Brady Helps

I see drivers on the freeway driving so fast and so recklessly that I wonder if they care about us — the others. They maneuver in ways that suggest they're playing a video game in their heads — real life "Grand Theft Auto." I wonder, what is their maximum fulfillment they're reaching for? Perhaps its the reckless driving itself.

Thinking about myself. In the past, I drove aggressively. I don't remember caring too much about other drivers. I cared about myself — my experience getting from Point A to Point B fastest, overtaking everyone else, beating the traffic... feeling in control. Perhaps I thought I didn't have much control over my life then.

In the past, this type of driver might have puzzled me... even irritated me. Since thinking more about unconditional love, I think differently now. Now, I just think "I hope this driver achieves the greatest possible fulfillment, whatever that may be" and then I allow myself to feel unconditional love for the driver internally and I move out of the way and get safe. Unconditional love is about what's inside me — internal, it's not about how I behave or accept from others — external.

You ask: could the greatest possible fulfillment be more reckless driving that kills someone? Perhaps. Though, I suspect that reckless driving is a substitute for what that person actually misses — acceptance, autonomy, self-sufficiency, perhaps something else. And there are many ways to achieve those ends without risking the lives of others. I wish for the driver to achieve their ends. And I advocate for means that don't hurt other people's ability to achieve their greatest possible ends too.

This idea scales, and as it scales it gets harder. Think of the worst type of person you know. Yes, even they, have some type of fulfillment they're trying to achieve. And yes, you can internally hope they achieve that fulfillment without having to hurt other people in the process. And yes, you don't need to externally accept their behavior towards you and/or towards others. And yes, that's easier said than done.

Holding unconditional love for the worst of humanity ≠ accepting injustice and horrific behavior.

And the friction of feeling both at the same time is a major part of our experience here. And don't bother trying to strike a balance. Unconditional is unconditional.

While walking, I notice people and how they behave. I notice if they look at me. I notice if they just look ahead. In the past, I wrote about people looking away when I approached. It puzzled me. I now developed a clear idea of how to think about that — unconditional love.

I like Julia Mossbridge's definition for unconditional love: "The benevolent desire that you achieve the greatest possible fulfillment, whatever that might be." And, people while walking, may have a concept of personal fulfillment that involves a walk that's to themselves — focused on their thoughts, their world, and filtering out everything else. And, if I'm to be a practitioner of unconditional love, perhaps the best thing I can do is to develop a heartfelt desire that those people have that moment they need to themselves — nothing else needs to change.

You might call this practice "empathy" and perhaps it touches empathy; I prefer "unconditional love". I call it unconditional love because my desire for the person I'm thinking about to achieve their maximum fulfillment doesn't require me to do anything about it; and, it doesn't require the person to have to change. Said more simply: it's allowing things to be as they are without anything having to change. Philosophical readers might see this as a nod "Stoic de-attachment", products of Jesuit education might say sounds half-like "Ignatian indifference", others might see it as "loving kindness." However you see it, the simple act of allowing people and their journeys to be as fulfilling for them as it can be, is a beautiful and generous act.

I'll write more on unconditional love in a subsequent post... for now... these are my musings.

Playing piano is easy. The hardest part of playing at the Abbey Resort for Sunday Brunch is knowing what to play, how to play it, and when to play it. There are a lot of factors that go into those decisions: age, types of people, proximity of people to each other, temperature, weather, culture, what I played just before, etc. I decide what to do with reasonably high confidence because I have experience -- I know what's in good taste.

Another pianist could show up for Sunday Brunch with the same education, experience, and repertoire as me but come across horribly. They might not have good taste.

There are lots of pianists out there, all of them play great, and not all of them have great taste.

How do we know someone has good taste? That's not up to me, I can't decide that for myself. It's you -- the listener -- you tell me through your tips, your requests, your feedback that what I'm playing works, and is in good taste. The reason why any musician or artist becomes popular is not their skill or their education, it's their ability to produce something with good taste.

It's easy to build anything with AI now. There are so many people out there shopping their AI products. Just like pianists, there are so many AI products that all promise to revolutionize the world. What makes one better than the other? Taste, and the taste makers are humans.

And could AI replace humans as taste makers? I doubt that too; how do you program the experience you -- personally -- feel when you hear a great song and the memories it brings up? As far as I know; you can't.

Because being human is anything but artificial.

The difference between a pianist that charges $125-$150 an hour and the one that charges $75 an hour is not money; hopefully, it's quality. A premium product requires a premium price. If every pianist charges $1, then how do we differentiate the good ones from the bad ones? A human has to listen and discern.

AI is no different. It's easy to build anything in AI.

And since nearly anyone can build anything with it; how do we know what's good versus not good?

AI can't replace taste.

Suppose you are unable to go about your day because of a serious injury. Now suppose people come to help you -- cook for you, give you money to cover your bills, etc. You might think yourself undeserving of such kindness. Do you accept the gifts? Do you turn them away? Do you ask for help? Are you uncomfortable?

What if this wasn't about you, and entirely about self-interest?

The people who want to give to you want to be helpful to you. Is it possible they could also enjoy the feeling of being supportive to you? That the joy of giving and sharing and helping produces a feeling for them that makes them want to do more of it. That sounds to me like giving and sharing isn't for you, but it's for them. The outcome of this self-interest is an action that benefits you and possibly others -- it's not about you.

And since it's not about you, how do you deal with feeling undeserving? You'll probably express that you don't deserve this kindness, and your friends will tell you that you're wrong and you do. Don't let them gaslight you; you know your reality. Instead, channel this feeling of yours, take the gifts you receive, and pay it forward to those you believe DO deserve it. You leverage your undeservingness to help others; and your friends are never the wiser.

So let your friends be selfish, accept the meal you don't deserve, and have fun paying it forward to someone you believe does.

Garlic aioli. I know it's a distinct food product. But, wouldn't it be more economical to use mayo?

I recently went to a restaurant that served a carrot hummus. Carrot hummus, made from carrots roasted to a perfect Maillard-forward reaction then mashed 200 times by hand, old-fashion artisan style. Garlic aioli, crème fraîche, and first press organic tahini are added to the carrot-pâté and whipped into a hummus-like spread. This will set you back $50.

That's how I heard the description. My partners didn't hear it that way. I think it was the "crème fraîche".

I'm sure the restaurant prepared the hummus the way they described it. It tasted good. But would it have tasted as good if they told me it was "carrot dip"? Probably!

Roast or boil some carrots. Mash them up. Add some mayo, add some tahini, and add some sour cream. Maybe salt, pepper, and some cumin. Boom! Carrot dip. Why make it so complicated?

I can't ask that question though. Social norms prohibit me from confronting the server and saying "who are you kidding here? First... hummus actually means 'chickpeas' in Arabic and what you're calling 'hummus' is usually known as 'hummus bi tahini' and second, why not just be honest that this entire explanation is to justify the $20 price tag on what's essentially roasted carrots mashed with tahini and some mayo and sour cream?"

So, I sit. Quietly . Calmly. I smile. But, inside I am boiling and roiling with discomfort seeing this obvious asymmetry and even more, observing the obvious absurdity —

Without the long and bougie description, would it have tasted just as good if it was called "carrot dip?"

That said, I pleased there was a course of artisan-milled, slow-fermented, twice-proofed wheat flour slabs, toasted to a Maillard-forward golden crust, accompanied by a whipped, cultured cream fat spread.

I tried my hand at using Notebook LM today. Of course, I had to make a video of my favorite artist to roast.

BTS

If you haven't played around with AI, I recommend it. Sure, it's easy to ask it to check your grammar or write emails. But you can get more gains by developing your prompting game.

The prompt I use to get that video involved asking Notebook LM to act like a Boston Consulting Group management consultant and develop a year strategy to de-throne BTS and replace it with a new artist. The audience of the video is an A & R executive. I gotta say, it did a "decent enough" job. I laughed.

Mad love to my ARMY friends. I feel you're misguided. But... I respect your choices and your artist religio- I mean, preferences.

Money: a current medium of exchange in the form of coins and banknotes; coins and banknotes collectively.

I don't carry around many coins or banknotes. When I pay for things, I often use a card or my phone.

In my apartment, there are no mountains of coins or banknotes. And, I don't physically see the money I get paid from my day job. I sometimes see banknotes from gigs.

I know I need money to support a roof over my head, food, and clothes. And when I die, I won't have much use for it anymore.

I think I see money as a form of mass, and with that mass I can create energy. I need energy to do things. So the more mass I ahve, presumably, the more energy capacity I have to do things.

Like you, I stress about money sometimes. Eventually, I won't be able to work and I'll need enough mass stored that I can convert into energy without work generating more mass.

What's interesting to me — is that stressing about money causes me to use energy. I am using energy from my mass reserve thinking about my mass reserves. I'll need to keep generating more reserves to make up for what I lost through stress and what I'll need when I no longer work. I'm deploying a finite resource — energy — towards an abstract concept that I'm privileged to see as an abstraction.

So here I am thinking and writing, spending energy, about a thing that I sometimes stress about that I rarely physically see yet I need if I want to be able to maintain this blog and survive in the modern world.

For some, divorcing ones's self from the grip money has on one's life seems a wise move. Perhaps, the excess energy could be shared with those operating at a deficit. Not a political position, just my musing for the day.

In his letters, Seneca quoted Posidonius:

"In a single day there lies open to men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes.' In the meantime cling tooth and nail to the following rule: (do) not give in to adversity, never trust prosperity, and always take full note of fortune's habit of behaving just as she pleases, treating her as if she were actually going to do everything it is in her power to do. Whatever you have been expecting for some time comes as less of a shock."

My version which brings me more comfort: In a single day, there lies open to you, opportunities to learn more than can ever be learned by the person who believes they know it all. And, while you're learning, remember that time will pass as it does and things will happen as they happen — best not to be surprised by what life shows you.

My version for maximum comfort:

• Learn as much as you can because you don't know as much as you think.
• Life's a shit show, so stop crying and work at making it a little better.

"We need to talk."

If you ever heard or seen that message, you might have estimated that there are bad consequences to follow that talk. Perhaps you're getting fired, breaking up, a loved one is diagnosed with a terminal disease and has days to live, someone died, you have been diagnosed with a terminal disease and have hours to live, you're partner is pregnant, you aren't getting a bonus, you're losing the house, BTS finally retired, a war broke out, someone bombed someone else, the list goes on.

See how quickly yours and my thoughts can go from 0 to 1,000,000,000?

And, see how quickly you and I can decide that things really are 1,000,000,000?

Suppose you have the talk and you learn that something bad has happened — let's call it "level 50 bad". That you means you twenty million times overestimated the badness! Why and to what end? Probability need to calibrate our estimations of bad down a bit.

I know I'm picking on you. You're not alone though. I do this too. We all overestimate bad.

I am not saying that things can't be bad, or that things might not be really bad. I am saying, you and I are likely overestimating and deciding that it's worse than it is. I see that as arrogant.

Why should we be so confident to believe our overestimations? What do we know that the people living the slog don't know? And since we believe our estimations of bad, why are the people living it underrating their experience? Think about it. It's horribly arrogant on our part. I'm routinely told by my team that I overestimate how bad BTS is on our culture, and they're right, I should probably join them to see how bad it really is for them (Hat tip to Lizzo, a faithful reader).

And I believe you and I need to check ourselves. We need to remember that we overestimate and we need to calibrate down. I am advocating for being closer to what's actually happening than further away from it. It's easier to move through life when you see it as it is than how we intend it to be.

Easier said than done.