimes the goals that we’ve chosen for ourselves are so huge that they generate a lot of “what-ifs” within us.  I’m mainly talking about the “what if such-and-such doesn’t work out the way I want it to work out” or “what if I can’t do such-and-such” brand of what-ifs.  Generally the fear represented by these what-ifs is only conquerable through action.  Direct action taken towards your goal is great, of course, but other kinds of action that add to your repertoire of “unknowns-that-have-become-known-despite-my-lack-of-experience” can be taken right off your list to become evidence of your ability to do something that you’ve never done before.  Make your list, try a few of the items, and see for yourself.  What are some of the random things that you want to learn how to do before you die?