Philosophy

[fbhjr]

I like the stuff over at www.despair.com.
One of my friends questioned that the other day. Asked if I was looking
for despair and failure.
It’s a valid question and worth a longer answer than a reply a dozen down
in a post on something else.
My favorite is their “mistakes” one.
http://images.despair.com/products/demotivators/mistakes.jpg
Not for any gloom or doom reason. Not to laugh at the poor person who lost
that ship.
But because I can look at it on days when everything in my life has gone to
shit; work, home, world and say “there may be a purpose for all that.”
That makes me feel better about it.
Mistakes can be learned from. I can learn from my own. And, if I’m good
and lucky in the right combination, I can learn from other people’s too.
(More often I end going through the same thing and having them say “didn’t
that suck?” But, camaraderie can be good too.)
Sometimes I need to be reminded of that. Some times it helps me to say
“you don’t have to feel that pain yourself if you can see what that person
did wrong.”

Things like that, and humor in general, is good for getting me to think
different ways about things. Look at things in a different light. Not
always a good light, but different.
And, there are times I need to look at things differently.

That’s one of the things I try and do with this LJ is get different ways of
looking at things from people. Things have gone very wrong for me. I
don’t know where. I don’t know when. I don’t know how.
When faced with an engineering problem, I tend to sit down with my boss
define the problem and just throw ideas out. One of the reasons I really
like my current boss is that he has a very different training and
background than I do. So, he thinks of things differently and comes up
with stuff I wouldn’t. And, I come up with stuff he wouldn’t.
Most of the ideas we throw out won’t work, aren’t practical, would cost too
much or break the laws of physics. But, it gets us thinking about the
problem in new ways, considering ideas we may not have, etc.

That’s what I’m really looking for. Different ways to look at things.

Comments

[evrgreen.livejournal.com]

Different can be good, but sometimes I think that "different" requires more than just looking at things differently - it means actually a different way of thinking. For example, many engineers apply very orthogonal, logic driven thought processes to define a problem and the product requirements, and sometimes that works fine. But I have found in other cases, this form of thinking doesn't always yield the best results, or even good results. When asked by some VPs at the Fortune 500 company I used to work at why I chose the people I did for the massive project I was given to lead, I wouldn't tell them that I used my Tarot deck and their birth signs to balance the energies in the group according to what needed to be constrained and what need to project. I came up with some corporate mumbo jumbo I knew that they would accept and showed them the 2000-task Micro$oft project schedule. We finished the project on time despite numerous challenges and changes thrown at us. Another time I had to design a software product based not on a set of requirements, but on a set of anti-requirements, if that makes sense. I actually used some concepts and processes I learned about viral/bacterial behavior to arrive at a solution. And when it comes to people and relationships, I have worked very hard at trying to use both sides of my brain, despite the innate tendencies to only use the traditional male or right brain. Though she didn't realize it at the time that she said it, one of the most difficult to work with people at that Fortune 500 company paid me a tremendous compliment one day when she told her boss, another VP "He is the only engineer I've ever met who thinks with both parts of his brain at the same time, I don't know how to talk to him, but I learn something new every day".

I want to get better at composing music, painting better pictures of flora using acrylics, and improving my jazz improvisational skills just as much as I want to finish restoring my old BMW bike, mastering C# programming, or designing the world's highest performing Class-D amplifier.

I'm not saying that I think that I've mastered this at all - like martial arts or anything else really, I think that one can continuously improve and there are always new ways to expand. I guess what I am trying to say is that looking at things as an engineer, even from different perspectives, still leaves you with a fairly specific or narrow point of view. sometimes, you have to be willing to look through new eyes, smell with your ears, or think with your heart, to become a better, stronger person.

Well, enough of my cracker jack fortune cookie attempts at wisdom for now, have a great weekend !

[fbhjr.livejournal.com]

I do understand I only think one way. I can fake it sometimes by applying how I think in different ways, but I still think the same way. (Like saying you can use a screw driver as a hammer or a crow bar. But, it's still a screw driver.)
That's one of the things I like about my wife. She does think differently. But, usually in a way that I can at least follow along with so we get to the same place.
That's one of the reasons I get so confused when people say they think I'm trying to control how she thinks. Her thinking differently is a great asset to me. Why would I want to make it the same as something I already have?
It's like taking a road you don't know. I can say "this didn't come out where I expected" and be disappointed by that. That doesn't mean I want to pave a new road going in a straight line to where I expected it to be, or move where that road comes out.
I do sometimes say "I wish the highway had an exit there" or "this road seems really rough, I wish they'd fix the pot holes" or "I wish there weren't so many traffic lights".
But, at least to me, that's not the same.

[evrgreen.livejournal.com]

My wife also generally thinks very differently from me, though fairly often she arrives at the same outcome/conclusion. And sometimes we are very, very different. Certainly our likes/dislikes have more differences than what they have in common, and that can make things pretty tough sometimes.

Like you say, it is an asset, even when sometimes it feels like it can make things harder to resolve/work out between us. It can be frustrating at times, but I don't want her to change her way of thinking or feeling about things either. I DO wish that I could make her less of a couch potato, but that isn't the same thing, and also isn't likely to happen!

Once in a while, it is good to just take a road that you don't know, and don't have any expectations about where it will lead you or how long it will take to get there, and just treat it as an adventure that unfolds in front of you - sometimes the best things that happen in life are those that are not planned, or expected.

[fbhjr.livejournal.com]

I love taking roads I don't know.
But, I also love trying to figure out where they will come out. That's half the fun.
"If this road goes north, it must hit that east-west cross road up there..."
Often it does. Sometimes it does not.
Driving my MIL home the other day I took a road I didn't know. She knew it.
I said "I think this will come out at (intersection)."
"It won't," she said.
She was right. It didn't. But, it still came out on the road I wanted. Near a candy store even...