A Christmas Piano Tutorial
Well, sort of. As always, I was ambitious with my words last week – classic American over-promise and under-deliver – hard to shake some aspects of the culture we grow up in. I originally planned to make a tutorial on how to play music by ear, but the universe intervened, flinging my phone into a a sharp corner – no chance for the case to protect, it was a direct blow to the head, instantly fatal.
These things happen in the early blue belt life. In my first year I had two computers fail on me and now the phone. To replace the computers I built a new one, and I still regret not sharing the knowledge I gained from that experience. The phone was a bit easier – I fortunately had it insured so they sent me a new one in 24 hours. But I had to figure out how to erase the data on the broken phone and it wasn’t completely straightforward, so after figuring it out I used the opportunity to share the knowledge. It’s what the universe would want, I feel.
My friend has a theory, derived from the 2nd law of thermodynamics, that the point of all life is to dissipate the sun’s energy as efficiently as possible. Now you can twist this to say that we should consume with abandon and follow our destructive tendencies, but that would actually go against this theory – after all, we dissipate the sun’s energy best when we are alive. I believe passing our knowledge on is one of the best way’s to live in accordance with this principle of dissipation. A quote captures this nicely (if anyone knows the source let me know): “Everything that comes to us, comes to pass. Or more accurately, for us to pass on. The money in our pocket, the wisdom, objects, ideas, even opportunities, all come to us so that, at the right moment we can pass them on.”
Speaking of things we’d be better off passing on, it’s Christmas this week 😉 My Christmas Grinch piece last week sparked up some nice criticism from some readers and I’d like to share it with you while I ponder my rebuttal:
1) Why don’t YOU completely give up Christmas yourself, hurt everyone’s feelings to do so and see how it goes before you broadcast to everyone that this is the morally right thing to do.
2) On my statement, “Even if you hurt someone’s feelings you haven’t caused any real suffering” – how do you justify this? It sounds pretty cold and calculating for someone who is embracing a “heal the world” approach to life.
3) Explain to us how the blue belt life is possible to embrace without 1st capitalizing off the very system you speak against? Your parents worked hard to earn the money to give you a private education that most in the world would envy. This allowed you to be a shoe in for a profession that rapidly gave you the financial stability to retire and focus on doing activities that are more fulfilling (cooking, health, music, helping others, etc.). Shouldn’t you be praising the system that allowed you this freedom so early in life?
Wow, now we have a conversation (literally, the act of changing together). I’ll get to these in due course, but in the meantime MasterDebator is definitely a few points up on me.
