Everything Under the Sun

I've come to realize that life is a surprise, Where the truth is juxtaposed with lies. And on the day that you realize, That time isn't on your side, You remember the words of the wise: "With honey, you'll catch more flies". But does honey come when I compromise? Or does it just, "come in due time"? How many times must I try to win the prize? Of calling someone honey... No answer from the sky, or my mind. And no amount of thinking will tell me why. Why I tried to save her heart, but break mine. And the strangest part? My eyes are dry.  

The phrase Pavlov's Dog resonates with people as a phrase representing conditioning. Pavlov, a research scientist is the 1890's, found that the dogs he studied, not only salivated at the sight of food, but even at the possibility of food. He learned that any event or object that the dogs began to associate with food would cause salivation. Food was the unconditioned stimulus and saliva was the unconditioned response. He introduced a metronome before the dogs were being fed so they would associate the metronome with food. Eventually, he could show just a metronome and no food, and the dogs would still salivate. The metronome became the conditioned stimulus and saliva was the conditioned response.  Essentially, Pavlovian Conditioning states that you can create conditioned responses using sensory activation and association. Your brain can be trained, and since the brain is a predicting machine, you will respond accordingly. The other night I was driving home and realized the last...

Life is full of irony. Events in our life contain irony, but at a deeper level, our very biology is ironic. Think about cancer. That which we are, the growth inside of us that creates our structure, will be that which causes us to draw our final breath. Some would say this is yin and yang. Balance. But balance is ironic. Deliberately contrary. Humorous in a dark way.  I was recently very impacted by an episode of Chef's Table on Netflix. The episode followed Grant Achatz, the world renound chef and owner of Alinea. Grant is one of the most creative and unique chefs in the world. He has an incredible ability to see food as art, and present it that way for his customers, creating a culinary experience. For a chef of that level, their pallet, their ability to distinguish taste, is their most important tool, analogized to a carpenter and their hands. In the show, we learn that when Grant opened his signature restaurant in Chicago and fulfilled his dream of being one of the best in the ...

I know a lot about Fulfillment. That sounds rather pretentious and elitist but I'm actually disguising this as a double entendre about my field of work. I work in Customer Fulfillment at Amazon so I actually do know quite a bit about how to fulfill customer orders as I've studied the supply chain and devoted significant time and effort into understanding and improving various fractions of arguably the most successful fulfillment engine in history.  I know almost nothing about true fulfillment. The kind of fulfillment where you feel fulfilled. And I've been doing a lot of thinking about this lately. Fulfillment is an action but it is also a feeling. You can say, "I feel fulfilled," and you can also say "that would fulfill me." But, if you are the one seeking the feeling, is it also you doing the action? Are you fulfilling yourself to feel fulfillment? It would seem that's far too complicated a question to extrapolate an answer. Perhaps it's the wr...

A few months ago I had the 2-Year anniversary of the first of two surgeries that were part of my Proctocolectomy with Restorative J Pouch operation. Right around my 25th birthday actually. It was a  concoction of reminiscent ponderings and reveries that kept me preoccupied for a solid 48 hours. As I get older I realize that surgeries aren't uncommon. People break bones and have faulty organs. People go through some shit. I think for me, if the surgery was a one off thing, or the result of some localized issue that affected me for a year or two, it wouldn't have been so impactful. But instead, the surgeries were a culmination of a decade long struggle. They were supposed to be the final obstacle to overcome. They were supposed to fix the problem. And despite the life-long impacts that would accompany the surgery, they paled in comparison to the costs of not doing it. I'm on the recipient list for the InflammatoryBowelDisease.net emails and a few days before that anniversary ...

I read a quote today from Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor and philosopher. He's considered one of the key thinkers with regards to stoicism and one of the Five Good Emperors, coined by Machiavelli. The quote said, "Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart." It inspired me to think about fate, and upon reading his biography and his thoughts on stoicism, I feel I've refreshed my perspective on fate and my understanding of the quote.  Marcus Aurelius's emperor-ship was marked by war as were many before and after his. Nearing the end of the roman empire, his wars were wars of defense rather than wars of expansion. During the years 170 -180 AD he wrote Meditations. As the story goes, he wrote these notes as notes to himself along the trail of war, separated into 12 distinct books reflecting his own thoughts and advice on life, through the lens of stoicism. Stoicism is a philosophy th...