“We never really grow up. We just learn how to act in public.” ~ Bryan White

Maybe I was ignorant as a child (aren’t we all?), and maybe I was still ignorant as a teen (aren’t we all?), but it was only later in life that I learnt that most interactions in public are pure performance. And like most realistic realizations about the world – this saddened me. For consciously, and unconsciously, I now act in public; consciously controlling my facial expressions, my body movements, and my speech.

Constantly seeing how others see you isn’t a bad thing, but you end up controlling yourself from being completely honest; you remain quiet rather than saying you don’t understand, you lie in order to not hurt the other, all-in-all you’re phoney… you play a role at all times – the teammate, the friend, the co-worker, the polite chit-chatter, the neutral diplomat.

Why I’m saddened by this is because I find that the most authentic people are the people who are either unaware of the play that is called public life (the ignorant and dunce), or those who, being stronger than us all, have chosen to not take part in the play by doing the exact opposite of what’s expected. But the latter is still in a way being controlled; Acting counter to the play still means that the play controls their actions (their actions are all reactions, what happens when there’s no play to be counter too?)

But the people who I truly admire are those that, like the rebels and conformers, have noticed the play that is daily life, but are unaffected by it like the dunces of the world.

Those who see the rules society has built but still live by their own.

They don’t make their decisions based on the rules of society, or of going against society, they do it for personal reasons, whether their personal reasons align with society’s doesn’t affect that much. They don’t care less about society, but they have a personal understanding of themselves that’s so strong that all of society’s written and unwritten rules come second.

These are the types of people who would help out ‘the other side’ in a segregated community. These are the types of people who would never conform unless conforming in that moment aligned with their personal self. They’re not rebels, they’re not conformers – they’re… just. They don’t stand for or against to be seen in a certain light by others.

Jeff ‘The Dude’ Lebowski from The Big Lebowski movie is one of the best examples I can think of. He’s not rebelling against anything at all, but he’s also not conforming, he’s just… being. He looks like the most carefree person on the planet; he’s a big kid with no worries, and when most people watch the movie they wish their lives were as free as his.

In a way we all have a bit of Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski in us. We all have those moments in our lives where we’re truly ourselves – no acting, and these moments are usually found when we’re home, alone. We don’t wear clothes to show off when we’re at home alone, we don’t eat politely to be seen as polite, we don’t act like we’re beings who don’t fart or poop, and we definitely don’t wear makeup if we’re home alone with nowhere to go. We’re free at home. And the more freer you feel being home alone than you do in public life the more you’re acting in public life rather than just living.

So our goal should be to be as free in the world as we are when we’re home alone.

Why this is harder than it sounds is because unlike being home alone, you are not isolated in public – you’re in constant interaction with society and society’s rules. To be free in an isolated environment is easy. But to be free in a sociable and crowded environment filled with ever-changing people, ideas, written and unwritten rules, you’re going to have to constantly be aware of the rules around you, and constantly be in a fight against you’re own human desire to conform or rebel and figure out what you want to do for you (remember, this isn’t about “People will think this or that if I do this or that,” it’s about “What do I think of this or that?”).

This level of being can only be acquired through constant practice and observation. Like how becoming a good writer requires you to be constantly writing and reading. So to with becoming a ‘good person’, you must constantly practice living rather than acting in as many interactions as possible. Practice seeing the message you convey with everything you say and do, practice seeing how others correspond to the messages you’re conveying, but most importantly practice being brave enough to do your own thing in all situations.

The goal is to be the same in both private and public times.

For you’re not truly alive until you stop acting.

photo credit: Frenkieb

You’re not your Facebook friends, you’re not your likes. You’re not your Twitter followers, you’re not your retweets. You’re not your number of visitors, you’re not your RSS subscribers. You’re not your iPhone, or Blackberry, or Android. You’re not your BBM. You’re not your apps. You’re not fucking Jailbroken.

You’re not your Tumblr reblogs. You’re not your YouTube views. You’re not Stumbled-Upon. You’re not the places you check in. You’re not the mayor.

You’re the all-surfing, all-procrastinating, attention-seeking crap on the web.

First, you’ve got to tell yourself you’re going to eat this damn elephant.

Then, before you even attempt eating the elephant, make sure you have the right utensils. Go to the kitchen, grab a fork, a knife, and a plate. Bring these to the table. Bring your whole self to the table.

Sit down and look at the elephant before you, it’s pretty big.

Take a deep breath. Close your eyes. When you open them again only look at the elephant’s feet. The hardest part to eat. For you, right now, that’s all that exists. And it’s not as big a challenge as eating the whole thing at once.

Open your eyes. See, no elephant – only a leg.

Take your knife, cut a piece off the leg, and with the fork bring it up to your lips, into your mouth, and chew. Pretty tough meat isn’t it? Don’t worry, remember what your mom told you as a kid , “20 chews then swallow.” 18… 19… 20, swallow. Now take your knife again, yes… we’re going to do it again.

Now the legs done. Close your eyes again. Open them. What do you know – another foot to eat. Pick up your knife and fork, get to work.

How’d those four legs taste? Like hard work right? Close your eyes. Open them. Ahhh, the torso. The meatiest part of all.

I know what you’re thinking, “There’s so much!” But hey, it’s not a tough as the legs you just ate. Take your knife, cut a piece off, then use the fork to bring it up to your parting lips, into your mouth, pull the fork away – meat still in your mouth, and chew. Chew, chew, chew. This is why you’re here, to chew.

Finished with the torso? Good job. It’s all downhill from here. Close your eyes. Open them. A tail, a trunk, a couple ears, and a head – the loose ends are all on your plate.

Wait?!!! Where are you going?! Sit back down! You’re almost done, I promise. You’re full? You can’t possibly eat anymore? Well, I have faith in you. Your stomach’s bigger than you give it credit. Please sit back down.

… Thank you.

Where were we? Oh that’s right, the loose ends. Your knife and fork still with you? Good. You know what to do.

Done?

Close your eyes. Open them.

Empty plate. Wait, this can’t be.

Quick, close your eyes. Open them.

Empty plate. Hmmm, guess it was true. You’re done.

You just ate the 26,000 pound elephant.

How do you feel? Accomplished? You should.

Time to do as mother said, clean the table. Pick up your plate, your knife, your fork. Take them to the sink. Don’t worry about washing them now. Now, you sleep. You deserve it.

Tomorrow? Well, I didn’t really think about that. What do you do after you’ve eaten an elephant? Nothing much… ‘Cept, eat another. Yeah, let’s do that. Eat another elephant… Tomorrow. Today we rest.

photo credit: juanpol

Stock and flow is something you learn about in economics.

To simplify it all there are two kinds of quantities in the world; stock and flow. Stock is a static value (the in-rest value): the money in your bank, and the houses on a block. Flow is the rate of change (the in-movement value): the money you make per month, or how many hairs you lose as you get older.

Economics should in no way interest you (it interests me, but I’m weird), but what should interest you is how Robin Sloan applied it to media.

In his own words:

Flow is the feed. It’s the posts and the tweets. It’s the stream of daily and sub-daily updates that remind people that you exist.

Stock is the durable stuff. It’s the content you produce that’s as interesting in two months (or two years) as it is today. It’s what people discover via search. It’s what spreads slowly but surely, building fans over time.

Robin goes on to talk about how with the ever growing ease of communication we have with one another (thank you technology) the more we focus on flow and neglect stock. Robin emphasis a balance between the two. That we do both.

And I agree with Robin. Stock and flow are both necessities. We need to stop, hide in our caves for a bit, and build the truly great things while remembering to come out once in a while to connect with people and let them know we’re still alive.

Yet why do so many of us focus on only one and not on both at the same time? Is it because we haven’t become aware of stock and flow yet? I don’t think so.

Stock and flow happens whether or not people are aware of it.

Even if people can’t word it as well as Robin has I find that people will always lean towards doing the best thing for themselves (basic survival skills in us force us to go with what’s best for us afterall), except on one occasion – When things are difficult. When things are hard we tend to ignore what’s good for us and do the easy.

So why is it difficult?

Why is constantly changing between stock and flow that hard for us?

This I’ll explain by using simple physics and history. For the more I thought about stock and flow the more I realized that in order to properly comprehend, and explain, the idea of it applied to our lives the more I had to expand outside of economics and look into other studies. First of physics.

The physics behind stock and flow:

Newton’s First Law of Motion: An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.

Newton’s first law let’s us see why stock and flow is so difficult for us to apply to our lives. It shows us that our imbalance is not created by our failing to properly define stock and flow, but because physics works against us in creating that balance.

When we’re in stock (in our caves doing work that truly matters) overtime we tend to stay there.

A person in stock tends to stay in stock.

And when we’re out conversing, getting to know people, we tend to stay there.

A person in flow tends to stay in flow.

The difficult part, the part that moves counter to what physics has in mind for us, is something I’ve called The Switch; the constant switching between stock and flow. This is the unbalanced force in the equation.

A person in stock stays in stock and a person in flow stays in flow unless acted upon by an unbalanced force, The Switch.

The Switch is the hard part because it requires more energy to apply than both stock or flow. In order for you to stop you need to exert more energy counter to the direction you’re moving, and in order for you to move from a stand-still position you’ll need to exert more force than both the energy you were using to stand still and of that which you’ll use to stay moving.

Same goes for stock and flow. In order for you to switch from flow to stock you’ll need to exert a small, but powerful, burst of self-control (self control being the energy applied counter to where you are going). And in order for you to switch from stock to flow you’ll need to apply that same burst of energy again.

Physics shows that the greatest energy is not exerted in staying still or in moving, but in applying the unbalanced force. And same goes for stock and flow, the difficult part’s The Switch.

The history behind stock and flow:

Now I’m going to do something drastic here and say that stock and flow can be applied to historic life. I’m going to go and say that stock and flow is how we’ve survived as a species. And I’m going to go and say that for us human beings The Switch is also a necessity of life (now anyways).

I see flow as the work the men of old did – hunt. In order for the tribe to live they had to go out there, risk their lives, and hunt. Hunting let them live one day longer because it allowed then to provide for their families, their children, and themselves. While stock is the work the women usually did – the raising of children and the growing of the community. The men provided for the health of the tribe by making sure that it had enough resources to survive now and the women provided for the health of the tribe by making sure that the children were well taught, and that the community itself grew better so that it survived later on. One focused on surviving in the short run (men), and the other focused on surviving in the long run (women). Both jobs were equally important.

The same can be applied to life today but in a different context. Today, our tribe can be seen as ourselves, our work, and our reputation intertwined. We, as individuals, are the overall tribe and the figurative men and women that reside in them are the mindsets that reside within us. We must apply both flow and stock in order for the tribe that is us to survive. We must, like the men of old, go out and hunt – connect with people, converse, and show them that we’re still here in the short run. And yet, like the women of old, focus on our future, better ourselves and our work, and create things that last. We must flow to thrive in the short run, and we must stock to thrive in the long run. Both, are still equally important.

In the past our tribe used to be the community we lived in as a whole but now, the tribe has morphed. It’s come from something tangible to something intangible; from something that used to consist of countless people to something that consists of only ourselves. That’s why The Switch is now more important than ever.

So why is The Switch more important now?

Why was The Switch not as important 500-1,000 years ago?

As I put forth earlier what makes today different is that the tribe has moved from consisting of numerous individuals to just us. We can no longer depend on someone else to provide for our short-term health while we focus on the long-term, or vice versa and focus on our short-term health while someone else focuses on the long-term.

We must now be both the hunters and the homemakers.

And thus we must now face a problem we’ve never faced before; The Switch.

Constantly switching from hunter to homemaker is something our long history has not prepared us for. History has given us the means to stay as hunter or as homemaker by making it easier to continue on the path we’ve chosen (physics – a hunter stays hunting and a homemaker stays home-making), but it has not prepared us for the changing from one to the other (The Switch).

The Switch is something we’re going to have to apply without backing from history.

And that’s why so many of us don’t stock and flow in a balanced manner. Most of us made the choice to either focus on flow or on stock subconsciously, and with physics helping us delve deeper into one or the other, we continued to do so. But now we’re facing an issue where we must switch our focus from one to the other frequently.

This can’t be done at a subconscious level. In order for us to properly balance stock and flow we must, with our conscious mind, apply The Switch.

And in order to do that we’re going to have to go back and [re]learn everything consciously. In order to consciously master The Switch we’re going to have to go back and learn about stock and flow consciously (we have to know what we’re switching between afterall).

Our subconscious provided us with enough means to get here, but in order to move on we’re going to have to become more aware consciously; we’re going to have to get smarter.

But for all of you that find mastering The Switch too difficult, don’t worry – There’s a shortcut to skipping The Switch altogether and going straight into balanced stock and flow. It requires two people. Both working together as a unit. One staying in stock, one staying in flow (one hunter, one homemaker). As a whole (tribe) you’ll be balanced. Pretty simple. But frankly, I find that few of us can get along that well.

For the rest of us we’re going to have to realize that stock and flow do exist, and that The Switch between them is the most difficult obstacle to our balance of them. We’re going to have to realize that the balance of stock and flow is a necessary if we want to better ourselves and our work both in the short and long run. And thus, we’re going to have to master The Switch between them.

photo credit: Yutaka Tsutano