Musturbation
How should I spend my time? What must I do?
This is a question I often find asking myself. I want to change it. How about... what do I want to do?
I'm taking the tongue-in-cheek psychological term musturbation from Albert Ellis, which I found through “Feeling Good” by David Burns. Leaving aside the credits part, which is a big one, I'll just describe what it's about. It's the compulsive insistence that things ought to be a particular way. That I should/must do certain things.
That is something I felt all the time and I didn't notice anything wrong with it. As it turns out, there may actually be something wrong with it.
Richard Feynman had this attitude in life about being “actively irresponsible”. He relates in his wonderful book (yes, guilty of being yet another physicist in love with him) “Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman” how he learned from Von Neumann “an interesting idea: that you don't have to be responsible for the world that you’re in”. I remember being a bit disgusted by the idea the first time I read it. Nevertheless, Feynman tells the story of how he cultivated this “active irresponsibility” and how it made him a very happy man ever since. Being a very happy person doesn't sound too bad, does it?
Add to the cocktail the joy of figuring things out and sharing the good stuff. Not stopping doing things just because you should, but actually doing the things you want.
One of the things I thought I “must” do is to write things, like this blog. But I wasn't. A big part of it was because I felt forced to, and at the same time I felt that basically anything I could write would not be good enough.
Funnily enough, it felt like a very valid reasoning. Well, I'm not sure if I'm tired of that way of thinking, but at least now I'm suspicious about it.