Inspiration is just about a beautiful word: we use it to describe brilliant ideas we have (I got an inspiration!), about people who do great things ("Bono is an inspiration!") or goals we hope to achieve ("Latte art is my inspiration!") Apparently MJ's inspiration every day to wake up (not very early, but eventually) is to do latte art with her new coffee machine. We all have inspirations, and most of our actions are dictated by those inspirations.
For me, inspiration changes every few years. For the stretch between 2012-2015, it was to travel the world and see everything the world had to offer and get away from the mundaneness of law school, or the stretch between 2016-2017, I was inspired by dodgeball. For the last few years, it's been the stock market (and trying to make money off it, apparently not an easy endeavor). Often though, I lose track of my inspirations or just don't feel it anymore. For 10 minutes when I sat down to write this blog, I didn't know what to write because I didn't feel inspired, mostly because of the pandemic and quarantine I haven't been inspired by anything. Every day feels similar, living in the same apartment, eating the same plant-based food (not necessarily inspiring food, but at least it helps inspire me to get on a scale to see how much weight I've lost since the day before). I think that's probably true universally during the shut-down: we've lost a lot of inspirations due to not going out into the world and talking to people (still can through zoom, but something about face-to-face inspiration is just a bit different and inspires one to take action).
Recently, though, I haven't had much inspiration: part of it is kind of just grinding and slogging through the day, blocking out inspirations in my mind, and the realization that some inspirations can be distractions: traveling, for example, is expensive and doesn't really create any practical value (certainly has sentimental and aesthetic value, but does not necessarily translate into marketable skills or $$$). I kind of wish I had cool inspirations like MJ: I guess I'm just turning into a boring person. Part of the reason we decided to move to a new state, new school, new part of the country was to get some new inspirations: and then the pandemic happened, and I realized I didn't get a chance to meet anybody new here in a new city, have zero friends, and don't have much hope of making any for awhile, at least in person: Funny how the concept of showing up at a meeting or gathering and going "Hi! I'm new around here, trying to make some friends!" became so inconceivable overnight. I usually get some inspiration from my co-workers or people who I interact with Monday-Friday, but remote work sucks all that up.
There are both positive and negative inspirations (often called "carrots" and "sticks") to get people to act, and studies have shown that a combination of both is most effective, not just all of one. Just for weight loss, for example, I do inspiration from the scale saying a certain number, but negative inspiration like my co-worker once remarking that my stomach looked like it was "being happy"- definitely not flattering and motivated me to shrink that stomach if I could. Politically, Donald Trump was mostly known for using negative inspirations ("build a wall to keep out all the illegal immigrants") as opposed to President Obama who ran on an inspiring message of hope and change for the better; both apparently work. Today I found a pretty persuasive argument that Kim Jung Un had spread the rumor last month that he was suffering from bad health and may be in grave danger, as a way to see if there were any traitors in his regime and punish any who would act in any way to take over North Korea. That seems like the most negative of aspirations, to imply punishment for misbehavior.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
No comments:
Post a Comment