“I’m obsessed with winning, with discipline, with achieving. That’s what this country’s all about, that’s what New York’s all about — fighting for everything.”

That’s a quote from George Steinbrenner that I saw in an obituary on Sports Illustrated’s website today.  It seemed to sum up his general attitude toward life, but it also related to the overall tone of the article: over the course of three pages, there were only three fleeting moments where anything remotely warm and fuzzy was said about Steinbrenner.  Two of those moments only had to do with his money and were sandwiched between less flattering descriptions:

“Steinbrenner would harass an employee to no end, humiliating and abusing them at his whim. Then he’d send their kids through college or hire them back with a bonus.”

“Steinbrenner was often the most-hated man in sports, a fitting title that he wore well. He was combative, belligerent, charitable and ruthless.”

Wait, did you catch the word “charitable” in that last quote?  How nice.

I am going to die someday.  So are you.  Some people might find that statement morbid, but it’s just a simple truth.  As many before me have already noted, it’s one of the few things we know for sure in our lives.  It’s actually surprising to me how many people get scared away from the topic of death when it’s so closely intertwined and inseparable from life.  If all goes well, I won’t die any time soon.  But if I kicked the bucket tomorrow, what would my obituary say?

Steinbrenner was an incredibly successful man.  He had more money than I will probably ever dream of.  He owned one of the most storied franchises in all of sports and played a big hand in restoring them to legendary status.  He was driven, ambitious, and (in his own words) “obsessed with winning.”  But the very attitude he cherished in himself meant he was remembered (by some) as a tyrant.

Granted, there were probably other memorials that were significantly more flattering.  And to be sure, Steinbrenner likely had many people in his life who loved him (and the purpose of this blog is not to pick on him, as I have no personal agenda there).  But the fact remains that even the more flawed characters tend to see their shortcomings mentioned only in passing when the media sums up their lives.  And seeing that the most influential publication in Steinbrenner’s chosen industry could write such a scathing remembrance, I couldn’t help but think about my own life, incomparable as it may be.

In the grand cosmic scheme of things, our lives are infinitesimal.  The universe is a place vast beyond our imagination, with light-years separating the stars.  Our tangible successes on Earth can be fun and rewarding, but they don’t really mean anything.  Money (and so many other ways we measure success) doesn’t really matter much.  Creating the next killer iPhone app can be nice, and it can make some people’s days slightly more convenient, but it’s not the yardstick of true success.  The only thing that has a real, meaningful and lasting impact is what you mean to the people around you.  The world won’t flinch if you win the lottery, but having a real consequence on people’s lives can create a ripple effect that spreads across the globe.  A gesture as simple as smiling at a stranger can start spreading the love like knocking over that first domino.

Each day creates many easy opportunities to be an asshole.  It’s much easier not to hold the door for someone, or to scowl at a cashier when you’re having a bad day, or to have a general “fuck you” attitude to people who get in your way.  But I say the world has enough assholes already.  It doesn’t need one more.  So I try to make sure that’s at the top of my daily to do list.  And I may fail from time to time, but that doesn’t stop me from trying.  Because nothing else is really gonna matter much after I’m gone, anyway.

A successful life to me is one where I’ve done my best to explore, learn, share and give a little love whenever I can.  There is no example of “concrete” material success that I could achieve that somebody else couldn’t match or surpass, but nobody can take away the kind of life I will live.  I’m sure George Steinbrenner was a guy with plenty of redeeming qualities.  But if I ever have an obituary like his, I’ll have considered myself a failure–no matter what level of success it appears I’ve had.

As John Lennon so aptly observed:

“There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done
Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung
Nothing you can say, but you can learn how to play the game
It’s easy…
All you need is love.”

Touché.

Yesterday I welcomed a new baby into my life: “Sunny,” my brand spanking new guitar!  I’m now an official endorser of Music Man guitars, a great company whose instruments I’ve used almost exclusively for years.  They’re all hand-crafted, quality American-made guitars (their factory is in San Luis Obispo, CA).

Read more about my new acquisition here.

The Buddhist concept of emptiness is one that is often misinterpreted by Westerners (much like karma, which has little to do with most people’s idea of a cosmic force of justice). Emptiness doesn’t mean that objects in the material world don’t exist, but rather that objects don’t contain inherent existence in and of themselves, independent of other phenomena. For example, a wooden table certainly exists, but it isn’t a table by its own virtue; it is made of four posts and a board, and even as these pieces are combined to create a table, it still is only a table because we have designated it so in our minds. Therefore, the table itself has emptiness, and lacks inherent existence.

This simplified version from a non-expert notwithstanding, the example serves to prove a very simple point about our lives. Things aren’t the way they are because they inherently exist as so, but because we assign our own thoughts, prejudices, biases and experiences to them. Materially, for example, the same object could be a table to me, but a bed to someone else. The same goes for things in our day to day lives that we assign as “good” or “bad.” One man’s trash, as they say, is another man’s treasure.

The upshot of all this is an empowering conclusion: by assigning our own mental biases to our surroundings on an everyday basis, we are literally creating our own world around us. Which means, with a little mental muscle flexing, we can also change anything in our lives simply by adjusting our mindset.

An enemy is not an enemy by virtue of his existence; he is an enemy because you have designated him so in your mind. A problem is only a problem if you choose for it to be one. We may not have a lot of control over what happens to us in life, but we have complete control of how we react, how we interpret, and how we create our mental state in any given situation.

With compassion, mindfulness, and positivity, we can turn our universe into something completely different without lifting a finger. That’s the power of emptiness.

Not too long ago, I was reading a book called The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Written by Oliver Sacks (a professor of neurology and psychiatry who also wrote about the effect of music on the human brain in a book called Musicophilia), the book is a collection of accounts of patients suffering from various right-hemisphere brain disorders that the author came across during his many years of psychiatric work.

I found most of the short stories fascinating, and a few of them terrifying. One chapter told the tale of an older woman who had songs “playing” uncontrollably in her head all the time. The titular story described a man who, although he could see just fine, had a condition where his brain couldn’t take multiple visual cues and combine them into concepts; he could see a nose, eyes and a mouth, but he couldn’t comprehend what a face was, and could only recognize people’s identities after he heard them speak.

One of the more frightening stories was about a woman who spontaneously lost her sense of proprioception, which basically meant she no longer felt as though her own body was an extension of herself. Formerly a very athletic person, the patient could now only walk if she was looking at her own feet, could only use her hands if she had them in her visual field. A frightening prospect, even if it’s unlikely to happen to any of the rest of us.

But the scariest of all was the story of a man who suffered from amnesia to the extent that he hadn’t formed new memories in decades. Much like the movie Memento, you could have a conversation with him, leave the room for ten minutes, and then return only to find that he had no recollection of meeting you before.

Sacks describes seeing an underlying sadness in this man, who couldn’t have any real idea of the affliction he had, but appeared to have a vague sense that something was constantly amiss in his life. Though in his sixties, years of heavy alcohol abuse had erased his memory since he was about 17. As a result, he thought he was still in the Navy, and seeing his image in a mirror would only cause him to freak out, wondering who the old man was in the reflection.

It got me thinking a bit about what makes me “me” and what makes you “you.” What is our identity if it’s not our own memories? Do we not become the people we are through learning from mistakes, growing with experience, and fulfilling our lives with the adventure that is living? What is left of me if my memory is taken away?  What meaning could my life have if I don’t really know who I am?

There are many horrible diseases that can do horrible things to the human body, but the ones that scare me the most are the ones like Alzheimer’s that steal your own memory away. Because I realize now that my memory is my very identity. Taking that from me is as good as taking away my entire life and everything I’ve worked for.

Value greatly the memories of your life, the good, the bad and the mundane. Without them, each day is starting from scratch.

No, I did not record a cover of the Rolling Stones song “Under My Thumb.”  Swap in a “the” for the “my” and you have the title of my newest song, “Under the Thumb.”  You’ll notice the two compositions have no resemblance beyond a couple words in the title.

Please take a gander at the Music page to listen to the new tune.  And while you’re listening, you can catch up on some of my monthly blog posts that you haven’t read in a while.  Or re-read all the ones that you loved, which has probably been most of them.

If for some stupid reason the audio on the Music page isn’t working, kindly let me know and then head over to my Facebook or MySpace page, both of which also have the song.

Enjoy.

To follow your dreams, you’ll probably have to make sacrifices. It’s generally inevitable. Ideally, you’ll recognize when you’re making sacrifices, and you’ll choose to make smart ones. I’d imagine, for example, that sacrificing some free time to work overtime hours to pay off a student loan is probably a reasonable decision one might make, whereas sacrificing spending time with your family so that you can become a Wall Street millionaire may prove unfulfilling in the long run.  (Although maybe not.  I’m not a millionaire, so I can only speculate.)

I’ve certainly made some sacrifices in my life. I chose to forego the typical college experience, for example (you’ll have to trust me when I say that attending a small school consisting mostly of male students and entirely of musicians wasn’t the normal college situation). I’ve also been forfeiting financial stability, large chunks of time and freedom that are devoted to being in a band, and potentially the ability to maintain certain relationships due to touring, music commitments, etc.

But if you’re making sacrifices in the name of pursuing the life you love, they shouldn’t really feel like sacrifices. You can recognize the trade-offs being made, but it should also be easily recognized that you’ve made these choices because they result in the least amount of sacrifice in your life in the long run. While a sacrifice can cause a temporary strain on your life, it should be noted that they represent something that, if you had chosen to keep it, would mean the loss of some essential part of your current path.

The moment I start feeling oppressed by my own choices, I know I have a problem. The moment I start feeling a sense of entitlement to anything simply because of the things I have chosen to deprive myself of, I know I have a problem. I have willingly left some things behind because I weighed my options and realized there is no better choice than the one I am making right here, right now with myself. If at some point it seems that what I’ve given up is more important than what I’m doing, I’ll have no choice but to switch gears.

I sometimes think about what I may be giving up over the coming years. I think of what it means for my life, and I accept it. Any sense of entitlement that comes from feeling like I’m owed something for the sacrifices I’ve made will only lead to resentment, and that will only make me miserable in the end. Life’s too short not to enjoy the ride.

Jerry Seinfeld sums it up rather nicely in my favorite scene from the film Comedian when he tells a great story about the Glenn Miller Orchestra: watch the video here.

The Internet has created global musical anarchy, and I am happy to be a part of it.  To read about my comparison of the web to Elvis Presley’s hips, please check out my post on the Shaimus blog.