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Chapter 22 — Pre-Chapter Quiz:

 

Question 43: what does 2+2 equal?

/.) 5

<.) A fun party

!.) Any number of things

&.) power in a vacuum

 

Question 44: What is the easiest thing to change in you life?

r.) What you want

3.) who you are

4.) How you act

C.) What you need

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Oh shit! New chapter already? Okay then! Uhhhh… let’s start here:

You know, I really do hate it when people say "There are no rules in life."

I mean, that’s bullshit. You can't grow wings in 0.2 seconds and then fly up to the sun to kill yourself like a more daring form of Kid Icarus. That simply isn't allowed. It's against the rules! Gravity is a rule. Death, is, a, rule. There ARE RULES! 

 

But.

 

That's not to say that you can't enjoy the simple act of playing a game, even if it has rules. I'd simply say that it's A LOT EASIER to have fun if we at least knew what some of (and not even necessarily all of) the rules are.  In its most fullest, and complete-est form, that is the point of this entire series, both inside, and outside of this single book.

 

The next lesson starts with a test.

 

Here it is:

Let’s start with this:

“What does 2 plus 2 equal?”

Did you say 4? Good!

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What else?

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Well, there are infinite answers:

• 2 + 2 = 4

• 2 + 2 = 1+1+1+1

• 2 + 2 = 1.5 + 1.5 + 1

• 2 + 2 = 1.0000000001 + 1.9999999999 + 1

Hmmm… Let’s forget about addition:

 

• 2 + 2 = 2 x 2

• 2 + 2 = 4 x 1

• 2 + 2 = 8 x 0.5

• 2 + 2 = 40,000 x 0.0001

You know what? Let’s forget about addition and multiplication:

• 2 + 2 = 2 / 0.5

• 2 + 2 = 1 / (1/4)

• 2 + 2 = 65,536 / 16,384

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Let’s forget addition, multiplication, and division:

• 2 + 2 = 5 - 1

• 2 + 2 = 2 - (-2)

• 2 + 2 = (-1,000,000) - (-1,000,004)

Huh.. Let’s forget… uhhh… addition, multiplication, division, and subtraction:

 

• 2 + 2 = 2^2

• 2 + 2 = 16^0.5

• 2 + 2 = 65,536^(1/8)

Let’s forget addition and multipli… you know what? Let’s just forget about numbers altogether!

• 2 + 2 = a    

• second equation:

• a = 4

 

 

• 2 + 2 = c    

• second equation:

• c = (4!)^2/(4 x 3)^2

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No numbers OR letters? Sure thing!

• 2 + 2 = ? 

• ? = 4

 

 

• 2 + 2 =😜

• 😜= 4   

 

 

• 2 + 2 =😜

• 😜= 4+0

 

What about a SINGULAR number that ISN’T 4?

• 2 feet + 2 feet = 48 inches

• 2 lines + 2 lines = 1 square (sometimes)

• 2 words + 2 words = 1 sentence (maybe)

• 2 lemons + 2 lemons = Who knows how many ounces of lemonade? I certainly don’t.

And the list goes on.

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There are infinite ways to do anything, and infinite paths for getting anything, too. The trick is to not assume anything about the rules until you’ve tried to bend them. (Or sometimes even break them). If you’re wise, you should love it when people tell you that things are impossible. 

It’ll give you things to do.

Combine This Mindset With The Next Rule:

The way people usually define the term "Needs" doesn't make any sense, in terms of goal setting, and must be fixed before acting towards success. We'll be recapping the emotional decision-making example here, as well as the difference between needs and wants, so it may be best for you to read those portions again if you've forgotten it (Pages 93-94). 

There’s also this big fact to consider:

“Because WANTS are based on feelings of desire, and NEEDS are based on logically imagined futures, the special thing about NEEDS, is that you can NEED a What, but you cannot need a WHO (because Whats are logic-based, and WHOs are not), and because of the fact that WHOs are purely emotion-based, you can only want and desire such a valuable thing, but you'll never need it.” (Me 83)

With this fact in mind, and knowing that while WHOs cannot change, but Whats can, you must remember that you cannot change the things that you WANT, but you can change what you may NEED in order to get them. And this is where the new lesson comes in.

"Two men looked out from prison bars.

One saw the mud,

the other saw stars."

- Dale Carnegie

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Let’s use an example of grades. Many people believe that what they desperately want in life, be it in college, in high school, or earlier, (... or later) is to have great grades and ratings.

Do you know what a grade is? It’s a number written down on a scrap piece of paper that many students end up burning at the end of the year. It’s your teacher’s way of saying “You worked hard. Now here’s a 100 for you.” You will get countless 100s for your hard work. The only difference is that your paper 100s get burned or thrown out at the end of the year, while the 100s that your teachers get, for their hard work, are used to buy nice things, and are so valuable that they try to keep them; either in a safe, or in a systematically secure bank account.

Listen to me, what you want is not good grades - I’m not saying you shouldn’t try to work well in school, or that you shouldn’t aim to obtain good grades. That would be silliness, after all. What I’m saying is that, just like with gold diggers (From the earlier gold digger metaphors), every What you think you have emotions for has its own hidden associations, within your mind. This is often how you stumbled upon WHO someone truly is without reading into this series in the past. If you have enough Whats you can accidentally stumble into building a WHO profile, through unexamined, or hidden, associations that just happen to be right this time, (but it's not common, and even if it was, it could be far more common and easy if you understand the difference between WHOs and Whats). This is how people achieve the feeling of satisfaction, on accident, by chasing enough Whats that they eventually find the right ones, and then ending up feeling like they finally are WHO they need to be, by coincidence.

In the case of good grades, you may be wishing to please your parents and prove that you can be relied on (using your grades), to get a good job by proving that you're reliable (using your grades), to prove that your intelligence is reliable for your peers (using your grades), to prove the doubters of your intelligence, and it's reliability wrong (using your grades), or to help you see yourself as reliable, in order to help build up your own self-esteem (using your grades), and so on. 

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In the end, your grades are a means to acquire, not an end goal to achieve. Whats are always the means, and WHOs are always the end goals; because, as we've discussed before, our emotions are used in all decision-making. Mistaking the two will lead to nothing but misery in life. If you chose to pursue a specific form of happiness, that's because of how it makes you feel, and that is caused, at its core, by WHO the goal is in its truest essence. The bigger the What is in category, the more satisfying it'll feel to chase it, and the more proud you will be once you have conquered it. This means that the What you're really after (for it's WHO) is actually a character trait, because What you are, is closer to the concept of WHO you are, than any What you may have. 

Maybe you're not using your grades to be more reliable. Maybe you're not aiming for good grades at all, but no matter what, your goals and dreams, are all about one thing: FEELING GOOD. All that you are aiming to do, is morph and rearrange What you are so that it can snuggly fit, and fill to the brim, your own WHO. This makes you feel fulfilled and complete, and that FEELS GOOD. If you believe that WHO you are, is a container that would comfortably and easily fit, the What that is "reliability" inside of it, then chances are that you're the type of person who thinks that they need good grades. What you're really after, is to become the most YOU that you can be, and so what you truly want is to change the things you achieve or have, to make your jar filled logically with the right Whats, and emotionally filled with the right WHOs, that are behind them. 

Like in a masterful game of anti-Tetris, when you've finally found a way to fit every WHO around you into exactly the right place, to fill in the connections within your Whats, your own WHO will become packed to the brim, with no room, once or ever, for anything more. The container is then containing everything that it should be holding, and will only swap out new pieces as a form of a fun hobby. It will contain all the Whats that it needs to have a satisfactory life and the WHOs that are needed in order to be able to feel that satisfaction, for itself. When that happens, the container has fulfilled its purpose because you've become the most

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holistic YOU possible, and so there's not really much left that you could need to do.

This is what it means for you to feel complete, or whole. It means that your WHO is completely full and that it feels completely full. 

Again:

"When a WHO matches with a WHO, you get emotion. When a What matches with a What, you get the opportunity for emotion, (AKA: attraction or repellence), but when your WHO matches with all of your Whats, that is when you get satisfaction. So, in order to feel happy, and be satisfied, in order to be, "truly fulfilled", you need to master all three of these combinations." 

- Me, in Chapter 7

This may not be possible in a single lifetime, but that's not the point here, is it? The point of living isn't to "win at life", whatever the hell that means. How would you even know if you did succeed at that anyways? The point is to simply enjoy playing the game, and if you don't know the rules, and keep losing because of it, then enjoyment becomes pretty difficult to have, now doesn't it?

The saddest, and most common issue I see with this, is how often people give up, and become “stoppable”, simply due to missing a “deadline” — Whatever the hell that means.

And truly, in a world of literally infinite ways to pursue your happiness, the idea of deadlines is pretty silly, when you think about it. 

Listen to me, you may have a deadline for getting a good grade. You may have a deadline when it comes to obtaining any What. The rules you

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have (What rules you have) like when you're allowed to turn in papers, may change. Sometimes they'll be due on Mondays, other times they'll be due on Thursdays, and so forth. Whats can change, but WHOs never will. That's the beauty in realizing that everything you desire, or feel anything for, is a WHO. What you really want will never change, and it’s source will never disappear. WHOs are eternal. Just like how they can create love for your family member that has long since passed away, they can create motivation for a dream that has long since seemed lost.

WHOs are eternal, so desires are eternal, and so you have all the time in the world to accomplish dreams, and achieve your desires, no matter what methods may need to be used. The fact is that there is only one true deadline, 

And it’s death. 

We never know when that deadline was set for, and so, for certain things, the best “ending” you can wish for, is one that doesn’t exist. You should never assume that just because a great grade can help you for now, that it’s the only thing that can help you, or that it’s the final step on that journey called  "your life." There will always be more to do, until the very second, that you die. Sometimes, the best thing for you, like in a happy marriage or in a good career, is to hope that it lasts forever. Sometimes, all you should hope for, is eternity and infinity.

If you want to please your parents, there are infinite answers, like with 2+2. In fact, there are infinite best answers. Do not assume that just because you got a bad grade, that you can’t find a way to please your parents.

 

.    .    .

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Now that I write it out, it sounds even more preposterous than when I thought of it vaguely in my head. People are very complex beings. Of course, they’re going to have other buttons you can push to please them, and as nothing is truly whole and nothing is truly broken (The Cup Metaphor, Pages 55-60), everything can be made complex, and therefore has its own buttons to press, even you, and everything you want. So, the first thing you should do is identify what (actually WHO) you truly want and to stop identifying only those quick Whats that you can grab on your way to it, so that you can better understand where and how to fill those voids within. You can use any of the tools I’ve given you in The Final Section as a foundational starting point for your brainstorming endeavors.

Again, to quickly requote from Chapter 4, "You can need a what. You cannot need a WHO." So keep in mind my friends, that all of your truest goals are WHOs, and the things you need along the way, are simply Whats. The more loosely you hold on to, or don't hold on to your Whats, the more easily your goals can be lived. A good life is not something you own; it's something you perform. It's just a listed series of games that we play, until the day we die. You don't need to win any specific games to succeed at life. You can win and be fulfilled, and you lose... and still be fulfilled. The point of a game is to have fun. The point of life is to live. It's just more fun when you get a prize for it. Keep in mind though, that the enjoyment comes from playing. If you play, and then win $200, the prize will make you feel proud of your past, but it will not be about enjoying the present.

How can I tell? Because after you play and win, that $200 won't keep you satisfied. Everyone will always want more money, no matter how much they have. Items will never keep us satisfied, the act, the play, of winning that money — now that is satisfaction. The game will always satisfy you if you play it right (and that’s not necessarily meaning to win). 

The prize, on the other hand, will not. The act of matching your WHOs and Whats properly will be satisfying. Once you finish it, you will be

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proud enough to play other games, just for sport. Again, there is no "best life" to live by any agreed-upon metrics. It's not about having a better  life than others, it's simply about living your life, and performing the act of living,  for you. So be loose, and free, and understand that, when it comes to Whats, change is unstoppable, and if you use them wisely, you can be too.