last night as I was trying to sleep, a new business/artistic endeavor. It’s going to be much bigger than my music career, and so I might be reconceptualizing my blogging and this blog in particular very soon.
For now, please enjoy the content posted already. Here are some of my favorites:
what if your competitive. I’m rethinking my last post and wondering if I’ve been just a tad naieve.
What if being yourself is wanting to be the best. Is that ok? Tiger Woods certainly wants to be the best, and it’s paid off for him. He is.
But what if you’re Bart Bryant, the guy that Woods was losing to all of last weekend. That is, until Tiger made a 25-foot, game winning putt for the win. I’m sure Bart wants to be the best too. But he isn’t, and he has to deal with that every day.
What does a competitive person do when they aren’t the best? What if they never will be the best? Should they give up or seek victory like a white whale named Moby?
These questions all come down to, what is the best life? I have some ideas, but certainly no final answers. What do you think?
Friday’s are wonderful aren’t they?! Especially because on friday’s, here at joebunting.blogspot.com, we exclude. Today is the day that we unapologetically ask people to get the hell out.
The only question is, who shall we ask to leave today?
About a week or so ago I talked about one of my secret desires: to be famous, the best, el primero, numero uno.
The problem with wanting this is that you spend a lot of time looking at the people that are better than you. You end up wanting to be someone you’re not, wanting to be them.
There’s a lot of wisdom in the tenth commandment. Have you ever seen anything good come from envy? I mean besides a really good scene (if gross) from the movie Seven… and maybe some good plays by that Shakespeare dude . Not the movie O, though. I didn’t see it, but it didn’t look very good.
So today we’re going to exclude envy. I’ll even be fair and exclude myself when I’m being envious. Goodbye and goodluck envy, I hope we don’t see you soon.
Because you can’t have one without the other. If all you want from music is lifestyles of the rich and famous, you’ll end up alienating the people that got you there in the first place. People may not always be able to see sleaziness right away, but eventually the truth will come out. “Burn bright, burn fast,” as they say.
On the other hand, if you don’t take care of your business (of which music is certainly a part), then you’ll burn out because you’re not getting your needs met (rent, food, etc). Either way, the people who love you will lose out, and they’re the ones who matter most.
It has come to my attention that some of my readers have misunderstood me, specifically misunderstood my post about wanting to be famous. Let me set the story straight.
It’s not that I have wanted to be famous, I’ve wanted to be the best. Fame doesn’t interest me as much as recognition.
But, what I am learning from Merton is that trying to be the best can lead to some very unhealthy things, especially for the artist. Instead, we should try to become ourselves, no more, no less.
I was struck by a passage in Thomas Merton’s autobiography, Seven Storey Mountain. He says,
There was a great deal of simplicity about [my grandfather]. It was a
simplicity and ingenuousness* that belonged to his nature: and it was something
peculiarly American. Or at least, it belonged to the Americans of his
generation, this kind and warm-hearted and vast universal optimism (p176).
*Here’s the definition. I had to look it up to make sure I knew it. Ingenuousness: 1. free from reserve, restraint, or dissimulation; candid; sincere. 2. artless; innocent; naive.
Merton was writing about his grandfater who lived through WWI dying in 1936.
I wonder what the nature of the American people is today? I wonder if it has changed sinced the 20’s and 30’s and how? It’s hard to qualify, but I’d love to hear anyone’s thoughts.
you can’t handle conflict. Or if you’re unwilling to learn how.
The biggest question of the 21st century is how do we live with people who are different. Right now there seems to be two main answers: reject diversity with violence or oversimplify diversity with tolerance (ie pluralism). Contrary to popular opinion, neither of these paths are helpful. One is aggressive, the other is passive (or sometimes, passive aggressive).
Conflict is a normal healthy part of any relationship. A close therapist friend has always told me that the one of the most important tests when dating is the first fight. If you can’t fight well together, it’s not going to last.
