Problems – Paul Hobus

The present moment is elusive.

Being the busy bodies that we are, we often do not experience the whole reality of living. Instead of being in the moment, we are focused on future problems or past failures. We spend our lives mentally living out how we hope the big presentation at work will go tomorrow. We are all too easily caught mulling over what we could have said during an argument, instead of being here, now.

At any given moment, your brain is running at 1,000 miles per minute. That object between your head is the organic functional equivalent of a computer. With over 100 BILLION neurons between your ears, you have a lot of connections to contend with.

It makes sense that we spend a lot of time carried away, lost in thought. But that doesn’t mean it is good for us. We let our animal minds hijack higher brain function and we get stuck in the feedback loop of following whatever our mind switches too.

This constant chasing of the next thought is detrimental to our mental state. It doesn’t allow us to focus. We become like a dog chasing our own tail, constantly engaged in activity, never moving anywhere meaningful.

In my last post, I wrote about how life is either a daring adventure or nothing. When I say that, it’s meant to get you dreaming about what your life could be if you followed the examples of Thor Heyerdahl or Richard Branson when they made daring expeditions.

However, this emphasis on planning and adventure means nothing if you cannot enjoy the present moment. It means nothing if you travel to Lima, Peru if you spend the entire trip thinking about when you will return home.

The only true moment you have is the one passing you by right now. All you are able to experience is the present moment. You will always be losing time. The clock is always ticking.

Tick tock.

But when you focus on the present moment, you slow this clock. Instead of being placed in a state of angst for the future or melancholy about the past. You place yourself in control of what truly matters. The now. You feel the wind on your skin. You feel the heat of the sun. You smell the roses because you are here.

It’s so easy to get lost in thought and get worked up about the smallest impediment to your day. The car doesn’t start and suddenly your entire existence is thrown into disarray. But I promise you, when you work on living in the present moment, all these minor problems are just that, minor. Insignificant. Relative.

It’s okay if its raining. The problem isn’t the rain. It’s your attitude towards the rain. Stop worrying about getting wet and just feel the rain.

You live moment to moment anyway, why not try to feel the life inside you while it’s still there.

If you like this content, feel free to share it. You can also engage with me on Twitter @paulrhobus, or email me at hobus.paul@gmail.com.

We all know that the media does some shamelessly awful stuff just to keep our attention. Maybe it is a flaw of human beings that we don’t care about things unless they are so outrageous that they activate our fight or flight response to gain our attention.

This media manipulation has some major side effects that I have previously covered. But I want to reiterate it because of a particular side effect that I feel is very relevant to our society today.

We are making idiots wealthy and leaving the truly deserving people out to starve.

This isn’t good for our society. We all know children are impressionable, so showing them people who act like uneducated fools and end up making large amounts of money sets a bad role model.

Instead of showing off people who are achieving things and are truly worth aspiring to be like, the media panders to the lowest echelons of society and we eat it out of their hands.

It should upset you that the “cash me outside” girl is going to be a millionaire by the end of the year. It should upset you that someone like that became famous because everyone thought she was a joke. It turns out we are the joke, because we got played.

This is called a negative externality in economics. It is a cost suffered by a third party as a result of a transaction. In this case, the media company is transacting with their audience, who fund them through advertising revenue. Society is the third party. As a whole, society is bearing the cost of making stupid people influencers.

The reason why we have a surge of conspiracy thinkers who believe the earth is flat, along with other ridiculous anti-science mumbo jumbo, is because we allow uneducated people to have a platform with equal or greater strength than those who truly know what they are talking about.

So listen, we can’t take power away from those who are already famous. That isn’t how the first amendment works. I want everyone to have free speech just like me because I realize that if someone else can be limited, I can be too. I am completely against the de-platforming of a person just because of their beliefs. But if we are going to allow anyone to talk on an issue, we have to fact check them.

That means it is up to us to pass around useful information, instead of perpetuating stupidity and misleading others. This means that if you don’t have data to back up what you say, you’re wrong.

It is up to us to work in a better direction and help keep each other informed instead of allowing ourselves to be distracted by reality tv trash. We need to prevent the movie Idiocracy, not create it.

The great writer Issac Asimov once said,

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

As a society, we need to work against this. We need to push ourselves to be better instead of resting on our laurels and hoping the government will come to our aid. If anything gets you out the door for a solution it should be to realize that clearly President Trump epitomizes BOTH anti-intellectualism AND the truth that the government is not going to look out for your best interests.

It’s time for us to take action. Go out and follow informed individuals. Subscribe to Youtube channels like Today I Found Out and Vsauce. Start reading books. You’d be amazed at how much free time you actually have when you escape from the constant sales pitches of these professional plug artists.

Go outside. Read a book. Learn an instrument. Volunteer.

We spend way too much of our time cooped up watching idiots sell us things we don’t need and entertaining ourselves to death. There is a better way, it starts by taking the power away from people like this.

If you like this content, feel free to share it. You can also engage with me on Twitter @paulrhobus, or email me at hobus.paul@gmail.com.

Tag: Problems

Just Feel The Rain