Terminal Lesson

Fans of the Wheel of Time series will be distressed to learn that Robert Jordan has been diagnosed with an extremely rare disease. Doctors have given him around four years to live based on the median life expectancy of the illness. Here's what Jordan said regarding his condition:

"In any case, I intend to live considerably longer than that. Everybody knows or has heard of someone who was told they had five years to live, only that was twenty years ago and here they guy is, still around and kicking. I mean to beat him. I sat down and figured out how long it would take me to write all of the books I currently have in mind, without adding anything new and without trying rush anything. The figure I came up with was thirty years. Now, I'm fifty-seven, so anyone my age hoping for another thirty years is asking for a fair bit, but I don't care. That is my minimum goal. I am going to finish those books, all of them, and that is that."

Man, I really admire that guy. Despite having a terminal illness, he still remains dedicated to doing his life's work and finishing writing his books. There's a lesson there somewhere but I can't put my finger on it.

I guess if you knew that you had a limited time on earth, you would enjoy life more. Savor every experience. Not complain as much about the minor irritations. Love your work, friends, and family more.

In fact, why wait?

How to be Lucky

From The loser's guide to getting lucky:

"Unlucky people are generally more tense than lucky people, and this anxiety disrupts their ability to notice the unexpected. As a result, they miss opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else."

Why I Like Pro Wrestling

I have a confession to make. I watch professional wrestling on TV. In fact, not only do I watch it, I love it. Here's why.

The bad guys sometimes win. When I was a kid, my favorite tag team wrestlers on All-Star Wrestling were the pretty boy do-goodies Tony Garrea and Rick Martel. The fans cheered for them. They were athletic and had good moves. I thought they were the greatest tag team in the world. And they were the champs. Life was good.

Then they faced the team of Professor Saito and Mr. Fuji. These were bad guys who did all sorts of illegal double teaming when the referee's back was turned. They were hated by the fans. They were not very athletic, used illegal weapons, and were clearly inferior to my fave team, the champs Tony Garrea and Rick Martel. But one night, Saito and Fuji waited for a time when the referee wasn't looking, used an illegal weapon, and won the match against my favorite tag team to win the belts. I was angry, sad and frustrated. "But they cheated!".

So I resolved to myself that Tony Garrea and Rick Martel had to win back the belts since after all, they were the good guys, and the good guys always win in the end right? Unfortunately, pro wrestling didn't work this way. You see, in pro wrestling, sometimes the bad guys win. And sometimes the good guys never gets back. This is how it also works in real life.

The best storylines are based on reality. The late 90's WWF and WCW were known for its wacky wrestling personas and crazy angles. Just imagine an evil wrestling clown, or a dead man wrestler accompanied by his mortician, or having a wrestling garbageman in the ring. You've got wrestlers feuding with each other over a casket, or one wrestler being afraid of snakes, or even fighting each other over who is the rightful King. Though these storylines are all entertaining and amusing over a short period of time, I find that the best wrestling scripts are the ones that are based on reality. These are the wrestling angles that have a touch of reality in them that make them more interesting to watch.

Take for instance the NWO invasion angle of the WCW. The storyline starts with some former WWF wrestlers Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, using their real names, invading WCW. You have announcers shouting over the microphone "Who are you guys? You shouldn't be here!" And I remember how cool it was at the time because it felt so real, like watching something that could totally happen. And you tuned in every week to see what unpredictable thing would happen next.

Or if you remember, there was a great feud between Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels where each wrestler would give great shoot speeches against each other. A shoot speech is one where a wrestler breaks character and acts like he would in real life. It is so refreshingly honest, yet you know it is still part of the script. And you understand that like in real life, honesty has a power of its own which you can harness and utilize for a greater good.

Heel turns or Face turns happen. A 'heel' is another word for bad guy, someone who is generally hated by the fans. A 'face' is a term used to describe a good guy, someone who is generally loved by the fans. My favorite event in wrestling is the heel turn - when a good guy turns into a bad guy.

Heel turns are great because you see the drastic change in the character of the formerly good guy. He stops caring how the fans think of them, he does everything he can in order to win. He starts getting more ruthless, starts breaking the rules a bit, develops that swagger that makes him a better wrestler. As I got older I started liking the heels more and more. They were cocky, but confident, and didn't care what anyone thought about them. And sometimes in life you've got to stop playing the part of the good guy, and start being more heelish if you want to get good results.

Face turns are also good but not as fun as heel turns. The best face turn occurs when the heel gets over (i.e. more popular) with the fans, and the people start cheering him even though he's a bad guy. One example would be Stone Cold Steve Austin. He told people exactly how he thought, good or bad, and he was one bad S.O.B., yet the fans loved him. I think eventually if you don't care what people think about you, you will be more cheered for and admired in the end. Go figure.

The best wrestler personas are based on reality. One of my favorite wrestlers of all time is The Excellence of Execution, Bret Hitman Hart. One of the best technical wrestlers of all time, extremely good in interviews, and could carry a storyline all the way to its conclusion where you totally believe in the reality of it. And the best thing about Bret Hart is I think his persona is not an act. He is, in fact, the Excellence of Execution, the best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be.

Another favorite wrestler of mine was Mr. Perfect. The guy was... perfect. He did everything well. Whether it was ping pong, or basketball, or tennis. He had this totally cool arrogant persona, chewing gum, then spitting it out and flipping it to the crowd. He finished off his opponents with the Perfectplex which was impossible to kick out of. The reason why the gimick worked was because Mr. Perfect Curt Hennig the person was more or less like his wrestling character.

Same would go for my other faves, Sycho Sid (psychotic wrestler who had some mental episodes), Bob Backlund (nice going guy who was a bit of a square, though would occasionally 'snap' and go insane), Stone Cold Steve Austin, and Degeneration X members HBK and Triple H who were best friends in and out of the ring so you totally believed them. The best wrestling personas are based on reality, so make sure that in life you stick with your true persona as much as possible as this will give you the most success.

I've got a couple more reasons why I love wrestling and how I feel it relates to real life. This and more, I will post in a future article.

The One

(For best effect, read this with Limp Bizkit's 'The One' playing in the background)

The great lie that many people believe is the concept of a soulmate. This is the belief that there is one and only one person in the world that you can share yourself with, i.e. the person that completes you. This is probably responsible for much suffering in the love and romance department, when the soulmate turns out not to be so.

A more realistic concept to believe in is the idea of having 'The One'. That one person you can be totally infatuated, in love, sexually attracted, intellectually stimulated, everything, the works. The One. In reality, despite the terminology, there are actually many Ones. Some people are lucky enough to discover many different people throughout their life that they can identify as The One. Others are not so lucky and go through life in a sort of void state lacking in passion.

My ideal situation would be to spend my life with a person I sincerely consider as 'The One'. I suspect many people don't actually end up getting married to their The One. They end up with the first person to have a semi kinda mutual attraction with who shows up at the right moment in their lives. Nothing wrong with that. If everyone pursued The One there would be very few married couples and the world population would be severely depleted.

What is The One anyway? It's hard to explain. There is a physical attraction no doubt, a sexual chemistry, a meeting of the minds. I define it as the feeling of knowing that this other person is really, really cool and it would be neat if I could spend as much time as possible with her. But the precise definition is elusive and could be different for each person. Like what the Oracle said to Neo in The Matrix, "Being the One is like being in love, you just know it, balls to bones." Deep inside you know in your gut when you know you have met The One, there's no denying it. You also know when a person is not The One.

Society tends to exert peer pressure on individuals to get married and raise a family. The reason being that ultimately, families are good for society as it promotes stability and child-bearing which keeps civilization and society alive. Imagine a world where people didn't have kids, we would be extinct as a race in a few generations. So people tend to want to get married and have a family at a certain age to keep the cycle of life intact. Nothing wrong with that. But there lies the conflict.

Ideally we want to be together with the person or persons we come across as being The One. Yet realistically it is a crapshoot, most of it is luck of the draw. So we are faced with a dilemma. Do we gamble, stick it out and wait for The One, or do we make do with the best that is available at a particular time. If I take a chance and wait for The One to arrive, I risk being alone and I pay the price of being choosy. Yet if the wait pays off and I do end up with The One then I gain a big piece of the ultimate joy in life.

So my question to you is, which are you willing to choose: The One or The Only One? Are you willing to gamble, possibly lose and pay the price of waiting for true happiness, or are you the type that is willing to compromise, accept that The One may never come so you take whatever is available at the right time? Are you the sort that goes for The One or The Only One?