Doing the wrong things are the greatest sacrifices

I have been thinking a lot about the idea of sacrifice lately (not the kind of sacrifice we make for others, rather the ones we think we make when we go for a workout and ignore our desire for fast foods). I think I’ve come to some interesting conclusions that I’d like to share.

First, I was pissed for being required to sacrifice my pleasure and comfort in this moment for gains in the future. What gives the future such an authority over the present moment? After all, the ‘I’ that exists in the present should have just as importance as the ‘I’ that lives in the distant future. Why does his well being trump my whims?

When looking for the answers to these questions, I realized some things.

First, there is no me in the past, present or future. There is just ‘me’, spread throughout the space time continuum. And there is no sacrifices either. There are just tradeoffs. When I sacrifice getting lost in the dopamine rich, continuous hits of pleasure that comes from shuffling the home page of Facebook or Instagram, just like a gambler playing the slot machine, I gain some thing else. I gain mental clarity, peace and TIME. Yah, time, the most precious resource in the whole omni-verse. Time, the resource that even Jeff Bezos- with all of his billions of dollars, can not buy. Time, whose productive limits are only bound by your own imagination.

 So long story short, if there were a sacrifice made in such a situation, it would have to be when you do the wrong thing. When you chose to stay longer in that dopamine rich artificial-social-environment created by those apps, and let go of your overall well being and time. This is the real sacrifice.

 You sacrifice each time you take a cigarette puff. You sacrifice your health and your integrity. You sacrifice the same things each time you consume sugar.

 Would you ever pay 20 bucks to get something that costs only 5? I don’t think so. But we make similar mistake when instead of money we deal with other types of resources. We take 5 minutes of sweet sensation in our tongue and pay for that with a life time of diabetes. Genius!

 

The logic behind sacrifices (for fighting procrastination and bad habits)

Is ‘me in the future’ evil?

For quite a few days now, I’ve been slacking off. All the while thinking to myself, what’s the point of anything? What’s the point of giving up binging anime, consuming sugar and putting things off? Why sacrifice awesome things now to get it delivered to me in the future? Who is this ‘me in the future’- that gets priority over the real me- now?

Then there’s always the existential crisis thoughts. If I am temporary, what’s the point of building myself up? What’s the point of sacrificing my hedonist desires for something so fragile? Heck, there’s even no guarantee of safety even if I do the right things! The non-smoker still gets cancer while century-old smoker lives!

This made me ponder about the idea of sacrifices. Why should I sacrifice for my future self? Why should ‘he’ get all the fun- I remember asking a friend yesterday.

 

The Epiphany

Today I had an epiphany. Sacrifices aren’t a one way traffic. They go both ways. Right now I feel stable and alert. Consuming sugar will make me feel dizzy and sleepy.

Consuming sugar will hamper my overall happiness, capacity and longevity. It’s not about me in the future or any other point of time. Rather it’s about ‘the me’- me spread throughout the space-time continuum.

Through each action I’m always sacrificing. There’s no activity without a sacrifice.

Thus, everything is a tradeoff. Meditate?- gain peace and clarity; lose time and opportunity cost. Consume sugar?- taste the goodness and stop craving; lose health, cognitive abilities, alertness etc.

It’s always a tradeoff. There’s no way out of it.

But, here’s the kicker- not every result have the same duration.

Consuming sugar may feel good for 10 minutes, while the bad consequences can linger way longer than that.

The question is then, am I sacrificing a bigger, longer lasting, dividend paying outcome for something that will leave me in an instant? Am I trading for less with more?

I think this is where wisdom stems from.

I could rephrase the question like this- Am I sacrificing the good of the many for the good of one? Maybe this is where morals stem from.

Then there could be another twist- some sacrifices may even enable us to gain an outcome that is very hard to get otherwise. In those cases we often make series of sacrifices because we deem it as good investments!

We see only what we aim at and this can be a problem!

To a man with a hammer, everything looks like nails. There are some shocking truth to this quote.

To comprehend this complex world, we use selective perception. Now you might ask, who decides what we see? Well the answer is, what you aim at decides what you see.

Vision is selective. The world is too complicated to take it all in and process everything every second.

Maybe some of you are familiar with the basketball and gorilla test. For those of you who don’t have a clue here’s a summary: So, some researchers arranged a basketball match and asked the research participants to count how many times the white team threw the ball at each other. Everyone starts counting. Meanwhile, a giant gorilla comes along and dances around in the middle of the screen. The gorilla avoids any area where the ball is.

Most of the participants counted the number of times the ball was thrown correctly. They completed the task with success. But wait, , most of them did not see the giant gorilla! Now this is a study done by credible scientists. Many other studies have been done like this with similar and shocking results.

This illustrates the point I made earlier. You see what you look at. So, if you are dreaming of your ‘six figure passive income at the Malibu beach’ lifestyle all the time, but at the same time worry about why you won’t sit down to study or do your bed or workout and etc other problems, remember this discussion. You are blinded by your own aim. Yes your ambition blinds you to all the goodness around you.

If all you see is violence and crime, maybe all you are looking for is violence and crime. You can replace this with anything else and its still true. It can be lack of opportunities, or maybe a plethora of opportunities. Maybe you see danger , or maybe you see safety. You could see betrayals everywhere, or rather trust and camaraderie. Whatever, I guess my point comes across.

 

A better approach to life

So what’s the way out? How to see the greater truth? How to notice more of reality and see the opportunities around you?

Odin sacrificed one of his eyes to see the greater truth. He could no longer aim well. But this made him see more! (spoiler for Thor: Ragnarok ahead) Thor lost one of his eyes in Thor: Ragnarok. But it gave him wisdom.

You see the metaphorical connection here?

Sacrifice. Sacrifice your aim. This seems to be the answer.

But really? Isn’t it stupid not to have an aim? After all, the school system has asked us to write about our aim since we were children. There is also this saying that: a  man without an aim is like a ship without a rudder. Well this is wisdom too! We can’t just leave this advice and start living an aimless life right?

Well, this is actually where my own understanding remains insufficient. I cant really argue against this. But I can see how obsessive coalition with an aim is bad. It can make life shallow. Specially, when human tendency is to ignore everything that is beyond your aim.

Your own well being could be beyond your aim and you would ignore it! Your family’s well being could be beyond your aim and you would ignore it too! Same goes to your tribe, your country and the whole world! It pains me to think how many CEO s have been blinded to the fact that they are harming the planet and ruining our future, because they cant even see it! They are blinded by their goal: more wealth for the shareholders!

I had been blinded by my aim too. I failed to see that doing the right things in the present moment, like, building good habits, doing positive and productive things that I also enjoy doing and taking the opportunities already in front of me is what would make me better, not blinded hankering after a single aim.

So do we aim at nothing? Do we become like ships without a rudder and wander around aimlessly all our life?

To answer that, let us can break the problem into three sub-components first-

1. We see only what we aim at
2. We want our life to be well and possibly get better every moment
3. As a result, we want to look at-a) the good things already existing in our life.b) The existing possibilities to improve our life

I have a solution here. Well, It’s not an original idea. I got it from Dr. Jordan Peterson’s book: ‘12 rules for life: an antidote to chaos’

The idea is:

First, sacrifice your aim. Then aim again. This time, aim at good. Your aim now is to do whatever good you can do to make your life better than it has been.

This puts you in an upward trajectory. Now you may see all the good and more conveniently, all the evil around you.

I’ve been following it since 2 or 3 weeks now. And it has made me realize things in my life that I didn’t before.

There can be a plethora of ways to see the world. The more we experiment and see the world through different lenses, the closer to the lens we are that may lessen sufferings.

So, give up on your aim for maybe a week and act accordingly. See what greater truth you discover!