Fortunes, Dogs With Jobs, and Meaning
Fortunes
Over the last 7 days, I have been wandering around Tokyo. No plan, agenda, or really anywhere to be. It’s been an experience to say the least. Culturally, the US and Japan are quite different, but in many ways, we are similar. Throughout Japan, one of the things commonly seen at many temples is Omikuji, which is essentially Japanese fortune-telling. You donate 100 Yen and then randomly choose a box with a strip of paper in it that tells your fortune, and if you don’t like it, you can tie it onto a wire near the fortune boxes. The world’s obsession with fortune-telling is interesting. Astrology, fortune cookies, numerology, tarot, tea leaf reading, and probably a million others. Humans seem wired to want to know the future's outcome now. Frankly, I think it’s a waste of time. Now, you might say, “oh wow, you’re no fun”, and to some extent, you may be right, but I think that dismissing fortune-telling as a whole is warranted.
There are 2 main reasons.
You are the creator of your own fortune. A piece of paper or a chart does not determine your life; you do. You get to decide what happens. By acknowledging fortune-telling, you are surrendering your autonomy.
Life should be a surprise. Let’s say that these fortune-telling tools work, and they tell you all that you want to know about your life. Why would you want to know? That is like skipping to the end of the movie or googling the outcome. Where is the honor in that? What makes life interesting is the surprise in it all. I don’t want to know the cards dealt to me before they are shown.
Dogs With Jobs
Do you ever have dreams that stick with you? Dreams that you wake up from and can’t get out of your head for weeks or years. A few years back, I had a dream that my dog at the time had to get a job. For whatever reason, he got a job as an accountant. He is a dog, so he was a pretty bad accountant. He couldn’t type, understand math, communicate, or sit in a chair. He tried really hard and gave it his all, but time and again he kept coming up short. His coworkers laughed and made fun of him, and eventually, he was fired. From that point on, he thought he was dumb. He truly believed that he was flawed and was really let down by himself.
Dogs are great at being dogs, but they make terrible accountants. No matter how hard they try, they will never be great accountants. There are a lot of people who live in this type of world where they are trying to be something they are not. They are in cities, jobs, or environments where they don’t belong and will never thrive. They are damned to eternal mediocrity because they are scared to choose another path.
Meaning
One of the more interesting things that not enough people know is how the language we use affects the way that we see the world. The way we interpret the world is bounded and influenced by the language we use. This concept is called Linguistic Determinism, and has some very interesting findings on how different languages and cultures interpret situations differently due to the way their language is designed. The most notable example is how Spanish speakers are less likely to blame someone for breaking something compared to an English speaker, because in Spanish the phrase translates to “the item broke” vs in English we say “he broke the item.” This is a very long-winded way to say, the language we use influences the way we experience the world.
Now, on with the message.
It’s generally safe to say most people would like to live a meaningful life. When people talk about having a meaningful life, the conversation tends to involve the word find, and that you should find meaning in your life. I think that emphasis on find is bad. You don’t find meaning in life; you create meaning in life. There is a stark difference between finding and creating. Finding is passive, creating is active. Now, you may say that this is a battle of semantics, but it isn’t. You don’t find the world you want to live in; you create it. Creating is what separates man from animals. Our ability to create is what makes us human. Creating is powerful. The conversations and internal monologues we have impact our perception of the world, and our perceptions of the world impacts the outcome of our lives. Reframe the way you see the world, and your world will change.