The Lowest Common Denominator

2(2(ab)² + 14452)

4(a²b² +7226)

What do you see when you look at that problem?  Does your brain shut down?  Does it look way too complicated?  Is it an immediate challenge that needs to be solved?

I want to share something with you that I have learned over the years.  I’ve paid a heavy price to learn it too, so please hear me out.  Life is Simple.  (please hold your objections until the end).

Humans are animals.  We are a species.  Like every other species on this planet (and any others that might exist out there) we have ONE extremely simple goal in life.  Survival.  That’s it.  The meaning of life is survival.  Without survival there is no life to give meaning to.  If you fail to survive, nothing else will matter.  Without survival, the car you drive matters very little.  Your cool clothes – have outlasted you.  That jewelry – will do your corpse no good.  Your fancy phone is useless in dead hands. 

First and foremost, the meaning of life is survival.  You can’t do anything – ever – without first accomplishing this main goal.  You need food, shelter and protection from the elements to survive.  Caviar will work just as well as spam.  Both will keep you alive.  Bologna will sustain you just as well as a porterhouse.  If the goal is survival, sustenance is sustenance.  Fuel is fuel to the body.  Shelter?  Under a bridge or Park Avenue apartment?  Both will keep you out of the rain.  Box Car or mansion – it matters not.  Shelter is shelter.  It offers protection from the elements and from predators.  Clothes, from Goodwill or from Bloomingdales, will still keep you warm in the winter. 

Why then do we place such importance on such trivial meaningless things?  If the point of life is survival, then why do we struggle and toil and sweat and bleed and die for the excessive?  Sure, some things are better for you than others, but we often endure an inordinate amount of stress and pain (thus cutting our chances of survival) to attain more than we actually need to survive.  Can we not appreciate what we have?  I have found that beggars can turn their nose up at a free meal just as much as rich man.  I have seen rich men appreciate the shelter of a shack and been more thankful than a suburban housewife for simply having a place to rest.  Your “status” does not matter.  We all share the same basic needs and we are all coded to survive.  What makes some of us appreciate what we have and others demand more?

Point of view.  We complicate our lives.  Many of us (more and more of us it seems) fail to recognize that a house with a leaky roof is better than sleeping under a bridge, that a jacket from Goodwill is better than freezing in the snow.  Having bologna is better than stealing moldy bread for dinner. 

I was watching this rather fat squirrel dig up his nuts the other day and it struck me how simple life is for him.  He has a good tree to give him shelter.  There is plenty for him to eat right next to it.  And he has a nice warm fur coat to protect him from the cold.  He does not yearn for nicer fur.  Nor does he spend his days “wishing” he had a bigger tree.  He goes out and works for the food he needs to make it through the winter.  He does not “wish” for better nuts, he is simply grateful he has what he needs and thankful no one is around to eat him while he tries to eat.  He survives and he is happy.

Are you happy to be surviving?  Or do you stress and fret and worry because you want more?  Is survival not enough?  I used to.  I used to stress and worry and sweat and bleed because what I had wasn’t good enough.  Or, at least, that’s what I was told.  I needed to give them more (whether I had it or not).  I’ve found that when left to my own devices, I am happy with what I have.  Do not misunderstand me, I am not saying ambition is bad or that goals are not good.  I am saying the opposite, in fact.  Goals are driven by Ambition and the fruits of those labors should be appreciated for the gifts that they are.  If you live in a shitty mouse infested “bad neighborhood” apartment complex (as I once did), you might appreciate the house with the leaky roof and little back yard a little more.  Looking back, I should have appreciated the apartment more; it was better than when I was living in my car.  Even living in my car was better than living on the street. 

Simplify your life.

Simplify your perception.

Things can be reduced to a lowest common denominator. 

Problems are rarely as complex as we make them.

An important part of survival is survival of the species.  We tend to have children.  And, for most of us, survival of our children far outweighs the necessity of our own survival.  This is good and natural.  For humans to continue on, the young must survive.  But lately I’ve noticed a trend.  Parents have forgotten what a child “needs” to survive.  It is my opinion that as parents, like animals do in the wild, we are to prepare our children to survive.  We need to teach them the skills necessary for survival.  A 10 year old child does not need an iphone or facebook or a playstation or TV to survive.  They need food, shelter and clothing and (most importantly) the knowledge of how to attain those things for themselves.  Everything else is just a bonus. 

I once heard a parent say, when their son was flunking every class in school, that they “couldn’t take his video games away from him.  He needs those to relax.”  Wow.  First, if he’s failing, it sounds like he’s relaxing way too much at school.  Teaching him that that is acceptable behavior will not help him survive later in life.  Would you keep your job if you failed at everything and insisted on not working OT to get it done?  What are we teaching our kids? 

Also, I wonder how people relaxed before video games.  Maybe they learned an important survival skill like reading or hard work.  I remember when I was failing all my classes once.  My father took all of my comforts away.  I was reduced to what I needed to survive and I was put to work.  Cleaning, digging, sweeping; as much manual labor as he could find.  Because, “If you don’t earn your living with your brain, Son.  You’ll be doing this for the rest of your life.”  My room was empty save a bed and a few books.  i.e. If I choose to fail school, then I will need to know these skills to survive.  Thanks Dad.  Turns out I’ve needed both brains and sweat to survive.  You taught me how to use both. 

Too often it seems, we are giving our children food, shelter, clothing and 100 other things they do not need, but neglecting to give them the knowledge they will need to outlive us.  Every time I hear of a 40 year old man moving back in with his parents and refusing to lift a finger to make his own way, I die inside.  Somehow, in 40 years, this human being has not learned how to simply survive.  Or rather, I should say, he has learned the only way to survive is by having his parents take care of him.  Do old birds still feed their adult hatchlings from their own mouths?  No, once they learn to fly, they go make nests of their own and find their own food.  I’m not talking about those of us who have accepted a “little help” from our parents over the years.  Mistakes are part of learning.  I’m talking about the freeloaders and moochers who have grown up thinking their parents will always supply them with their basic needs.  I am ashamed to see people of my generation failing at life; unable to survive on their own. 

But the generation we have raised, makes me even sadder.  We have so failed our children when we offer to help them and they respond by saying it’s not enough.  It’s not enough?  To punish them for a wrongdoing is now viewed as “bulling” them.  They have no idea what it is like to sacrifice comfort for sustenance.  Let alone what it’s like to go hungry so your kids can eat.  It’s almost as if we have raised them in insulated padded little safety zones.  I shudder to imagine how they will make it when we release them from their protective sheltered lives out into the wild and cruel world.  How will they survive when we are no longer able to ‘give’ them what they need?  Give them fish and they eat today, teach them to fish and they can eat for life; but our kids seem to say “I don’t want fish – give me something else.  NOW!”

The world does not stop spinning for them. 

We should teach them to survive. 

To Simplify.

To appreciate the miracle of indoor plumbing. 

But there is more to life than merely surviving you say.  I agree.  But the prime directive is survival.  Once that base is covered, once your basic needs and the needs of your family are met, we humans have something the squirrel and birds do not.  We have rational thought.  Free Will.  We can reason and imagine and invent and aspire to new and miraculous things.  It has been my experience, however, that this part of us, this basic difference, can be more of a hindrance than a help.  It too can be simplified.

Too many people worry too much about what other people are doing or saying or what others might think of them.  We watch reality TV and act like it somehow affects our lives personally.  We are so incredibly tied up with non-sense and ridiculousness.  And when trouble finds us we can worry and agonize for weeks, months, years – even lifetimes.  Some of us cry “why me” while others struggle to control the people and world around them and still others slump into depression and do nothing to confront their problems.  Some will even thrust their attention into everyone else’s lives rather than be forced to look into their own.  Society as a whole seems convinced that there’s a magic pill out there that will make all your problems go away.  There’s not. 

Simplify your life.

Simplify your perception.

Most problems can be solved by looking yourself in the mirror and answering a very simple question: “What kind of person do I want to be?”

Not, “What kind of person do I want people to think I am?” and definitely not “What kind of person do I think I should be?”  Simply: “What kind of person do I want to be?”

 You cannot control what anyone else does.  You cannot control what anyone else thinks.  You can ONLY control yourself and your actions.  At the end of every day, you go to bed with yourself.  At the beginning of each day, you wake up with yourself.  No matter whom you take to bed with you or who you wake up next to, there you are.  No matter how much you busy yourself with your neighbors’ problems, or how worried you are about those people on TV or how many drugs you take; you will always find you can’t outrun yourself. 

“What kind of person do you want to be?”

Simple.  Some of you will say “that’s complicated”.  I assure you, it’s not.  When given the opportunity to steal money (from a business, from your employer, from a friend, from a parent, or even just unattended – any possible scenario) you must ask yourself; “What kind of person do I want to be?”  The answer to that question will result in you taking the money, returning the money or ignoring it all together.

I have been faced with many crossroads in my life, too many to get into here.  But some of them required a great amount of sacrifice on my part.  In some cases, it was a sacrifice without reward.  People who know me well have asked me many times, “Why did you do that?  You got nothing but trouble in return.”  Looking back on it now, I know the answer.  “Because it’s who I wanted to be.”  I’m not trying to imply that I’m flawless.  I am far from it.  Many things I have done in my life, I wish I had done differently.  Those actions do not represent who I want to be.  But, to me – in my mind, if I at least learned from those mistakes; then those mistakes have served a purpose.  Because to me, the very meaning of life, is to live long enough to learn what it is we are meant to learn. 

Simplify. 

Find the lowest common denominator.

Most of the mistakes I’ve made are a direct result of over thinking.  I rationalized what I wanted to be true instead of looking at the facts.  I talked myself into it or out of it or I talked myself around it a thousand times.  I failed to look myself in the mirror and state the simple facts.  If the voice in your head starts a sentence with “But. . . .” then you are over thinking it.  You either ARE the kind of guy who would sleep with your best friend’s wife or you ARE NOT.  No amount of situational circumstance or excuses will change the simple fact that your choice is either yes or no.  Either way, you will have to look yourself in the mirror every day for the rest of your life.  Some people are that guy.  Some people are not.  Either you ARE the kind of woman who would sleep with a man just because he has money or you ARE NOT. 

And here’s the real kicker, the real root of the problem.  We like to tell ourselves we are ‘honest’ people.  But how many times have you lied to yourself?  When was the last time you were honest with yourself?  If you are the guy who slept with his best friend’s wife, have you made excuses for your actions?  Or did you make amends and accept the consequences?  If you are honest with no one else in this life – be honest with yourself. 

So the next time you find yourself at a crossroads; the next time you are wondering “what should I do?” the next time life has you incapacitated with strife and worry; I urge you to try this.  Find a quiet place and a mirror.  Look deep into your own eyes and ask yourself if your basic needs are being met.  Are you surviving?  Have you provided for your families survival?  Plainly state the problem you face in its simplest form, no more than a single sentence (no if’s, and’s or but’s).  Find the root of the problem, reduce it to its lowest common denominator, and ask yourself – “What kind of person do I want to be?”  You might find the solutions are simpler than you think.  Do I want to be the kind of father who gives my children what they want, or what they need?  Do I want to be a loyal friend?  Do I want to be a thief?  Do I want to be an addict?  Do I want to be a moocher?  Do I want to provide for my own survival?  Do I want to be proud of my work?  Do I want to spend my life in a bottle?  Do I want to be a quitter?

Take the math problem at the top of this blog for example.  Have you solved it yet?  What is the simplest way to state that problem?  The answer is actually very simple.  The answer is one.  The number one can be as simple or complicated as we wish to make it, but it’s still just one.  No matter how many variables we plug into it or how many times we multiply it or divide it; 1 is 1.  Simple as that.

I am a religious man.  I may not go to church every Sunday nor do I parade my religion out for everyone to marvel at; but God and I have an understanding.  I just had my 38^th birthday.  Statistically speaking, my life is half over.  In my heart, I believe that when I meet God he will only ask me one question, “What kind of person were you?”  I hope, when that day comes, I can say “I was a good man” with all confidence, sincerity and honesty.  What will your answer be?

Simplify.

You’ll be much happier. 

Find the lowest common denominator.