Life's Philosophies II

Here's another one.

So there are times in everyone's life when they're scared, nervous, etc. Maybe it's concerns over bills, their job, the sound of a broken window at 3am, the left wing, which was there just a moment ago, no longer being present, whatever.

Religious folks have it easy. They get to pray to an all powerful presence and in doing so, they can feel at peace and conquer their fears.

Coming from more of an agnostic angle where there may or may not be an all powerful presence who may or may not be inclined to help in any way (Crom!*), I had to come up with some other internal rationalization.

My secret mantra? "Do the best you can." I think I want that on my gravestone: "He did the best he could."

I think I evolved this line of thinking through gaming (see also: "everything I ever needed to know, I learned from gaming"). I've generally felt that while you can't always win, there is no shame in losing when you are out of ammo, out of options and too tired to run anymore. There are times in everyone's Nethack career when they are shoved up against a dead end with 15 Orcs stuffing up the only exit, they have 1 hitpoint left and the only thing left in their backpack that can possibly be of any help is a scroll named "Ugloft Potel" because they haven't identified it yet. And sometimes it saves you and sometimes it just lights up the room so you can witness your death more clearly. But that's not important. The important thing is you did the best you could with what you had and nobody can ask any more of you than that.

This same line of thinking has carried over into my real life.

I maintain a relatively stress free existence by saying things like, "While I don't know what my career will look like in 5 years, or what that noise was just now or whether that left wing is supposed to come off at 30,000 feet, what I do know is that I will simply do the best I can and this is all anyone can expect."

I dunno, I just find a lot of peace in that concept.

There's a joke among competitive gamers that goes, "don't run; you'll only die tired". I've always felt that dying tired (and out of ammo) was the best way to go. You did the best you could and there's no shame in that.

* - I've been reading the Robert Howard "Conan" stories. I like the concept of Crom, the god of Conan's people. Contrary to the movie, you don't pray to Crom. Conan was quite specific about this. Crom doesn't care and if you pray to him, he'll send you doom for interrupting his train of thought. Crom only does one thing for his people: at birth, he gives them the strength to strive. "What else shall men ask of the gods?" What else indeed?