Passionate Living

Sanguine means being a person who celebrates spontaneity. Sanguine means being a person who is cheerful most of the time, and is quick to forget upsetting matters. Sanguine means being a lighthearted, easygoing, free spirited soul that becomes the center of attraction and spreads joy and contagious laughter to as many people as possible.

Shiny Happy Birthday Girl Smiling by D Sharon Pruitt

Being a melancholic [1], I appreciate very much the sanguine quality in other people, and especially the small amount there is inside myself. Because being a melancholic is often the opposite of sanguine – the opposite of spontaneity and bright cheerfulness – the simplicity and authenticity of the sanguine spirit is truly attractive to me. Since I made the distinction between the two, and learned which one I am more, I’ve been trying to be more sanguine everyday: trying to be more humorous, easy, laid back, and light as possible. The world needs more sanguine people.

But sometimes, sanguine isn’t always charming. Being sanguine takes trust, because the charm lies in making certain small mistakes and flaws that would be irritating and upsetting for other people if there is no trust there yet. The charm lies in being slightly oblivious to your surroundings, slightly suffering from short term memory loss, and slightly considering most things with less weight than other people. For someone to appreciate a sanguine person, there needs to be an established relationship between them in order for the joy to be comfortable for both people.

The littlest mistake

This thought crossed my mind the other when I was driving in traffic: a silver hatchback sedan was driving more slowly than all the other cars, and it was driving hesitantly in the middle of the road – there were lanes enough for two cars, but the silver hatchback took up both lanes so everybody behind had to drive as slow as it did. In another case and another scenario, this might be a nice sanguine experience: sometimes we need to learn to light up, enjoy the moment, and just let it be without thinking about it too serious. In the case of the silver hatchback, just let it drive obliviously like that, and love the charm of how the driver is clueless about her surroundings.

But traffic is the last place you want to show your sanguine side. Traffic is the one place where we interact intensively with each other, without there being trust among us. Most of the people on the road have never met, talked, or shared, so when the littlest mistake is made, the biggest consequences can arise. Therefore, being sanguine in traffic is like asking someone whose urgencies you don’t consider, to consider your urgencies without any benefit for them.

This is why sometimes jokes can become misunderstood. As I wrote before, comedy needs trust in order for it to be comedy. Else, it would just be a very irksome and disturbing behavior from someone whom we will think to be childish and irresponsible.

Welcome comedy

There is a time and place for everything, and to know which is when is what we call wisdom. It’s possible to be sanguine in any place and time, and spontaneity and lightheartedness should always be welcome in every environment. But that’s the point right there: it’s needs to be welcomed first, for it to be accepted.

We can’t simply stroll into a party and start being sanguine; we need to be invited. We can’t immediately explain why a person is wrong; our judgment needs to be requested first. We can’t put and enforce principles on the public, without them understanding the principles behind it beforehand.

Trust is imperative in every relationship. The problem is all of us think we are important enough for other people to understand us and give us permission immediately. But, like driving in the middle of the road and forcing everyone to play along regardless of each individual’s different urgencies, exercising the rewards of a relationship without building the trust first will only hurt the connection further – like drawing money out from an empty back account.

Are you a sanguine person? How is your trust in your relationships that matter? Let’s discuss about this in the comments.

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[a name="95_1">1] The terms “sanguine” and “melancholic” is borrowed from Florence Littauer’s book “Personality Plus”

New York Sunset HDR by Ferguson Photography

There’s a verse in the Tao te Ching [1] that goes:

“If you realize that all things change,
there is nothing you will try to hold on to.”

For the last 81 days of 2009, I followed the journey of Nick Fitzsimon as he reblogged the 81 verses of the Tao te Ching [2]. The verses of the Tao te Ching are beautiful, and I resonate with the principles contained in the Tao te Ching. But I still have reservations on some parts.

What I realized reading the ancient wisdom of the Tao te Ching is this: when we stop pursuing everything, we start to gain everything. This philosophy doesn’t only belong to the Tao te Ching, but also becomes a foundation for the major faiths of the world. I think most religion-practicing people could come to the conclusion that happiness and peace come not from the pursuit of material possession, but from the fulfillment of the inner self.

Think about it: when we are young, our minds are preoccupied with pursuing a career, a business, or the perfect person to marry. But when we learn from our elderly, the wishes they had if they could return to their youth are rarely related to money. It might be related to love, but it’s usually a larger and broader kind of love; not the Eros [3] kind.

What do we learn as we grow up that makes us realize we’ve been chasing the wrong thing all this time? Why must we learn for ourselves, and have difficulty accepting it just from the words of our ancestors alone [4]? Why must every generation repeat the same mistakes and come to the same conclusion, only to have the collective wisdom be taken for granted by the next generation who think they are better and know more?

Why are we only fulfilled when we stop pursuing everything? When we stop worrying about our career, and our health, and our social status? Why must we chase those things in the first place?

Learning to accept is a sign of good growing up. Learning to let it be is a sign of good loving. Learning to live beyond ourselves is a sign of good living.We always tire out midway, but we insist on continuing down the road. We believe the superficial things we pursue will give us the happiness that we’ve been looking for. We are more worried about being accepted by other people than finding and preserving this peace for ourselves.

So why are we still pursuing these things? Things that we already know – from the history of human society – won’t bring us to where we want to go. Why do we still push on to have everything in the world, when having everything in the world means to have nothing at all?

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*Listening to Ella Fitzgerald singing My Funny Valentine makes me want to listen to classic jazz standards all day long

*Pictures of the universe always make me ask: what’s the purpose of all this beauty?

*I’m pretty envious of Katelyn, who won the 2009 John Mayer christmas cake competition and received a Martin JM Series acoustic guitar

[1] What is the Tao te Ching?
[2] Read the Tao a Day blog
[3] What is Eros love?
[4] As according to the one image universe theory
[5] Photograph by Ferguson Photography. Because we all want to live in the big city

I read an article by Derek Sivers [1] on how he knew he was done with his company and it was time to move on [2]. In the article, he relates the story of how he decided to sell his company even though at first he said that he would never let it go. Derek confirms at the end of the article that disattaching himself from his company and passing it on to more capable hands proved to be the better solution for all interests involved.

The article inspired me to think about how we need to change, and how most of the time we think that achieving our destination is enough. Borrowing Derek’s experience, if he thought that establishing his business was enough then he would be satisfied with the results he already obtained. But years into the business – and being a true entrepreneur who always has new ideas stirring in his head – he felt that it was time to move on to the next project.

When he did sell his company at a lower bidding price but to people whom he believed understood his clients better, Derek had the time and mental energy to start working on his next project; and he sounds happier and healthier than if he were to insist that he still stay in his previous company. In the article he also inserted a diagram that depicts the growth stages of a company, and at the end of the life cycle he needed to make a decision to stay or start something new. There is a parallel lesson that we can extract from the diagram and apply it not only for businesses but also for our living success:

Adoption Life Cycle by Idea Sandbox

Dynamics of success

I think that most of us still make the mistake of being satisfied in our new comfort zones. For example, when we graduate from college and land an intermediate position at a prestigious accounting company we are easy to be satisfied with our achievements and assume that there is not more struggle to do. We are content with the income that we make, with the office space that we inhabit, and with the work environment and politics that we live with every day.

But in reality, change is an inherent part of living a dynamic human life. The times keep moving on, and there will always be new technology and new education channels and especially new social challenges that we need to face in order to continue living and succeeding. As in the case of businesses that have to innovate or fail, I believe that the individual also needs to have the same attitude when responding to change – we need to constantly educate ourselves on the change that is occurring and be able to equip ourselves with awareness so we can make the appropriate choice.

As shown in the diagram, success is dynamic also – like every other aspect in life. It’s not static, something that you reach and then just stay there without any further effort; you need to be constantly innovating in order to maintain that success and claim it as yours. Because the downhill part of the cycle is a natural part of growth, then we need to acknowledge and prepare for it and understand that it’s a necessary part of staying in success.

Self-reliance in a turbulent time

This is where education becomes imperative, especially self-education. In a world where the constants are constantly changing, the one true strength that we can have is self-reliance. Because the external conditions will always change, we can’t rely on them to support or help us; we need to be able to rely on the capabilities that we have inside.

This is why keeping an open mind is important, because without a healthy curiosity and openness to new innovations, we will always be stuck in the old paradigm that may be obsolete in our effort to maintain success. We need to welcome change with open arms and we need to adopt a new way of seeing things in order to take advantage of the different situation and different technologies. We need to be able to glide along with the current.

At the same time we also need to be anchored to principles, because just following the flow without knowing where the source is and where the water is going is tantamount to happiness suicide. We need to determine and develop a clear sense of direction in our lives before we attempt to dance with the currents. We need to understand that the style is allowed to be different, but the principles stay the same.

How are you responding towards the changes occurring in your community? Do you constantly keep up with new technology and ideas, or do you think that it’s all a waste of time and everybody has their own way of working? Share your opinions in the comments below.

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[1] Derek Sivers is a musician and entrepreneur, founder of CDBaby.com
[2] How I knew I was done with my company, Derek Sivers