Edoardo Ballerini » change

“The .00001 Percent Solution”

Edoardo Ballerini — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 03:09:53 +0000

A woman I worked with some time ago told me that in order for me to make massive changes in my life, I would have to change myself by about two percent. Surely, she’s mad, I thought. What’s needed here is a full out 180 degree turnaround, a 100% re-imagining of who and what I am. Anything short of that is going to fall short of the mark.

She pressed on, pointing out that to her eyes and ears, I was already 98% the person I claimed to want to be. What was missing, she argued, was a very small piece. She’s mad indeed, I thought again. Why I’m listening to her at all is a mystery…

I recently had a similar conversation, though on the other side of the ledger, as somebody made the sweeping statement that she needed a full out radical change of course in her life. The earlier madness that came my way must have been contagious, because I reflexively thought, no, what you need to do is change yourself by about two percent. And I went on to make the same case that was made to me some time earlier.

Yes, two percent is the magic number, I decided. Change the self by two percent, change course by two degrees, increase your savings by two percent and watch that interest compound. It’s the small things in life that add up. Two percent it is.

But as I rode home on the subway today I was struck with another thought. Scientists and eight graders are fond of pointing out that the genetic difference between man and ape is roughly in the two percent range. If that’s the case, then this whole “change myself by two percent” is a wild over-estimation. If two percent represents the difference between hurling feces and putting a man on the moon, then I’m thinking I need to change myself by about .00001 percent.

And I think I can manage that.

For the Mineralava Musings, this is Edoardo Ballerini.

“Brain Fizz Hunger”

Edoardo Ballerini — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 01:07:02 +0000

The last growth spurt of my life happened when I was 26 years old. I ate and slept like a teenager, and for a few short weeks a typical evening was spent consuming a pound of pasta and a box of donuts, and then crashing for about half a day. I didn’t even gain any weight. It all got magically burned off into… growth. Maybe I got a little taller, I don’t know. One thing I did notice, however, was that my brain “fizzed,” as if somebody had poured champagne on it.

I’m told this has to do with the brain “re-wiring.” That is, that the brain is being asked to do things it’s not accustomed to and needs to put the threads together differently. This, evidently, leads to the bubbly sensation. And as I reflect back on that period it was also the beginning of a creative, artistic and personal growth spurt. A lot happened in the coming years, I blossomed and grew, and it’s very likely that I was suddenly thinking differently.

Alas, though, somewhere along the way, I got dull, and there was neither hunger nor fizz. There was, in fact, little feeling at all. I could have walked through a plate glass window and barely felt the effects. (Judging from a couple of scars on my my thigh that I cannot account for, I may have done just that.)

But this New Year’s Eve I was suddenly ravenously hungry once again, as I remember being those many years ago. The hunger has stayed with me for three days without pause. Every few hours or so I’ve wanted to find the nearest Bacchanalian feast and eat a wild boar while washing it down with a gourd of wine or three. And along with it has come the fizzing sensation.

I have no idea what’s going on, but I’m convinced it’s the cumulative effect of meditation and so many books challenging my assumptions and ways. Either way, I’m choosing to think of this new-found hunger as a metaphor. So… let it be indicative of the year to come. Let the hunger continue throughout the coming months. May my body grumble at me continuously, urging me to feed it, with foods, with thoughts, with ideas, with passion, with the knowable and the unknowable, the known and the unknown.

Let the hunger never cease, may my brain always bubble…

For the Mineralava Musings, this is Edoardo Ballerini.

“Note to Self”

Edoardo Ballerini — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 14:26:05 +0000

2009 was dedicated to making massive change on every level. Will 2010 hold more of the same? The pursuit has made me feel more alive than any time I can ever remember. My mind felt as if it were shot out of a canon, and my skin tingled as if the nerve-endings had been attached to a live wire. I had no idea where I was going when it started. All I knew at the beginning of the year was that if I didn’t change, I would die. You’ll forgive the dramatic turn of phrase, but I felt the “diamond bullet,” as Colonel Kurtz put it in Apocalypse Now, the moment of binding pain, beauty and clarity that turns everything on its ear.

The year came with its share of hardships and obstacles. The Buddha teaches us that suffering is inevitable, and damned if he wasn’t right. But there is the inevitable, and there is the self-imposed. We make choices. Choices about how we live, who we spend our time with, the activities of the day. And we have the ability to make changes. If a person doesn’t fit our life, we can move on. If a job doesn’t suit our ethics, we can find another. If we can’t get through the day without pain in extremis, we can work towards our happiness.

I’m a little sad to see the year come to a close. It was tremendous. I learned more about life, love, and myself, than I had in the previous ten. But it’s time to move on to the next phase, whatever that may bring. For now, I return to this simple idea: don’t stop making massive changes. Be mindful of others, be kind, but don’t stop making massive changes.

As Shakespeare reminds us:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Let us embrace them all…

“The Popeye Syndrome”

Edoardo Ballerini — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:45:53 +0000

If “The Popeye Syndrome” hasn’t been coined as a phrase yet, it should be. At very least it could be a terrible title for a film that nobody would know what it’s about. But that’s something else entirely. Anyway, I’ve been surrounded by the Popeye Syndrome lately, and it goes something like this: people resign themselves to their behavior using the logic, “I am what I am” (or as Popeye would say, “I yam what I yam.”). I’ve fallen into the trappings of the Popeye Syndrome many times. It’s seductive. All you have to do is what you already know how to do. No learning required. Just sit back, eats you spinach, punch out Bluto, save Olive Oil, rinse and repeat. And voila! You is what you is. I think Popeye got his catch phrase from Aristotle’s treatise on the nature of things but he skipped a few pages towards the end. Probably exhausted from all that brawling, poor guy. Yes, it is the nature of an acorn to become an oak, and for fire to burn upwards, but the acorn-to-oak and fire are, in point of fact, in a constant state of change. They isn’t what they is. If you don’t believe that change is happening, I suggest you take an apple, leave it out for three weeks, then eat it.

The Popeye Syndrome is the most debilitating idea anybody can ever entertain. People change radically all the time. I can hear the cynics chortling in the background. Ha! People are inherently selfish. Bad things happen. My girlfriend would never do that with me, no matter how drunk I got her. That’s fine. I’m not suggesting the world can be flat tomorrow. But things that once made you cry can make you laugh. Things that you once thought ugly can be beautiful. And fears you once held can give you strength. Shakespeare, who was a shade brighter than Popeye, tells us “There’s nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” I nearly had a bloody fight over the interpretation of this line a couple of years ago. Since I still have my teeth, I’m confident I triumphed in that contest, so I’m sticking to my idea that it means anything and everything is interpretive. Anything and everything. The death of a loved one is painful because we believe it to be so. It is not inherently painful. It’s our feelings and thoughts about the event. Your belief that you’ll never amount to anything, or be happy, is only a belief, not a fact. Big difference.

You can change. You can change anything you want to about yourself. It takes work, but it gets easier the more you do it. But it starts with the understanding that it’s possible. Hey, you isn’t what you was when you started reading this.

For the Mineralava Musings, this is Edoardo Ballerini.