February 14, 2012
Today I flashed five clubs for the first time. That means I threw five clubs in the air and caught them. When I can catch each one once with each hand (twice as many as I did today), I’ll be able to say I juggled five clubs. Well, technically I could say it now, but I’d be lying. And I never lie about anything important.
When I first started juggling (read that story here if you want), I noticed that all the jugglers I met were unsatisfied with their skill level. Even the very good ones wished they were better. If they achieved one goal, they set another. I didn’t want to be unhappy, so I set my solo juggling goals at five balls and four clubs and promised myself I would never revise them, so that one day I could just be happy. I kept that promise for about 15 years, but recently I started thinking that five rings and five clubs were within reach, and I was right. I’ve qualified five rings now and flashed five clubs, and I’m insanely happy. I was right and wrong about jugglers being unsatisfied. Making and achieving new goals is wonderful.
After practice and a late-night Chino-Latino dinner, I came home still amped and started looking through my old viveca.net content. I found a maybe decade-old list of life goals. With today’s juggling practice as inspiration, it’s time to revisit them. Here’s the original list:
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Top ten personal life goals:
1. Smell good (don’t smell bad).
2. Don’t be the limiting factor (especially for rate).
3. Eat anything that I can (but not necessarily all of it).
4. Be fearless.
5. Choose my own words (know when I’m swearing, don’t say “like” to mean “said,” etc.).
6. Don’t make emotional issues out of things that aren’t practical issues.
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I said “Top Ten,” but I left room for more if I thought of them. I may not believe in religious tolerance, but I certainly believe in engineering tolerance. In any case, it’s still a pretty good list. If I could do all of this and juggle five clubs, life would be grand.
Dead pent content, regards for information. “You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.” by Samuel Butler.
With regard to religion, my position is that “Faith” is believing in something that you know is not true.
Samuel Butler ( http://bit.ly/yZ6TEm ), also wrote, “Nevertheless it is folly to appeal from reason to faith unless one is pretty sure of a verdict and, in most cases about which we dispute seriously, reason is as far as we need go,” and “Faith is no foundation, for it rests in the end on reason. Reason is no foundation, for it rests upon faith,” and “Life is one long process of getting tired.”
Congratulations on the Flash of Five! Upwards and onwards.