You’re a mash-up

Your life is not original.  You’re a mash-up of your mother and father.

You’re a mash-up of what and who you let into your life.

You are influenced by all these things you pay attention to and put together to be you.

That’s cool.

Knowing this, are there ingredients you’d like to change or add?

What happened at our Baja 1000 race this year?

Everybody is asking me, since I have not written about it yet.  Well, let’s just say that sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes you don’t finish because you broke the car at mile 55.

That’s life.

I hit a rock at mile 30 and got a flat.  Dustin changed the flat in 4 minutes “flat”.  So I was now babying the car a little because we would not see our chase until mile 80 where we could change the spare out.  If we got another flat, we would be in trouble. (Flashback to last year where we got two flats at the same time.)  

So we come around this corner of this easy graded road and a rut from the big 1000 hp trucks begins.  We are in it.  There is no steering out of it. Ruts are very common.  It is silty and you don’t want to slow down and get stuck.   The rut goes to three feet deep and at the end it’s a hard ledge exit.  There must have been a boulder underground.  The hard exit was hidden by all the loose silt in the bottom of the rut. 

BANG!  The sound of metal splitting.  We pull over.  Dustin gets to work on a broken ball joint.  While we are there I hear a car coming around the corner and hit record on my phone and get a buggy hitting the same rut and flipping over.  I runover and help the guys, and three of us manage to flip it right side up.  They regroup and get going.  Dustin is still working on the car and another buggy comes around the corner and hits the same rut.  He flips and rolls the car three times.  I go help them.  They are on their roof.  A father and son in their first race – welcome to Baja.  We couldn’t flip them over with man power so we flagged a passing race truck, tied a strap on to his bumper, he pulled them over real quick and left.  They got going.  Both buggies actually finished the race!

Meanwhile, Dustin went to put everything back together after having to take the hub off to get the ball joint out, and was wondering, “What is wrong with he geometry of all this – why won’t it go together right?”  Then he looks toward the center of the car, and the frame is split open.  “Damn!” (or something like that.) 

Race over.

Dustin tied the front end together with a strap, and to add insult to injury we got a flat tire on the same corner trying to pick through the brush to get back on course – a sharp stick.  The local racer told us where we could pick up a graded road back to the nearest paved road.  Dustin sat on the drivers side rear corner of the car to take weight off the badly wounded front passnger side and I nursed it at 7 mph for an hour and a half back to a place where the trailer could pick us up.

When we got to the road, there was a big tent a family had set up to serve food to race fans and race crews.  It was a whole family affiar out there along the dusty road.  I got a chicken tamale.  I am not much of a tamale fan, but I must say, it was heaven.  He asked for $6.50 for the tamale and Dustin’s burrito – I gave him $20.  It was worth $50 then and there.

It got dark and the crew finally got there to pick us up.  Only two of six in our class finished.  Dang.  

Welp…

There is always next year.

It was an opportunity to practice  – stoicism, controlling the controllables…not shooting the second arrow where you beat yourself up with the story of woe…I think I did pretty well.

Next, I will be racing the Dakar Rally in Saudi Arabia.  It’s 13 days – about 500 miles a day – 6500 miles.  In that race I do not seek to win.  Finishing IS winning there.  But it is grueling.  It wears down all men to the nub.  I will back off 20% and go for a Sunday drive to see the Saudi Arabia countryside each day.  That’s what I am telling myself.  

Check out the Dakar Rally highlights on YouTube.  It starts Jan 3.

Uncle Gordon’s hand pinch test.

In my Uncle’s scrapbook, he wrote about an older friend of his at work.  They were talking about getting older.

His friend showed him the back of his hand and said “Do this”.  Then he pinched the skin on the back of his hand.  This skin was thin, and creased up easily, and when he let it go, the crease remained for a few seconds and slowly went down.

“Now you do it” he said to my younger Uncle.  My Uncle Gordon did as instructed, and when he let go, the plump skin instantly went down, no lingering crease.

“See” his friend said.  “It will happen to you too”.

My Uncle wrote that he thought “that’s never happening to me”.  But he wrote this story when he was older, and when he knew it DID happen to him, and how silly he was to think otherwise.

Time…..it is happening to all of us.  I think the recognition of that, and our context in it, can instruct us on what we should be doing now, and to avoid surprises, disappointments and regrets.

My Uncle’s Scrapbook

Last week I received a great gift in the mail.  My aunt Kiki in Florida sent me my Uncle Gordon’s scrapbook.

My Uncle Gordon passed away some years ago after living to a good old age.  He was my Dad’s oldest brother.

I have only seen him a handful of times in my life.  He lived far away from us in tiny Wassaic New York (near Kent Connecticut), and then moved to Florida after retirement.  I think he was a genius, and I think, that he didn’t think so.

Uncle Gordon was an architectural draftsman and contruction manager for a living, and an artist – a painter for a passion hobby.  When he passed away, my Aunt gave me over half of his 110 paintings.  Most of them are “cowboys and indians” scenes and painting of the old west.  There is one civil war scene that, like many others, really evokes emotion and thought.  My Aunt said he would retreat into a flow state for long periods deep into a project, and come out with an amazing piece of work.  He was a master.

Well, here comes this scrapbook/journal in the mail.  My Aunt Kiki said it was the essence of Gordon, and she just couldn’t part with it before.  I eagerly dove in each night, exploring my Uncle’s thoughts and gifts.  There were drawings, stories, thoughts, and science.  He wrote about World War II, Hitler, the names of each man in the photo at Iwo Jima, photosynthesis, how man is destroying the earth, walks in the woods with his dogs, drew sketches of modern homes and enclosed motorcycles, and how he despised the developers he worked for, for their lack of regard for the environment.  

He drew sketches of people that showed their whole life on their faces.  He wrote about the sinking of the Bismarck, 9/11, and his softball games, which he played as a senior late into his years.  He hit a home run at age 77!  It was a look into the man who had painted all the paintings I received some years earlier.  I think my uncle was very humble, and I think his skills were greater than he thought they were.  

I cherish his work and am honored to be its keeper until I pass it on to the next Janesky one day.

There are so many people out there, playing their hand and being an important part of the tapestry of humanity.  

Well done Uncle Gordon.  Rest in peace.

What makes life meaningful?

For many, the first half of life is about identifying who we are, and accumulating resources.

For most, there is a time when those ideas fade, and a new pursuit emerges – meaning.

When we are young, we think we will live forever.  When we come to really understand that is not true, we start to think differently.

We start to shift our focus on doing things that make life worthwhile – other people, causes we believe in, and simple, beautiful things fully experienced.

What makes life worthwhile for you right now?

No Mud, No Lotus

There’s a great book called “No Mud, No Lotus” by Thich Nhat Hanh.  It is a gentle but profound guide showing that suffering and happiness are intertwined.  The hard stuff – the mud – is where we grow stronger, kinder and more awake.

One idea that is very important is, “Don’t launch the second arrow”.  We suffer first from what happens – and then from our judging, resisting, or refusing of that pain.  Let go of the extra suffering.

So, something happens that is not good.  It hurts.  Well, don’t then replay it over and over in your mind, saying it is not fair, resisting it instead of accepting it, and creating a victim narrative.  That’s the second arrow you should not launch.

I recall Brian Tracy saying, “Never get upset about something that is in the past.”  It’s the same thing.

Observe, learn, and move forward.  Don’t beat yourself with it over and over again.

Are you still suffering from “second arrows” you have launched on yourself?

We should all be grateful for this…

Happy Thanksgiving!  

This is a time to reflect on what we are grateful for.  In counting our blessings though, we often forget a whole host of things that we should be grateful for – what DIDN’T happen.

I woke up this morning.  That’s a good thing.  I didn’t die last night.

Look at all the accidents that were prevented by people doing the right thing.

How about all the health problems you don’t have?

No bombs were dropped on your town last night.  Your company didn’t go out of business (I don’t think…)

A violent criminal didn’t break into your house this year.

We could go on and on.  We have many blessings.  Chief among them are the things that did not happen to us.

This Thanksgiving I am grateful for many things.  My wife Marie is first.  My kids.  And all the people I know.  I have many friends, and that is a true joy.  I love to get together with bunches of them and have fun.  I think collecting friends is the true measure of success and the ultimate thing to collect!

You’re the casting director of your story

You get to say who is part of your story and how much.

Keep quality people around you. 

Stay around people who are a plus sign, and get away from people who are a minus sign.

You own the film rights

You own the publishing rights and the film rights to your autobiography.

It is an amazing and unprecedented time to be alive, with such choice and freedom.  And we don’t have the big problems, and have to spend every waking minute just trying to survive like our ancestors did.

Your life is yours.  Wow!

What happens next?

Grit and perseverance

If you line up with a bunch of people in a race or trek or journey, and many of the others decide not to start, and some others quit 1/3 the way in, and others quit 1/2 way there, and others decide to quit to go run a different race without finishing this one, you will win.

You weren’t the fastest, or the smartest – you just didn’t quit.

You kept going – farther, and getting better, and learning more about the journey you were on.

In a short-attention span world, grit is more important than ever.