@kaler

“You want to know how to paint a perfect painting?  It’s easy.  Just make yourself perfect and then paint naturally.  That’s the way all the experts do it.  The making of a painting or the fixing of a motorcycle isn’t separate from the rest of your existence.  If you’re a sloppy thinker the six days of the week you aren’t working on your machine, what trap avoidances, what gimmicks, can make you all of a sudden sharp on the seventh?  It all goes together.

…

The real cycle you’re working on is a cycle called yourself.  The machine that appears to be ‘out there’ and the person that appears to be ‘in here’ are not two seperate things.  They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality togehter.”

– Robert Pirsig. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Yesterday was my 29th birthday.  I can finally say I am proud of the man that I have become.

Having a birthday so early in the year is kind of peculiar.  There are two points back-to-back that get one in a contemplative mood.

Most resolutions have already been broken 15 days into a new year.  The easiest way to tell this is by timing how long it takes to get a treadmill at the gym.  On the first Monday of the year you better be at the gym before the doors open.  Two weeks into the year, half the treadmills are free.

Most people, including myself, overestimate what can be accomplished in a year and underestimate what can be accomplished in 40 years.

This is what I learned in India.

I am of the mind that there are two types of changes.  Change that happens instantaneously.  This is usually internal change–a decision.

Then there is the hard change.  The change that takes a lifetime.  The change that requires you to wake up at 6AM every single morning ready to kick ass.

In 1968, my grandfather decided to move my family away from the small village that my dad was born and raised.  This must have been quite a difficult decision for him.  He had been the mayor of the village for 25 years.

40 years later, it just made perfect sense for the family to get back together in that same tiny village and spend New Year’s Day together.

The village is constructed around a modest village square.  My grandfather led the construction of the square many decades ago.  In the early 1980s, my father sent money to the village to construct the first domed building in the square.

The village square is where couples are married.  It is where people go to pray.  It is where village meetings happen.  It is where all of the communal tools are stored.  It is where the bulk grain is stored.  It is where all the kids go to play.

This New Years, my father, my uncles, and myself donated a big sum of cash to have the village square completed.  We donated it under my grandfather’s name.

The money is going to continue tiling the building in the centre.  If there is money left over it will go towards covering the current dirt surface with marble.