abookstateofmind

[abookstateofmind]

Meaning

I feel as though there are so many out there looking for meaning.

Not in a deeper spiritual way, but instead that they are missing something.

Something fullfilling, something that sets their wires straight.

I think that is why ultra endurance and endurance world of adventures, events and expeditions has gained some much appeal of late.

I believe it satisfies these needs. This sense of purpose, sense of living to our potential.

This self realization that there is more to us than sleeping, eating and working slash career.

Of course there is time for family and in more rare cases unfortunately for community and church and more.

But one thing is missing in all of this. The self. The time for self. The time for self help, self health, the time for spending time with thoughts, reflection, elevated heart rate, muscular activity and most importantly, fresh air. Nature.

Endurance events allow for this and more.

A connection with nature, with the environment, with its beauty, its ability to revive us.

We are hard wired for nature. To be outside. To live connected with our environment.

To feel it, to play and struggle in it.

To be challenged by it, and therefore challenge ourselves.This sense of adventure, challenge, struggle and realization is what pulls people to becoming endurance athletes.

To discover their potential.

At first maybe not a huge step, but seeing what we are capable of and growing from there. To a new potential and all the while connecting to our truest, rawest, inner self.

How we are hardwired as animals to nature, to the outdoors, to a sense of feeling alive in it via activity.

Everything in it is active around us in nature.

And of course we as humans are part of this nature. Part of this growth and vibrant balance. And as the athlete continues to grow to new challenges, which then add some fear and curiosity and uncertainty to it, which again, brings us back to our true raw self.

That human living with the outdoor, surviving outdoors and feeling most alive when we are truly challenged physically and mentally via nature and our endeavors in it.

Nothing can replace that. As it is our truest, rawest self.

Its buried deep down there, but the more athletes connect with it, the more they realize how much that dormant self was in them and they want to unlock and unleash more.

It makes them better. More energetic, healthier, happier, more creative, more efficient, more connected and therefore caring.

The stewardship of our environment and nature begins with loving ourself in it and feeling this connection to it.

How can one relate to the environment and its destruction if one is foreign when in it.

But when we have felt how we are truly part of it, that is a deeply connected and wired part of us.

We begin to unlock this hardwiring and allow it to fire, more and more, in order to feel alive and joyful and happy and motivated in our days.

Not only to get out and spend time in it again, but revitalize for work and family and community and more.

Because our own tank of self care is full and we are connected in seeing and feeling our potential physically and emotionally.

We need the fresh air for all of that to fire.

As I heard the other day, in order to love others, we need to love ourselves.We can’t give more love than we are able to give ourself. So knowing that we have this emptiness and missing component in our lives, makes living generously and giving very hard. We are missing something.

That huge piece is our hardwired self for outdoor adventure, physical activity and with  that comes curiosity with what we could be capable of. Awakening the endurance athlete within. The one that is curious if they can achieve that goal and once seeing that growing to a new level of appreciation of that better, healthier, more confident, beautiful, vibrant, energetic self.

That close outward, because on the inside, the fire of that missing component has been lit.

The challenges we feel this inbalance, we just can’t identify what it is.We have become so disconnected with our potential that we don’t know how to explain what it is. But most once outside in nature training with a healthy fear towards and event on the outer edge of their current capability start to understand.

I was reading the other day about how we no longer have these rites of passage that young men women used to go on out in nature.

Surviving on our own, living in the world of our environment off the land for days.

To really feel it, sleep in it, awaken it, live off of it, and immerse ourselves in it.

We no longer have this and it might be leaving a curious hole in our soul that is missing.

Why is it we are so curious and mystified by the outdoor life. Adventures, raw ability in nature.

When we see those pictures or hear the stories that it tugs at us. That it leaves us daydreaming. Because we are drawn to it. It is who we are, how we are hardwired from thousands of years of living in nature. In balance with it, surviving in it, being challenged by it, being overwhelmed by it. Feeling alive, on the ocean, or in the woods, in the mountains or the desert.

It all has its effect on us. We all think back to the beautiful moments outdoors alive.

Have we been sterilized to our fake lighting, fake transportation, fake shelters, fake space we call our property?

We have ignored this fundamental part of us for too long.

Where is our danger, our use of all our senses or unease. Our unease.

Where are we truly challenged in body, mind and soul?

Not at work, not at home, but in play. In the outdoors or anything close to it.Your senses come alive ever so gradually. All the components and cells of your body start awakening and firing because that is where we are originally from.

Land, sea, air.Coming back from this dose it fires all our senses. No treadmill or gym can replace this.

There time passes slowly, laboriously. In nature time passes quickly because we get lost in ourselves. And our thoughts in mind and spirit, in listening to our body and soul. It’s all happening there.

How do you think we feel after a marathon or 50k in the woods, mountains or beautiful terrain. How do you think we feel after a day on oceans or lake while rowing, sailing, swimming.

Fully powering ourselves across terrain. Mountain biking through hills and meadows across streams.

Repeat any of these actions for a few days in a row and our sense of self changes.

Our priorities shift, our soul exhales and relaxes to what it knows is an integral part of it.

Nature, challenge, raw beauty and immersive inputs all around us.

We all have an impulse to be more. An impetus we often don’t know why or where it came from but it is there.

Adversity creates morality. It shows our human side, vulnerability and therefore empathy.

- Chris Hauth, RRP 377

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2019 in books

“Neuropsychedelia" - Nicholas Langlitz

“PiHKAL” - Alexander and Ann Shulgin

“Alibaba” - Duncan Clark

“Birth of a Theorem” - Cedric Villani

“Of Mice And Men” - John Steinbeck

“The Lessons of History” - Will and Ariel Durant

“A Primate’s Memoir” - Robert Sapolsky

“More Money Than God” - Sebastian Mallaby

“What I Talk About When I Talk About Running” - Haruki Murakami

“I Was Vermeer” - Frank Wynne

“Lying” - Sam Harris

“Tools of Titans” - Tim Ferris

“Cryptoassets” - Chris Burniske, Jack Tartar

“Free Will” - Sam Harris

“Caveat Emptor” - Ken Perenyi

“Zum dritten Pol” - Dmitri Meschtschaninow

“Lost in the Jungle” - Yossi Ghinsberg

“Бог без машины” - Николай Кононов

“Shooting Up” - Lukasz Kamienski

“Bitcoin Billionaires” - Ben Mezrich

“Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor” - Yossi Halevi

“13 Spiegel meiner Seele” - Reinhold Messner

“Conscious” - Ann Harris

“Am seidenen Faden” - Hans Kammerlander

“Die rote Rakete am Nanga Parbat” - Reinhold Messner

“The Man Who Solved the Market” - Gregory Zuckerman

“Mastering Ethereum” - Andreas M. Antonopoulos

“Mastering Bitcoin” - Andreas M. Antonopoulos

“The Mastermind” - Evan Ratliff

“Маленькая книжка о большой памяти” - Александр Лурия

“Ultramarathon Man” - Dean Karnazes

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Drawings of writers.

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2018 list

“Trust Me I’m Lying” - Ryan Holiday

“Жизнь насекомых” - Viktor Pelevin

“The Internet of Money” (Vol 1) - Andreas Antonopoulos

“The Harvard Psychedelic Club” - Don Lattin

“The Art Of Learning” - Josh Waitzkin

“The Internet of Money” (Vol 2) - Andreas Antonopoulos

“Losing my Virginity” - Richard Branson

“Dear Chairman” - Jeff Gramm

“Inadequate Equilibria” - Elizier Yudkowsky

“Любовь к трём цукербринам” - Viktor Pelevin

“Bad Blood” - John Carreyrou

“The Bitcoin Standard” - Saifedean Ammous

“Trip” - Tao Lin

“Black Edge” - Sheelah Kolhatkar

“Dark Pools” -Scott Patterson

“Principles" - Ray Dalio

“Soul of an Octopus” - Sy Montgomery

“King Icahn” - Mark Stevens

“King of Capital” - David Carey, John E. Morris

“Fooling Some Of The People All of The Time” - David Einhorn

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2017 list

i may have forgotten a few, but this year I was down by a lot

“Money:  A Suicide Note” - Martin Amis “Der Totale Rausch: Drogen im 3ten Reich” - Norman Ohler “Man’s Search for Meaning” - Viktor Frankl “A Life Decoded: My Genome: My Life” - J. Craig Venter “I Want To Be A Mathematician: An Automathography” - Paul R. Halmos “Economics: The User’s Guide” - Ha-Joon Chang “Вся кремлёвская рать: Краткая история современной России.” - Михаил Зыгарь. “Taking the Stand: My Life in The Law” - Alan M. Dershowitz “When Breath Becomes Air” - Paul Kalanithi “The Strange Case of the Mad Professor” - Peter Kobel “Breakfast at Sotheby’s” - Philip Hook “Shoe Dog” - Phil Knight “Eigensinn” - Hermann Hesse “The Toad and The Jaguar” - Ralph Metzner “The Prince” - Nicollo Machiavelli “Interventions. A Life in War and Peace” - Kofi Annan “SAS Survival Guide” - Lofty Wiseman “Markings” - Dag Hammerskjöld “Oceanic Mythology” - Rosyln Poignant

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Economics: The User’s Guide

A must read for everyone without an economics background: amazingly well written, humorous, very informative and saves a undergraduate degree in economics. Chang manages to capture or mention most areas of economics, relating ideas and defining many terms and concepts in a clear way.

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I Want To Be A Mathematician

Halmos Biography is an interesting read and shows the path and life of a mathematician in academia. While his views on teaching and studying mathematics are invaluable, often he delves into great detail about his own personal life - resulting in a rather chewy and not so interesting second half of the book.

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A Life Decoded

Craig Venter is the man who led the effort to and succeeded in being the first to analyze a whole human genome, introducing one of the biggest advances in science this century. His story is inspiring and tells about individual development, a life in science, the politics (unfortunately) involved in big scientific projects and spreads extremely valuable insights into and knowledge about modern genomics. 

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Mans Search for Meaning

I’ve read a lot of books about the holocaust: historical investigations, reports, survivor stories, judicial and military analysis and others, but the psychological portrait of concentration camp inmates and their development Victor Frankl masterfully creates without leaving his own subjective experiences behind is plainly phenomenal. 

As a bonus, the second part of the book gives a short introduction into the field of psychotherapy, its different schools and his own approach, brilliantly laying out fine distinctions even for the layman.

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The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore, professore dottore Eco, what a library you have! How many of these books have you read?” and the others – a very small minority – who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.

Nassim Taleb - The Black Swan, p. 1 (via alphacaeli)

How to build and think about a library by Nassim Taleb

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Der Totale Rausch

A supremely interesting re-visitation and reinterpretation of the medical information and records considering pharmaceutical intervention during the times of Nazi Germany. 

Ohler describes the systematic distribution and usage of substances like Methamphetamine, Cocaine and different Opiates in the Wehrmacht, the German Society and also its heavy misuse in the Elite of the Nazi State. His theses about the behavioral changes induced by the enormous consumption and the overall influences of the drugs on Hitler himself, the course of the second world war and other selected figures important in the historic context are fascinating and novel. But while they seem to be logically coherent one has to be aware of the stretch that is made, since factual underpinnings are rather sparse.

Nonetheless a great piece of historical investigative journalism combined with exciting storytelling. It sheds light on another dark side of these horrible times, providing great historic value and value in understanding the relationship between society and drugs.  

PS: The English version of the book is titled “Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany” - Norman Ohler

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Money - Martin Amis

John Self is a money making egomaniac, stumbling through his chaotic debauchery of everyday life and talking to the reader about it, but never revealing too much at a time and slapping the plot-twisting truth in our face every few chapters. A smart, darkly-colored-humorous critique of some aspects of the modern, sometimes lonely existence. 

[abookstateofmind]

the unknown

it will remain a mystery until eternity leaves it behind as a small particle of dust in the vast forgotten landscape of our lives

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sketches by Franz Kafka, thoughtfully preserved for us and generations to follow by Max Brod

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“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”

My 3rd grade teacher once told me to read the books that are the the most damaged on the outside because you can tell by the damage its been read by a lot of people, and there’s usually a great story on the inside. This advice hasn’t failed me yet.

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When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.

Maya Angelou (via bookshavepores)