6 Harsh Truths
This, jadies and lentilmen, is a link to a Cracked article.
For those of you unfamiliar with Cracked, they are known for humorous, offensive articles that point out obvious things that nobody wants to think about. Things like … clownfish behaviors in real life and what that would mean about Finding Nemo.
The language is NSFW and only a very small portion of the world wouldn’t be offended at least once (at least a little) when reading their articles.
This article is no different, and yet I am linking to it and recommending a read anyway.
Cracked.com’s 6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person
For those of you who don’t want to read, I’ll do a Tami-summary here, but I’ll be rephrasing and paraphrasing rather a lot.
6, 5, 4, 3, 2 : What are you DOING?
I’ve combined quite a few of Cracked’s headings into a single point, because I believe they blend together very well.
What are the things you WANT? You want money, fame, respect, food, shelter, love, etc.
What are you DOING to get those things? What are you offering the world? What are you giving up?
You don’t apply for a job as a programmer at a corporation, show up in sweatpants, insist that you crochet lovely mittens, and expect to get hired on.
Sitting on a couch watching tv and eating junk food all the time may lead to success for some people, but the odds are NOT in your favor.
Bring something to the table. BE something. DO something. If you met yourself, would you even like who you see? Stop wishing you were someone else, and figure out what you want and what it’ll take to get there.
A quote that hit me pretty hard:
Do the math: How much of your time is spent consuming things other people made (TV, music, video games, websites) versus making your own?
Apple Trees
Followed by a FANTASTIC discussion of “who you are on the inside” and “what you do on the outside”. If you’re an apple tree, then who you are on the inside is the DIRT in which you’re growing. No matter how good the dirt is or how lovely the tree, most people ONLY CARE ABOUT THE APPLES.
What fruit are you producing?
Inside, you have great compassion for poor people. Great. Does that result in you doing anything about it?
also
How many of you are walking around right now saying, “She/he would love me if she/he only knew what an interesting person I am!” Really? How do all of your interesting thoughts and ideas manifest themselves in the world? What do they cause you to do? If your dream girl or guy had a hidden camera that followed you around for a month, would they be impressed with what they saw? Remember, they can’t read your mind — they can only observe. Would they want to be a part of that life?
The Final Point
Everything about you is going to reject change.
Whether you do it by getting defensive, attacking the “attacker” who says you need to change at all (what does Tami know anyway? And certainly what does that Cracked article know?) or nitpicking the bits you don’t personally believe in, your inner self will do everything it can to make sure you keep sitting on that couch, watching that tv and eating that junk food.
It’s comfortable. It’s easy.
You can certainly get by that way. Make your way through life without ever producing fruit. You’re not actually an apple tree, and nobody’s going to cut you down for not producing. You’re a person. You can get government aid pretty easily these days, and then you don’t even need to get a job.
My Apples
That’s not what I want, though. That’s not who I want to be. And I know for plenty of you, that’s not who YOU want to be, either.
This blog isn’t my fruit. It’s just me, figuring things out, trying to learn and share as much of that knowledge as I can. My blog is flowers on an apple tree branch, but not actual fruit.
I want my apples to be my books, my stories, my characters and worlds and I want them to be sweet and fragrant and utterly irresistible.
You
What do you want your apples to be?
14 Comments
The quote about turning an eye to how much time we spend consuming other people’s work instead of creating our own hit me pretty hard.
I NEED APPLES! I WILL MAKE APPLES, BY GOD!
COME GET SOME! x.X
Me too sir. Me too.
I spend far too much time being a consumer, accepting and desiring inputs and far too little time utilizing what I learn in order to produce my own outputs.
I am still very guilty of this. Still, consuming at my current level is also learning, so I can take some comfort in that.
It’s always easier to fix something that’s broken that make something from scratch, so I know that I can criticize something I see in a tv show for example, but that doesn’t mean I could have made the thing in the first place.
But…but…but I *like* to consume…
In all seriousness though, I’ve just lately been coming to this realization on my own. Probably what is making me really stick with writing this time, instead of my previous dabbling. (I have NOTEBOOKS full of two/three page novel beginnings)
keep those notebooks! They’re incredibly priceless. <3 (and I’d love to see a post or two of your favorites!)
Oh my goodness, but they are so embarrassing! But maybe I’ll start a “From the Archives” weekly or something…
That quote about spending time consuming versus producing hit me hard as well.
Like you, I want to produce books, stories, and characters that readers find irrestistable while also inspiring them.
But I don’t think of those as my fruit.
When people come away from an interaction with me what I want them to see is someone who cares for them, someone who has joy, someone who is at peace with himself and those around him, someone with patience, a person who is kind and good and faithful and gentle, but most of all, someone with self-control.
Whether they love my stories or not, if I can be THAT kind of person, I will have been a success.
It’s very important to know your own goals and how you want people to see you, but I think the original article dealt more with output — not just warm-fuzzies, but actual actions and activities that impact other people.
For a non-writing example, if you care about the poor and wish to help them, actually going to a soup kitchen or other way to donate.
Who you are on a personal level is important as well, but not quite the same thing as the fruit-and-tree analogy, I think.
Ted, be careful with that vein of thought, it allows one to silo themselves in such a way that we might think less of the things we create, put less effort into the things we use as tools to effect people simply because we feel the intention is there.
The feeling of intention and the EFFORT put into the outputs are different things. But the paramount fact is that your way of conveying that intention to anyone outside of your own skull is what they can see of the effort you put into the output.
You the writer, creator, architect show me, the reader, consumer, owner how much value there is in your product by the quality of it.
Last week, I spent my first day working at a soup kitchen, and I agree: intentions and actions are worlds apart.
I’m like Ted. My ‘apples’ aren’t physical objects or career achievements. They’re more personal, more spiritual if you will. I call my apples my ‘rosary’. They’re an informal list of the times when I’ve made a big difference in a person’s life. Whenever I feel depressed I think about them, touching the memories of each deed like the beads of a rosary.
But all of them are real. They’re times I actually did something. Times I produced fruit, so to speak.
I learned to distrust intentions in my 20s. I fell on hard times, came within a hair’s breadth of being homeless. And I discovered that people would commiserate endlessly about the plight of the oppressed proletariat — but they wouldn’t loan me ten bucks, share a hot meal with me, or give me a couch to crash on.
Everyone wanted to be seen as compassionate. Heck, I think they genuinely wanted to BE compassionate. But they didn’t care enough to actually do anything. And I can see ugly parallels in my own life. I think that I care about the homeless. Why, for years I’ve donated money to soup kitchens! That makes me compassionate, right? But none of that was anything like doing the work myself. Feeding 300 people. Waiting on them, serving them, cleaning up after them.
THAT was an apple. Sending checks? Important, yes — but I was essentially paying someone else to grow apples and calling them mine. I was a fruit sponsor, not a fruit producer. And the intentions before that… well, if they’re not strong enough to produce fruit, I’m not sure how much they’re worth.
Your story reminds me of James 2:15-17 “15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.”
*high five Jenny* PERFECTLY stated. Yes. This.
And to my shame, I have very little fruit, either paid for or done, to support my own inner belief about who I am and what’s important to me.
Thank you both. It is so helpful to be able to share my thoughts and get good constructive feedback. I appreciate it!
“You the writer, creator, architect show me, the reader, consumer, owner how much value there is in your product by the quality of it.”
That is, at the end of the day, what I want to do. One of the constant advices aspiring writers get is read a lot (consume) and write a lot (produce). Like many things in life, I guess its finding that balance.
[...] is a horrendous lack of apples in this group and there are two reasons for this. Two traps that the various members of this group [...]