Technicolor Mariachi Summer Camp

In one of my dreams this week, I was attending a mariachi camp. My teacher writes the lesson out on a blackboard for me in coloured chalk: “Find joy in this piece [of music], find joy in everything you do”.

What do we know about mariachis off the top of our head?  We know the outfit. On the hottest day in July, they will show up decked out in this colourful suit.

They will bring up the mood, and spread the joy of music, no matter what’s going on behind the scenes in their life.

This is what it means to find life underneath the life situation¹. Joy is the act of showing up to do what you’re meant to do right now, even if it’s not your favourite task or chore in the world.

That you are able to do it and not let your mind take control of this situation, and all the situations that come after it.

On Sunday, we regain our strength and do our best to remember what it is we set out to do in life.

We can write down some goals if that’s how we operate, but the main thing is to sit and contemplate what you will do with our remaining time here.

How you spend today is how you will spend your week, and how you spend this week is how you will spend the rest of your life.

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Three Ideas from My Notebooks

1. See what will happen if you just try. Don’t be in the habit of dictating outcomes. Just try things out and learn for yourself. That’s the beauty of ignoring all the advice you might soak up on YouTube. That eventually you can just try. If it fails then you can go back to wiping your ass with 2-ply.

2. Optimize for peace of mind rather than perfection. The cost of doing things with errors is a lot less than not doing them at all.

3. From Claudia on impulse purchases: If you had to pay for the item 3 times over, could you still afford it?

A long archive of the ideas are located in The Ideas Index:

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Thanks for reading today, and have a great week ahead 🧡🥯🧡

Elliott

1. Credit to Eckhart Tolle on this nugget