The Right Way

In life there are many things we have to do which come with instruction manuals detailing the steps we must follow to complete the tasks.  For every task that comes with an instruction manual however there are hundreds more that come with no instruction at all.  This is where education comes into play, both formal through academia at schools, colleges, and universities, and informal through life experience, or as some call it "The University of Life" both play the same role.  What we learn through both routes can fall into three main areas, the right way, the wrong way, and your way.  While they may often overlap, for the most part we never truly adhere to one and only one.

We could spend an entire series of posts debating the definitions of right and wrong but for the sake of brevity, for now, let's just define 'right' as the way in which the task was intended to be completed, either by design or precedence.  We can define 'wrong' in this sense as the way that was never intended to be used.  It's important to stop and note here that we are only addressing the "how" of this process, and not the "what" of the result, in other words we're not concerning ourselves with whether or not these methods work or achieve the task we set out to accomplish, we're only concerning ourselves with the way in which we try to do so.

When it comes to your own way of doing things, often this is the most fluid of the three, forever adapting to changes and developing micro-solutions to micro-problems that evolve over time.  I have a strong background in programming so I can speak from a software development perspective one area these divergences are prevalent is in the software development life cycle.  Software development is discussed in an academic setting in terms of paradigms, set methodologies with steps to be followed to achieve the task.  The problem is that most of these paradigms aren't followed in practice, and even when corporations try to follow them the practical application is at best, barely relatable to the paradigm supposedly in use.  In software development as with everywhere else in life, "my way" wins out in the end.  You end up weaving between right and wrong and adding alterations to your process until eventually it does not resemble either.

While this is the way we pursue many things in life, it poses a question, at what point should you stop trying to pursue your way and accept the "right" way, even when it seems wrong to you?  Some might argue that as long as the same objective is met then how you achieve it is irrelevant but there are so many instances where you can demonstrate the negative consequences of failing to consider the ramifications of your actions that the argument of how short sighted this is seems self evident.  If we go beyond theory however we can demonstrate with simple examples how doing something the wrong way, can achieve a goal yet produce an entirely different experience.

To pick perhaps the most relatable example you can look at Ice Cream.  As children we learn very quickly that there is a right and a wrong way to eat ice cream.  The reason we learn this quickly is because it punishes you immediately for eating it the wrong way.  You need to pace yourself when you eat ice cream and if you don't then brain freeze immediately sets in and punishes you for doing it wrong.  If you only ever ate ice cream quickly you would forever experience pain from doing so and never experience the pleasure others get from it.  It is only through eating it slowly that you learn to appreciate its flavour and gain pleasure in the process. 

One of the things I enjoy most in life is trance music, and it's also one of the things I find others are very critical of because they see it from a different perspective.  Like ice cream which punishes you for eating it fast, they try to listen to trance music the way they do any other music and fail to gain any pleasure from it, in many cases they outright say it causes the opposite.  Trance music is like ice cream, if you try to listen to it the way you listen to all other music you'll never appreciate it.  Just as you other foods quickly and must make exceptions for ice cream to discover its finer points, you have to make exceptions for trance music and approach it with a different mentality. 

The purpose of trance at its core is to induce a trance like state, hence the name.  Repetition in trance music originates in the same concept of chanting and tantric meditation; the purpose is to help you let go and embrace a state of oblivion and nirvana.  Trance music requires the listener to abandon their other senses and embrace the music itself.  To feel the rhythm of a bassline dance with your heartbeat, to feel the sweet kiss of the hi-hat on your neck, whilst synthesisers whisper sweet nothings in your ears as the touch of the treble creeps and crawls across your skin tickling your hairs as they stand on end, the sweet sensations caressing you as you feel it build in anticipation of the moment when finally you hear the break and you feel yourself lifting and falling into fervent phonic euphoria.

To achieve this requires much more attention and dedication than other genres of music.  Trance is active it is not passive, you must engage with it, like a lover beckoning you to dance with them, trance holds out a hand for you to hold.  The reason drugs are so often associated with this style of music is because they offer a shortcut, allowing you to quickstep into the mentality required to appreciate this music.  I've never needed that personally, music has always been my drug and when I need to let go it has always been there for me with open arms to fall into.  The lack of appreciation others have I find comical at times because the same belief permeates their impressions, that they should be able to experience something without having to learn how to do it first.  Trance is like ice cream.  If you don't consume it right then you're destined to feel nothing but headaches and find yourself at a loss to understand why other people love it so much.

It is the lack of punishment that can make us pursue the wrong way without recourse.  We have to remember just because there are other ways to do something does not mean they are right or wrong.  This isn't even about asserting which is right or wrong this is about making people open up to the idea that there are other ways to do things and when you follow them your experience can completely change.  So maybe you should stop and think about the things you have tried in life that turned out to be entirely negative and ask yourself whether you did it right and whether your experience was the same as others.