A little bit of Zen (105)

 

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."

Albert Einstein

A little bit of Zen (104)

 

“Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.”

Arthur Schopenhauer

You don't have to tell England football fans that, Martin.

Another addition to the list of famous people we didn't realise had played Fantasy Premier League....

A little bit of Zen (103)

"Every ending marks a new beginning. All things pass away, but new things arise in their place. The world is constantly replenished."

GW

The 2026 World Cup is nearly done. Let us hope we have a magnificent Final on Sunday to cap what has been a magnificent tournament - probably the best ever in the competition's history. 

Messi is bowing out in style; perhaps Kane also (I doubt if he'll still be around in 2030). [Let us not dwell upon Cristiano - he should have retired from international football 4 or 5 years ago, to avoid tarnishing his legacy...]  But new stars are rising in their place; I look forward to seeing more from the likes of Ismael Saibari, Pau Cubarsi, Antonio Nusa, Johan Manzambi, Haissem Hassan, Gilberto Mora, and Nico Paz. There will be so many new wonders to enjoy at the next tournament. I can hardly wait...

A little bit of Zen (102)

"All that matters is today. Yesterday is merely information and tomorrow we think about when it arrives."

Jürgen Klopp

A little bit of Zen (101)

"Everywhere is walking-distance - if you have the time."

Steven Wright

A great line from one of my favourite comedians. Deeper than you think... 

For me, the wisdom of it lies in recognising how much our thinking is constrained by the categories we unconsciously impose upon things.

A little bit of Zen (100)

"The true harvest of my daily life is... intangible. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched."

Henry David Thoreau  -  'Walden' 

A little bit of Zen (99)

 

"Intuition is cosmic fishing. You feel a nibble, then you've got to hook the fish."

Richard Buckminster Fuller

"We are all following hunches. We need to develop an intuition about which hunches are actually the good ones - hunches about hunches!"

GW

A little bit of Zen (98)

 

"Every beginning contains the seed of its own ending. Enjoy the things that are, when they are. Do not regret them, when they are not."

GW

The World Cup will be over before we know it, it will go by in a flash. We must try to give it our full attention while it lasts, try to sup every possible drop of joy out of it.

A little bit of Zen (97)

 

“If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.”

William Blake  -  'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"

A little bit of Zen (96)

"It's taken me all my life to learn what not to play."

Dizzy Gillespie

"You can never know what are the 'best' decisions to make. You just have to try to avoid making too many of the most obvious mistakes."

GW

 

The ultimate REFRAME

I was asked - yet again - on one of the forums the other week what my rank is. And instead of just ignoring the enquiry, or castigating the questioner as an ignorant lout, I came up with this flippant response.... which I find contains a kernel of important truth. This is not silly bragging or empty, delusional consolation; it is a valuable reminder of where our true focus should lie.

"I am FIRST in the only league that matters."

This is always true, for all of us. Because the only competition that truly matters is the struggle with ourselves - to do the best we can, and to constantly seek to improve on what that 'best' can be.

Fretting about your 'Overall Rank', or even your status in mini-leagues, is a VANITY of VANITIES. It is not what the game of FPL should really be about.

A little bit of Zen (95)

"Roads are made for journeys, not destinations."

Kong Qiu ('Confucius')

"Money's just something you throw off the the back of a train..."

Tom Waits - 'Long Way Home'

Money, after all, is just a crystallization of effort, a convenient medium for translating effort into different material benefits. But money, like effort, like all manifestations of the material world, is ephemeral: we use it, and it is gone forever. Nothing lasts; but the true value of a thing arises precisely from the fact that it can only be experienced for a fixed amount of time. The value of an FPL season is not found in the numbers recorded against your name at the end of it, but in the memories of all the doubts and struggles and difficult decisions grappled with over the past nine months.

A little bit of Zen (94)

"Anxiety destroys scale, and suffering makes us lose perspective."

Saul Bellow

Things always seem worse than they are. And they often appear to be worse for us than they are for others. But even on the rare occasions when that's true, things are almost never as bad as they might be.

There is a comfort to be found in perspective.

Never give up!

 

Last year, I watched a documentary about the early years of the American Space Program which included the following very striking line on the unique mentality they looked for in their astronauts - most of whom were admitted into the selection trials on the basis of their experience as military and/or civilian test pilots. I found the observation rather inspiring. I wish I could remember who said it; no-one very famous, not one of the astronauts, I think, but one of the engineers who'd worked closely with them.

Any ordinary pilot will reach a point where he accepts the situation is hopeless. You know, the plane's 10 seconds from hitting the ground and he'll say, "This is it. We're going down. We're going to die."

A test pilot just thinks to himself, "I still have 10 seconds. What else can I try?"

We should, I believe, seek to apply the same attitude in our approach to playing Fantasy Premier League. However unkind the Fates have been to us this season, however far out of reach our original goals may have slipped,... there are still things we can fight for, new challenges we can seek to overcome week by week.

We might not always 'succeed', but we can always TRY.

A little bit of Zen (92)

 

“We must learn to accept the impermanence of all things, and find peace in the midst of change.”

Kosho Uchiyama

The games we choose to play

 

Over the past few years I've become a big fan of Robert Pantano's thoughtful Youtube channel on philosophy and psychology, Pursuit of Wonder.

One of the things that most disturbs me about a game like Fantasy Premier League is its fiercely addictive qualities, the fact that it is in essence a form of gambling - where we stake our self-esteem on our ability to predict the outcome of unpredictable events better than our fellow FPL managers.

So, I was particularly struck by this latest video of Robert's, in which he starts off from considering the parable of The Gambler from Pascal's Pensées (a man who finds he cannot renounce his vice, even when offered a huge amount of money to do so), and goes on to consider why such obsessive distractions are proliferating in the modern world. The only consolation he can offer at the end of his brief audio-essay is this, a suggestion that these activities may not invariably be all bad, and that we can still maintain some measure of self-awareness and control over our engagement with them:  "It is not winning, it is not losing; it is the hope and uncertainty we experience in the games we choose to play. And so, what seems to matter is this: wisely choosing what games we play, and how we play them. Each of us have a choice in whether we keep playing games or not, and each of us have a choice in what kind of games we play, and the bets we place."

For me, the 'answer' in engaging with FPL is to not care about the results. You can strive for better results (which is mentally improving and spiritually ennobling) without actually letting yourself be bothered whether you achieve them (which is something outside of your control, ever at the mercy of random factors in the external world). 

For me, it must be all about the process, not the outcome; and about measuring my 'success' or 'progress' against my own internal yardstick, not against the greater or lesser 'success' of anyone else.

These thoughts on gambling suddenly reminded me of this excellent Al Pacino speech in D.J. Caruso's 2005 sports gambling picture Two For The Money (a severely underrated film; unfortunately, Pacino's co-star, Matthew McConnaughey, was still in his 'career slump', more box-office poison than box-office catnip at this point), in which he dismays a Gamblers Anonymous meeting by confronting the attendees with the uncomfortable fact that most 'problem gamblers' have a more serious underlying issue, a masochistic, self-destructive impulse: they are addicted to losing, not winning - because that intense misery and despair is an insidiously heightened state of being, a rush that's come to dominate their lives.

It does bother me, often, that the almost inevitable, relentless 'failure' involved in FPL might be the dangerous key to its irresisible appeal... It is something I continually try to address, and to skirt away from.

If you like Mr Pantano's style in this video, you should check out his recently published book, The Terrible Paradox of Self-Awareness.

A little bit of Zen (91)

 

"When you find someone else's intelligence offensive, in fact it's your own stupidity that's upsetting you; you're just looking for external targets to vent your frustration and self-loathing against."

GW

I wish commenters in the social-media-sphere were more aware of this. It is dispiriting how many of them will get all snarky and grumpy at people for having the effrontery to use complete sentences or 'big words'...

A little bit of Zen (90)

 

“A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.”

David Hume

"A foolish man magnifies - or invents - the evidence according to his belief."

GW

An inspiration

 

In my meanderings around Youtube the other day, I stumbled upon this - an engaging profile of self-taught wood-carver Ray Kinman, who became one of the leading practitioners in his field and landed a prestigious job sculpting many of the signs for attractions at the Disney theme parks. Still active at 70, he is now a beloved teacher of his craft.

A little nugget of peace and beauty in a turbulent world...

And he has a few inspiring lessons we all might seek to use:

Be passionate about everything you do.

Your greatest asset is persistence.

Cultivate mastery through repetition.

Mistakes are where the great learning and growth comes.

Always try to push yourself a little bit harder.

Lose yourself in the process.

These, at any rate, are principles that I have tried to follow in my life, and which I try to promote in my online writings. They can even have some useful application in our FPL endeavours, I believe.

A little bit of Zen (89)

 

“By three methods may we learn wisdom:

First, by reflection which is the noblest;

Second, by imitation, which is the easiest;

Third, by experience, which is the bitterest.”

Kong Qiu ('Confucius')

παθήματα μαθήματα:  'Pathemata, mathemata' - "Learning, suffering - same thing."  

(Ancient Greek proverb)

Avid readers (if there be any; traffic stats seem to suggest I have a few regular lurkers, at any rate) may have noticed that my main purpose on this blog is to try to promote the first of Confucius's paths to wisdom - while also celebrating the third, but strongly discouraging the second (which is, unfortunately, by far the most common approach among the FPL hordes...).