To live in New York must be what it’s like to live inside an audio compressor. Everything moves a such a pace, and all these diverse sources come through that one spot before they are processed and spit back out to dissipate into the world.

It doesn’t surprise me that those people can be so creative. The diverse types of people who live there, the amount of cultural influences all impinging on them from different angles.

I had a chance to listen to Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra speak. That guy has his head screwed on askew; which is a HUGE compliment.

Ben talked about possibility. The fact that everything around us is invented, made up, bullshit. The good, the bad, the ugly; it’s all an invention of someone. Whether we invent it for ourselves, or someone else invents it and forces it on us in some attempt at throwing us into the downward spiral of worrying about whether we’re good enough, measuring up, doing okay.

Things like “good enough,” “measuring up (or down),” and “doing okay” are ALL invented. It’s ALL invented. They’re simply standards someone (often someone else) puts out there for us to trip over. To feed an ego or to establish a hierarchy of existence among people. Doing the right thing, being the “right” person, being “cool” is all made up bullshit. It’s all INVENTED bullshit.

The standards that REALLY exist in the world are the standards of possibility.

How are you falling into the trap of wondering if/how you measure up, rather than inventing a possibility for yourself and others to live in?

You’ll spend your whole goddamned life trying to live up to the “measurement” world, and COMPLETELY miss the process of possibility.

Ask yourself, which is worse? Not meeting some invented standard, or not finding the possible?

And remember rule number six . . .

DON’T TAKE YOURSELF SO GODDAMNED SERIOUSLY.