Getting Your Stuff Together by Jim Price (ap literature book list .txt) 📖

Introduction

I meet a lot of people who cannot get their stuff together, can’t get their butterflies to fly in formation. That’s no surprise because they grew up in a crazy world and just cannot make sense of it. Can’t make sense of religion. Can’t make sense of the economic system. Chances are they can’t make sense of their relationships either. It’s hard to get a sense of direction when you live in a house of mirrors, when everything is distorted, when your mind jumps from one text message to another.

Don’t worry someone is figuring how to deal with your stuff even while you remain in confusion. Right now someone is planning to run an ad on TV that tells you that you can buy a car from them with only $99 down and since your stuff is still in disarray they won't bother to tell you how much interest you will be charged.

But if you feel that it might be good to start connecting the dots in life, to do it in such a way that you finally get the big picture and that you might to even want to color in the picture so as to give it definition texture and bring it to life then this book is designed to help. It’s written for a fast read; I know that your mind is quick, maybe too quick but in the final chapter we will show you how to slow down to the speed of thought, the speed of your own thought and give you suggestions on how to uncrazy the world.

Living on the edge of information

Don’t be surprised if you often feel confused, frustrated, irritated and downright mad about your life and the life others live around you. You have just come through and or still going through the most dynamic change the world has ever gone through.

                                  Change makes amateurs out of us all.

When older people come into my office, I often hear them say; We are living in a different world.

Young people come by and very often think that they have the tiger by the tail forgetting that’s it’s the mouth of the tiger that they should be worried about.

All of us grew up with a set of assumptions and many of them wrong. When I was in the printing business a fellow came in and wanted a new set of business cards printed, it had been several years since he had updated them. Our city had just gone through a 911 revamping of all the street numbers. So I asked this fellow are you sure your house number is the same? “Well I’ve lived there thirty years, I guess I know my own house number.” Two weeks later he came back in, finally aware that his number had been changed and expected me to reprint them at my expense.

My favorite brother in law was having a twentieth wedding anniversary and I wanted to do something nice for him. He had a nice work shop about 60 yards from his house but had to run inside each time he received a phone call. [ no cell phones then ] so I bought some phone wire, strung it out to the workshop and hooked up an extension.

I assured him it was legal and that Ma Bell had no say in the new hook up. When I went back to visit in six months he had taken it down and said that he was afraid that he would get in trouble. His hunting buddies were not aware of the changes in the law and warned him that he would get in trouble if the phone man saw the line running to the shop. So much for progress!

Living in this age, things change so fast that it leaves most of us feeling like amateurs. Especially when it comes to workplace rules. That is just one reason why we need a union to keep track of all the work rules and see to it that we are treated justly and fairly.

The apostle Paul once wrote that he saw through a glass darkly and that he did not comprehend all things. Dah! So Paul you should live now in this high speed complicated world where our eyesight and our comprehension is challenged on an hourly basis. The fact that we walk around not seeing not understanding is not mysterious what is mysterious is that so many believe that they see everything clearly. So unless you know how much is yet to be learned then this book nor any book is likely to be of any help to you.

Consider Meditation

Part of getting your stuff together is to get confusion out of your mind. That might seem like something simple to do but some people have had clutter in their minds so long that it seems natural to them. A first step and also low in cost is to find time and a place to meditate. Without a computer and without a hand held device and with only a pencil and a notepad ask yourself; what’s in my mind that should be sent to the trash bin? It’s time to unload stuff that’s been holding you back. The answer may not come to you right away. That’s okey, meditation takes a while; give it time, you certainly don’t want to throw away ideas, concepts and information that you hold that is valuable. But trust me you almost certainly have assumptions about politics, religion, history and the future that are distorted; everyone does. How can you get that stuff cleared out of your thinking so that it doesn’t prevent you from becoming the best that you can be; that is the question.

One meditation want do it, one or two notes in your notepad want clear up all the debri  that’s floating around in your brain. Think of this debri as weeds in the garden, your goal is to weed out what is unnecessary and what threatens to prevent it from killing the good fruit.

Paul the Apostle, once wrote that when he was a child he thought as a child but when he became a man he put away childish things. So what you want to clear out is stuff that’s out of date.

I once spent some time with a young student from Iran, he was here in the states to study and possibly to become a citizen. He was intelligent but very confused, his old culture and his old concepts of reality were being challenged everyday. The reason that he wanted to spend time with my family was to help him sort out the old and the new, to try and get a grip on who he was and more importantly what he wanted to become.

You may not be from another country but you can be sure that your own country has changed enough to leave you confused if you haven’t taken the time to debrief and clear out the debri from the past.

Looking for Certainty

When many people look for meaning and clarity in life they look for certainty. But certainty is illusive; whether you are trying to find certainty in your religious beliefs or in other departments of your life; to be absolutely set on any one opinion is likely to lead you to a dead end.

Last night I sat across a banquet table from a very big guy who was very certain of his belief system. As he talked it became clear that he had accepted several beliefs that had been passed down to him without studying them through or questioned their validity. I knew most of the people in the room and realized that his shallow opinions would not have been readily accepted by them, yet he talked on not realizing that others thought of him as backward.

When it comes to political beliefs one should be aware that it is a huge subject and that major change happens within each belief system every few years. If you go back and trace the history of conservative and liberal thought over the past 500 years you can see these contrasting opinions have changed from one country to another and from one period to another.

Certainty is not what we should be looking for but rather for  wisdom. At one time someone could have said, with certainty, that the only way to get from America to England would be to take a ship. That is no longer true. Truth changes, although many people still hold that it doesn’t. But if you want to get your stuff together then you must discard that which is no longer true or either no longer relevant. If you can’t get over this hurdle then perhaps more meditation is in order.

Setting Priorities on Relationships

Here is where stuff can really get confusing. Best to take the old route and