Something I realized after I made my prior post, and it deserves a post of its own, so here we are, is that not only do intelligent people tend to focus on more esoteric and obscure topics, they tend to sometimes get “caught up in details” about shit that doesn’t matter.

In many ways, why worry about how and if we will ever “get to Mars and beyond?” Why worry about things like “Saving the West” or “doing it for the elderly/children/future” crowd? When you think about, or at least when I think about it, my elders and ancestors didn’t worry too much about what happened over a hundred years ago, nor did they worry about what was going to happen a hundred years after they were gone. They just worried about what was going on around them in “real time.” They were more concerned with keeping food on the table and keeping the vehicles up and running.

A lot of guys out there that are very intelligent guys are more concerned about “how to get da gurlz” than whatever guy first came up with the first idea of human behavior and why that behavior is. It can be difficult and distracting to wax poetic about the finer points of philosophy when you have a hard dick and no way of getting release besides masturbation.

When I talk about “Let ‘Em Burn,” it’s not only about letting people fail on their own and letting them make their own mistakes, it’s also about figuring out what is important to you. What really matters to you. Figuring out what “is” versus what “ought to be.”

For whatever reason, I personally get more satisfaction for myself and for others when I hear that they figured something out versus all of the detail of how they got there. You got there? Great! I don’t really care how you did it, just that you did. I’m certain that I’m missing something important much of the time when I start to tune out when the details start coming in, but that’s the crux of the matter for me I guess. The devil is always in the details and I don’t like getting bogged down in it unless I’m still trying to figure it out for myself. Once I figure it out I want to move on to the next thing. Dammit, I don’t want to sit around rehashing how I got there.

Maybe this is just my long and rambling way of saying:

Figure out what really matters to you and then do that. Don’t get caught up in all of the details if you can help it. Most of the details aren’t going to reveal themselves until you are “right in the middle of it,” and those details are going to be things that you probably had no idea of what they were or what they were going to be. You can’t plan for everything and you won’t be able to anticipate everything that comes your way. We tend to worry about shit that never happens and we handle whatever it is when it shows up.

A recent example of what I’m trying to convey happened to me over this last weekend.

Friday evening, I was going to hop in my car and get myself something to eat. The place I was going to go to was close, maybe two minutes away. So I grabbed my keys, went out the door, and promptly locked myself out of my house. You see, I grabbed my keys alright, but I grabbed the wrong keys. I grabbed my work keys instead of my house keys and my car keys. I knew it when I went to lock the deadbolt to my house and saw the keys I was holding.

Normally this wouldn’t have been a huge problem except that I had left my phone in the house as well. Since I was only literally going “around the block,” there was no need for me to have my phone on me, except that I did have a need.

Technology is great, but there are certain drawbacks to it as well.

When I was younger, before the day and age of smartphones, I had phone numbers memorized. I still do. I can still pick up a phone and dial my grandmother who has been dead for over five years. I have no idea who has her phone number now, but I could dial it without even thinking about it. Same could be said about several childhood friends phone numbers. I could call them even though they moved away over twenty years ago and they didn’t take their numbers with them.

I couldn’t call my Dad though, and that’s because I don’t have his phone number memorized. My phone has it though and it was currently sitting on my coffee table behind a locked door. Something else that I realized at that time was that even if I had my Dad’s phone number memorized and I went to a neighbor and asked to borrow their phone in order to call him, he was most likely out with his girlfriend and wouldn’t be able to help me at that time.

The only option that I had available to me was to start walking. Two and a half miles later I ended up at my Dad’s house where I could get my spare key to my house. He wasn’t home at the time, of course, but I was able to get the key and then I had to hoof it back to my house, two and a half miles yet again. By the time I got home it was getting dark and turning chilly. I can only imagine what a predicament it would have been had I locked myself out of my house in the dead of winter and me not wearing a coat or jacket.

I had a little over an hour to go over and over in my mind what I need to do in order to not have to walk five miles to get a spare key in the event that I lock myself out of my house again. Walking five miles is doable, but I really don’t want to repeat it. It’s not an ideal “plan b.”

I figured something out that will work for me and I’m in the process of implementing it as I write this. It’s not totally ideal, but it will work. It’s better than walking five miles roundtrip or busting a window to get back into my house. The point is, while I was walking and mulling it over, I wasn’t thinking about “how are we going to get to Mars” or even “how do I get da gurlz?” None of that shit mattered. I barely focused on anything except “What do I do so I don’t have to walk five miles to get a key?”

Small side-note: I’m walking and avoiding getting hit by cars and people were out, not “sheltering in place.” Most of them were hiding behind their car windows and masks. But there were two women that I passed, one of them complimented me on my shirt, and had I not been pressed to get my spare key, I would have stopped and tried to pick at least one of them up. But I had a different urgency at the time and different priorities.

Neither of the women were wearing masks. Apparently they didn’t give a fuck about COVID-19 either. There’s hope for humanity yet.

KISS. Keep It Simple Stupid. Stay in the moment instead of wondering and/or worrying about a bunch of things that ultimately don’t matter, never did, and never will. You can keep distracting yourself with your interpretation of what some dead philosopher said over a hundred years ago, or you can figure out where to stash a key in the event you lock yourself out of your house. You can distract yourself with visions of flight beyond the speed of light, or you can notice that the girl not giving a fuck about a bug is not wearing a mask and she’s smiling at you, and now is your chance Bubba.

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