Welcome to MicroMac Living

I want to tell you that this blog life has started as an experiment. A lot of things happened in between the years 2007 - 2009, not too many of them good. I will spare you the details, as most of you have experienced your own suffering in some form or another over the past year. Buddhists say that enlightenment is the "end of suffering." When I first heard this, I was a bit depressed. That's it? Nothing positive? Just the "end" of something? I wasn't real motivated to be enlightened, I guess. Somehow the absence of something didn't seem like much of a reward.

Clearly I wasn't enlightened. And I don't claim to be now. However, I am having some interesting insights lately, and I thought that perhaps, as an experiment, I would start noticing them, and even sharing them. So that is what this blog is dedicated to. I am learning some unique things about how to live a happy life in this very strange and chaotic world. This is not about losing weight, raising your self esteem, becoming a better you. This is something different. It is finding that tiny seed inside you and growing it.

Like many of you, I have not always lived to my potential, been productive, effective, or human. I've spent years trying to improve, work harder, get more done, be better, contribute, re-connect or network with the right people to build good relationships. But I'm not sure it got me anywhere. And often, when it did get me somewhere, I either didn't like the place, or was never certain I had arrived.

Some time in the middle of 2009 my energy was shot. I was empty. And I really believed that it was my true nature to sit on the couch and eat potato chips the rest of my life and watch the cartoon network. (I love cartoons). As 2010 approached, I was overwhelmed by another year of my life passing by feeling unfulfilled and thinking that I'd accomplished nothing meaningful. I kept recalling a phrase by Nelson Mandella "no one does the world any good by striving to be small." And I felt really small. Perhaps noticing this, and admitting that I was small was the starting point. The big bang started from a single point. A black hole collapses to a single point. Was this the point? The centerpoint of my Universe? Was feeling this small where I was supposed to start?

This "small" idea of Mandella's was a very important quote for me. In fact, it has been my personal philosophy of life based on a very profound experience I had when I was 23 years old (now half my life ago). I was a professional tennis player in the year 1987 when he uttered this quote. Nelson Mandella had elected to return to prison rather than be released under the same condition of apartheid as a means of protest. I happened to be in South Africa at that exact time. I was one of a handful of Americans allowed into the country during those difficult years, and I was playing a tennis tournament in Johannesburg and staying at the Johannesburg Sun, a five start hotel. I was a wealthy (by comparison) American and had the opportunity to stay in the country for well over a month. It was my first big trip abroad and my first experience with third world culture.

South Africa seemed to me an enormous dichotomy. On the one hand you had the deBeers diamond fortune, the most prestigious and precious element in the world. And on the other, you had total suppression of an entire population. A population that was in the majority. You had the Dutch, who were considered the rednecks. You had the British who were the aristocracy. And you had the Zulus and Tumbus and various tribal factions that had created an under-culture that couldn't agree long enough to disagree. Nelson Mandella's political organization the ANC was one of violence, although at the time most of the violence was black on black. Families that were not supporters of the ANC were told to get on board or find their head of household with a tire filled with gasoline on fire around their body, burned to death. And this was liberal Johannesburg, Pretoria boycotted candy bars that had a black person on the wrapper. To me, South Africa seemed like a big mess. The Dutch hated the British for having to save them in the Boer war to get the Zulus divided over the river. The British didn't care for anybody, but themselves. And all the blacks were fighting with each other. But then I took a ride.

I had wanted to go to a game park, Kruger National Park, which I did. But along the way I stopped in Soweto, Bahputswana and a few other of what were called "Independent Nations." Independent Nations were basically small plots of land in the surrounding areas of South Africa. They were made up of small groups of shanty towns, which were basically corrugated tin. The first "nation" I came to consisted of four sticks propping up a tin roof and a cow tied to one of the sticks. Certainly if the cow had moved in the slightest, the entire dilapidated structure would fall. The cow was obviously content to remain motionless in the hot sun, which was about 126 with heat index. This structure was the home of The Chief. He greeted me with an enormous smile, filled with white teeth, and a welcoming gesture that would have made an Italian mother at a dinner table proud. I asked him why he was here and he explained that he had left Johannesburg where he had been a medical doctor, to live here. They did not have potable water. But they had the right to vote. And he was happy.

Wow.

Okay, let me repeat that. He was a medical doctor who left his practice to live half clothed under a tin roof with a cow and no water so he could...vote. My voting record being somewhat pathetic I immediately felt guilty. And I felt guilty for drinking water earlier that day. I'm sure the look on my face was blank to hide my shame. I couldn't understand. I couldn't relate. And I was really concerned about startling the cow and destroying this man's entire world. And despite his obvious challenges, this man was so happy! I've never seen anyone with such a glow about him. There were 31 people in his "nation" so far, and he had been freely elected, and they were building their infrastructure and they were organizing a school. The way he talked about all this you would have thought he'd won the lottery. I had nothing to offer this man, but gave his son a tennis ball which immediately set off a chorus of cheers and excitement for the six children who earlier wanted to just touch me, to see if my skin felt the same, as they ran out into the hot sun and dust to begin a mini soccer game.

If no one does the world any good by striving to be small, why did this man leave so much to have so little? And why did Nelson Mandella elect to stay in prison where he had virtually nothing in terms of means and necessities? I was trying to become the top tennis player in the world, at the time I was ranked about 189. I realized I was in the top 1% of my field, even though I was nowhere near my goal. And yet, why was I so small? And why did these gentleman seem so much greater to me? Thus would begin THE GREAT IRONY of my life. The irony of happiness through letting go, the irony of freedom through restriction, the irony of mastery through specificity, the irony of greatness through minimalism. One that has taken half again a life to comprehend. This IRONY I have come to describe as micrognosis. It's a word I'm inventing. It's a word I will explain. And as a write, I learn, and as I share, I grow. So with that, I will tell you that the secrets that are about to unfold before you, are secrets that have been shared with me by great men and women of our time, but in intimacies and parcels that are incredibly small. These secrets will be yours and it is my hope that you will make them your own, by reflecting on your own life and those small moments of wonder, miracle moments, quantum packets of you that have infinite power and pure potential. Keep reading and we will grow together.