Run! Dammit! Run!

If you haven’t seen this movie, watch it. It mixes great world building techniques with flash backs and illustrates fantastic character development.  And the rules the main character develops to survive in a land of zombies are hilarious with a level of truth.

Robert Mckee, author of the popular book, Story, distills every story to be a quest.  Romance stories are quests for lust or love, fantasies are quests to save the helpless, thrillers are quests to solve a mystery of some sort, etc.

The main character, Columbus, played by Jesse Eisenberg is a college student who’s on a quest to find out if his parents are still alive.  Alive as in not zombies.  Honorable endeavor.

Columbus and Tallahassee run into a pair of sisters played by Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin whose sole purpose is to survive.

But Woody Harrelson plays Tallahassee.  What’s his quest?  Is it to save a damsel in distress?  No.  Is it to find the one rare cure for zombieism?  Not even close.  He loves killing them.  How about to rescue other humans from being eaten?  Ha!  Nope.  His quest is an honorable one.  Twinkies.

This brings us to the whole message of the movie.  Enjoy the little things in life.  Because in the world of zombies, (i.e. a symbol of our world:  people who work, do as they’re told, consume, watch mindless TV, and sleep only to wake up to do it again) you have no choice but to enjoy what you love.  And it’s usually the little things that matter the most.

Today I saw a documentary of a woman who was diagnosed with an incurable cancer.  In her quest to find a cure, she has become a leader in the field of health and eco eating.  She’s not only lived with this cancer, but has found a healthy way of keeping this cancer to the level of benignancy.  Pretty amazing.

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One of the things about the documentary was the number of cancer patients who fought for life and found a renewed appreciation for life.  This led me to the question:  What would I do if I had a limited number of days to live?

In human reality, I do have a limited number of days to live.  I may live to be 100.  I may live for one more day.  I can’t be concerned with which.  I can only focus on what I want to do NOW.  And it’s the reason why I’vesearched for my passion. Once I’ve found it, I jumped in head on.

What would you do, since you also have a limited number of days to live?

In researching warrior societies for my book, a commonality is they started training at preadolescence.  There weren’t any real exceptions for good reason.  All of thesocietiesI focused on stemmed from hundreds to thousands of years ago where men had to protect or fight for what they had.

Native Americans had to protect their villages.  Scots fought for their land and freedom during the English occupation.  Samurai fought for their warlords during Japan’s monarchy.  Spartons threw their young into the agoge to become Greece’s special forces.

Life was treacherous.  As a result, fighting became a necessity.

But do you have to start at a young age to be good at anything?  It seems that a lot of successful people of today started their endeavors when they were children.  Michael Jackson is a good example.  The turn out for his remembrance is a tribute to his passion and hard work.  But look at the other brothers.  What happened to them?

What about the colonel?  That’s right.  The man who made fried chicken a staple in America?  Did he start frying poultry when he was young?  He had a variety of jobs that had little to do with flightless birds.  It wasn’t until his late forties that he started a cafe, and his fried chickens had become popular.  Then at the ripe young age of sixty six did he start selling franchises, which of course spawned the empire all chickens fear today.

The Ultimate Fighting Championship is about to have its 100th pay per view show this weekend.  The heavyweight champion, Brock Lesnar, started to train how to fight just a few years ago.  It’s fair to say that a lot of great fighters on the UFC roster started when they were young.  And Lesnar is highly talented as an athlete.  But the one thing the UFC has proven over and over again is talent and experience has little to do with winning.  More than hard work, it’s a mindset forged under the heat of severe competition.

For Lesnar to become the heavyweight champion in four fights, which is amazing in its own right, he had to overcome some very experienced and gifted fighters.  In listening to his many interviews, he always knew his unproven ability to win, worked extremely hard, and approached both his fights and training with an intelligence that some heavyweights ignored.  A lot of them relied on their weight and size to prevail.

He scoffed at critics who said he was too green for the sport of mixed martial arts, that he needed experience before he could even challenge the prior champion, and, despite his explosiveness and size, knew he had to learn quickly with a furious pace.

Is it ever too late to start anything?

Yes.  When you’re dead.

Continuing on with yesterday’s post ofReading People,I remembered something today that made me laugh.  Several months ago, I was working in another office.  They have those vending machines that dispences hot cocoa, coffee, tea, etc.

Periodically, the vendor will come to reload the machines and allow that particular coffee machine to give out free drinks.  All you have to do is press the clear plastic button, and, bam, free coffee or cocoa.  They can even choose between a large or small cup.  Keep in mind this happens often enough that once the worker bees hear about this a line forms.

Nothing funny so far, I know.

The one constant comment about the coffee?  “Yuck!”

Do the cubicle bees throw it out?  No.

What do they do?  That’s right.  They drink it.

Do they come back for more?  Yeah.

What is it about free stuff that no matter how bad it may be people will line up for it?  It’s the strangest behavior.

You see this in buffets.  People prepare themselves the whole day by not eating.  Once they get to the buffet they eat their fill.  They’ll continue to eat, making sure they consume the price of admission.  Then are they done, yet?  Well…there’s dessert.  You can’t have dinner and not have dessert.

They’ll load up on ice cream, cakes, cookies.  It’s as if they’ve never seen anything like this before and hoard all the sweets.  By the time they lug their goods back, they’re too full and leave most of the dessert.  And most buffet places have a policy of no doggy bags.

Why do people do this?

What’s crazier is the buffet called Todai.  They serve Asian style seafood like sushi, lobster, different filleted fish, etc.  This one Chinese lady had an empty plate.  She rapped her fingers along the bottom edge, waiting.  Saliva lined her bottom lip.  Her eyes widened.  The chef appeared from the back and placed about half a dozen halved lobsters.

This lady had no shame.  As he placed them on the serving plate, she scooped them up.  I’m not a huge fan of lobster, but, damn, scand-o-lous.

What is it with people?

It’s simple.  They don’t live in the moment, busy scarfing everything they can get their hands on, not enjoying life right now.  They’re constantly thinking there isn’t enough, living in the future, letting the present fly by.  And it’s no wonder when they’re on their death beds, they think, “What happened?”

The hero of my story deals with this on a constant basis.  It’s the one thing that saps his soul, making his job as peace keeper miserable.  He’ll have to find a way to cope.

Passion.  Is it important?  People talk about it all the time.  Lovers look for it.  Artists seek it in their muse.  Musicians sing about it over and over.  If passion is important, do people need it in their lives?  And should every one have it?

Passion is one of my main themes that I explore in my book.  Because it’s a novel, I can’t lecture about it.  I explore it from both the hero and antagonist.  Kinda like William Wallace and King Edward I in Braveheart.  For passion can infect people who are both ethical and horrid.

My coworker said passion is important but not necessary to live.  ”Someone needs to work at Walmart,” she stated.  That’s true.  Someone needs to do farm work, run the Mickey D’s, man the gas stations, pick up the garbage.  ”Look at our company,” she said.  There’s about 36,000 employees.  ”Our company couldn’t run itself.  It needs us.”

Again, all those are true statements.

But isn’t freedom of choice the freedom to choose what you do in life?  For many years I’ve searched for my passion, the thing that took me out of time, out of my daily drudgery.  If you’ve read my bio, you know it’s telling stories.  I love it.  Do I love every single part of it?  No.  But do I love it almost all the time?  Most definitely.

I have my day job.  However, it’s only a means to an end.  That’s it.  Nothing more.

Michelangelo is famous for painting the Sistine Chapel and sculpting David among other things.  I was listening to Dr. Wayne Dyer, and he said Michelangelo’s passion was sculpting.  His day job was the Sistine Chapel.  I thought that was interesting.

Without my passion for stories, I’d be lost.  I’ve been lost before and it sucked.  That state of limbo led me to mine.

I think William Wallace said it best in the movie.  ”Every man dies.  Not every man lives.”

So, is passion needed?  And are my coworker’s statements just a shield to protect her from her own power to create what she wants in life?

Many have asked why we are here, why were are born.

My personal philosophy is that the meaning of life is to be happy.  As children were happy.  We spit up, drool, pick our noses, crap, and we laugh about it.  Babies cry because they need something – changing, food, injury – but that’s not sadness.

A lot of people who teach personal growth/spirituality state that we all are born with a purpose.   And they also say we know our paths since childhood, and it isn’t until well intentioned adults impose their own view of what reality/practicality is that we veer off it.  Let’s assume that’s true.

So if you’re in a job and you aren’t doing well in it, despite how much and hard you try to do well, is it a sign that you need to change?

Or if you’re with someone and everything is going well, the connection is there, the core values are there, is this the person you’re meant to be with?

Your parents divorce, leaving you to play on your own because you don’t feel like making friends.  You spend your time pretending, fantasizing, making characters, and gain the skill of story telling.  Should you story tell?  (Robin Williams)

What about you go to Hollywood and you audition like crazy.  You love acting, love the arts, love the the city of angels.  People say you’re a great actress, but every single audition yields nothing.  When is enough enough?  Or is there a limit?

I do know signs are given to us.  I mean, if you’re at a job and don’t like it, ask yourself why?  If the reason is because you want something better, or the job holds no meaning, move on.  Right?

Or if you’re with someone and everything seems to be working, then you would continue to see them.  Yeah?

And what about reality/practicality versus dreams.  Failure happens, but isn’t it meant to help guide us like driving a car?  Veer too close to the curb, turn the wheel.  Hear your tire hit the middle road markers, adjust your wheel.  These things have lead me to become a writer.  Since I’ve made that decision and committed to completing a book, I’ve felt content.  I’ve even found myself not really wanting to buy things.  Not the way I used to anyways.

Tell me what you think?

Richard Paul Evans is a New York Times Bestselling author.  His first book is called The Christmas Box. His subsequent books – Grace:  A Novel, The Five Lessons a Millionaire Taught Me About Life and Wealth, The Last Promise - just to name a few, have also gone on the best seller list.  His keynote speech at the San Francisco Writer’s Conference was awesome.

He discusses what he did to get his book out to the world.  Richard was cool enough to tell a few other stories.  Some were touching and others funny.  He also  gave some inspiring advice to us authors.  I highly recommend listening him.

richard-paul-evans

Tell me what you think.  Please forgive the poor recording.  All three hundred of us were having lunch.

Tomorrow, I’ll upload a lecture about branding.