Stop trying to fry other people's fish
And please clean your room
Everyone seems to be rather hysterical about how Trump’s tariffs are tanking the economy. Having seen a lot of talk about it on social media, I took a look for myself at the S & P 500 this morning . . . and sure enough, they’re right! Shit’s hit the fan.
Funny enough, though, I can still walk outside and smell the air and see the trees and feel the wind. You’d think it impossible if you took a look at all these headlines, but the sun did, in fact, rise today.
I’ll admit that I enjoy talking about politics; it’s quite intoxicating, actually. But I don’t pay much attention generally, and I have never really written about them. Because, to be honest, I simply don’t always have the time to give a shit. At least right now.
I’m sure it’s been said a billion times already, but from what I’ve gathered, it seems to be the case that a good chunk of people are way too obsessed with what politicians do, and with the news in general. Of course, what I see on social media is distorting my perception of reality as well—I’m just as sure that most people aren’t curled up in a fetal position in the corner of their bedrooms, worried sick about the stock market.
And I’m not saying, either, that people shouldn’t be paying attention to these things. They absolutely should.
I’m just saying that it doesn’t make sense to be investing so much of one’s livelihood into whatever’s going on out there. You know? Shit happens, and it’s out of your control. If you want a better life for yourself, why not give all the time and energy and attention that you’re giving to figuring out whether Hillary birthed an alien from her mouth or whether Trump shit himself in public instead to something you have a hand in? More importantly, why buy into this doomsayer narrative? Don’t we know our time is finite?
Certainly, bad things happen if people don’t keep their politicians in check. It is relatively understandable that people are obsessed with politics in the United States of America. And yes, I know it’s not good when the market collapses . . . I know that people’s lives are genuinely affected by this stuff. But the fact of the matter is that many, if not most, people wouldn’t even know they were enduring a recession (are we technically in a recession right now?) if the news didn’t tell them they were.
Our animal brains never seem to pick up on the fact that few things are ever even close to as bad as the media makes them out to be. No matter how much we all consciously acknowledge the fact that it’s a bunch of horsecrap designed to rile us up and get us to click on headlines and foam at the mouth, people still let their stomachs get twisted by these things that will mostly not affect them in the slightest! Don’t we know that the media is the boy who cries wolf every single day?
(To put things in perspective, consider the fact that the economy is tanking not because a sinkhole swallowed a city—not because some real, physical event transpired—but because people are scared and clicked the “sell” button on their computer [to be honest, I’m not 100% sure about what I’m saying here; it’s just what I think is true based on what I know about how the stock market works, so please correct me if I’m incorrect].)
And don’t get me wrong—there are wolves out there. Real ones. But for all the misplaced hysteria, we are undermining our eyesight, our detection systems.
This isn’t really what I want to write about today. I prefer to write and put effort and energy, as I said, into things over which I have control.
I did vote this year, you know, and maybe one day, when I have a bigger audience and feel my words might be well utilized by sharing my opinion on what’s going on in DC, I’ll get more into politics. But for now, I really just don’t have time. I have more immediate fish to fry.
I think, actually, that this is one of America’s bigger problems: people are trying to fry other people’s fish. And everything is getting fricked up. Like, leave my damn fish alone, bro. Yours looks like shit, and you forgot to pick the bones out.
The way I approach my life is bottom-up. Some think I’m crazy. Some say I go a little over the top. Apparently, keeping a kitchen clean is just shy of impossible . . .
What I mean, though, is that I prefer to work my way from small to big. I prefer to take care of the most immediate chaos, working my way ever more outwardly and upwardly. Because I believe that to change the world, I’ve got to change my world first.
When I’m home, it starts with the bedroom. Because the bedroom is the foundation of my routine. (Of course, I suppose, you could just skip over having a bedroom and be homeless. But I think having a bedroom is nice.)
After I get the bedroom clean and functional, I’ll work my way forward. Bathroom, kitchen, garage, car . . . At some point, when I feel I’ve got a worthy chunk of the chaos in my immediate environment ordered, I can start working my way up the pyramid and taking care of bigger things like my health and my trauma and whatnot . . . And then I can start making money, and eventually, I’ll have done so much to order the background and these crevices that I’ll have made way to start a Substack (or engage some higher-level of this “pyramid”—you get the point). In this way, I work from the bottom upwards, ensuring I have, to the best of my ability, all the things within my control under check—that I’m hiding no skeletons under my bed, as it were—before moving on to bigger fish.
This isn’t to say that everyone should be like me, nor that this process is perfect, but that it might help people if they give their energy to more immediate problems before they start trying to be Superman.
Perhaps more people once operated this way back in the day—I’m not sure (although I do know that this is Mr. Miyagi’s philosophy)—but they sure as hell don’t anymore. Everyone thinks that they ought to be president. And they can’t even clean their damn bedroom.
It’s a joke, really. Comical beyond belief. Our world has become so appearance-oriented that people will refuse to look under their beds, knowing full well that there are dozens of skeletons, then convincing themselves that that’s just how life is. “Everyone’s got skeletons! They’re not worth cleaning!” they’ll say to anyone who’s willing to listen in an attempt to excuse and justify their utter unwillingness to do what it takes to walk the walk.
I don’t know. I’m just blabbing right now. This isn’t really what I want to be writing about. For some reason, it’s just what I chose to write about today. What I want to be writing about is nature, and the beautiful world, and the ocean, and relationships, and getting rich, and hot women, and my thoughts on some new cuisine. I want to write about things I can actually experience. But I can’t, knowing there are people out there having day terrors about orange men they’ve never met or even seen in real life. LOL.
Trump or Hillary (I should be saying Biden, or Kamala, I suppose), right or left, who the hell cares? Why can’t you agree a little bit and disagree a little bit with someone? What ever happened to moderates? I know they’re out there. I know, actually, that the vast majority of people are much closer to the middle, much closer to sanity than we’re all made to believe. I know we’d all probably get along if we sat down at dinner and had a conversation.
But for some reason, those who shout the loudest, those who lean furthest this way or that, get the most attention these days. And I think this is a problem because these are the last people we should all be listening to if what we’re after is sound mental health.
That’s what it is: people are so damn desperate for an identity these days. They feel they’ve got to go all this way or that.
Having failed to clean and organize what’s going on behind the scenes, inwardly, under their beds, people reach their outwardly in a desperate attempt to label themselves. Because they can’t control what’s going on within, they try to control everything going on without. (“Without” isn’t exactly the right word; it just sounds cool to say. What I mean is externally.)
And I’m not talking about sexuality here. I’m talking about identifying oneself with ideologies. It goes both ways. Extremism is the word.
All this shit going on—all this crazy political crap, all the hysteria—is not the fault of politics. It is the fault, the consequence of our world’s impulsiveness, our loose relationship with simple beauty, with discipline and principle. It’s the consequence of people being unable to keep themselves from spending too much time paying attention to superficial bullshit, flashy things. It is the result of what must be some sort of unwillingness to experience discomfort and look underneath one’s bed and pull out the skeletons and order them so they may move forward truly, one step at a time, addressing those things within their control, rather than trying to jump right to the top of the pyramid.
It’s true: we’ve become far too impulsive a people, and it’s leeching into the stratosphere of our world. Don’t we know by now that society, culture, and politics are simply an extension of the individual?
I swear that what this country needs more deeply than most other things is for its people to simply make their beds and clean their rooms. I think, in fact, that instead of profile pictures on social media, we all ought to have in place a live video feed of our bedroom.
How did this happen? How did an entire culture get so bad at looking within? Well, the camera certainly has something to do with it. But I think, in general, it’s got mostly, as I said, to do with comfort.
People simply aren’t willing to be uncomfortable these days. We have, for all our technological progression, created an infrastructure that allows everyone to so deeply know the most indulgent of comforts—unaware of the consequences of their hedonistic tendencies—that they cast a negative light on anything that’s not comfortable. Why be uncomfortable if you could be comfortable, you know? Why feel bad if you could feel good? Why open yourself to new things, to change, if you could stay the same?
The more desperate for comfort you are, the more impulsive you become, the more ravenously you’ll bite at hysteria.
This post isn’t a political statement—or, at least, I don’t mean it to be. I’m not saying anything about what I think of the tariffs. I’m not an economist.
If anything, this is a bipartisan post. A Ryan post.
It’s not perfect; there are a few things I would like to have explored a little more, a few more points I would like to have added (and some I could have removed), and a few things I probably could have clarified.
Of course, nothing I say, at least right now, is going to change a single damn thing, aside from, perhaps, the perspective of a few of my readers. I just wanted to write myself today through all this apparent chaos and share with you the fact that I think the world, regardless of whether the White House flies a donkey or an elephant, is still a beautiful, amazing place rife with the most incredible opportunities imaginable.
So chill the frick out, people. We may one day get hit by an asteroid, but from what I’ve gathered, that day hasn’t yet come.