Slaying the 21st Century with Lessons from Charles Bukowski

Image Source: Origafoundation, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Time and again, every line of employment conceives individuals who are courageous enough to take the road less traveled. These people are in fact the exemplar of the group that prefers plotting its own trajectory than taking the already carved path. And, when we talk about the writing industry, the first name that pops up into my mind is that of the legendary author, Charles Bukowski

If we reckon writing as an art, then Bukowski is one of the best artists the world has ever seen. I say so because I’m yet to find a better craftsman of sentences than Bukowski. Every poem, every sentence he wrote is a testament to his self-designed, unschooled way of writing.

Let’s consider the following words from Bukowski to corroborate my argument.

We are like roses that have never bothered to bloom when we should have bloomed and it is as if the sun has become disgusted with waiting

As is evident from the above words, Bukowski was well-known for his unsparingly realistic and graphic take on society, fellow humans, work culture, and everything that seemed to follow a predefined rule.

The rawness with which he covered some of the least- talked about subjects is something that separates him from his counterparts.

To reciprocate our love for this nonconformist author, here we have derived 15 powerful lessons from some of the best works of Charles Bukowski that would definitely help you slay the 21st century.

Powerful Life Lessons from Charles Bukowski:

#1: The Importance of Solitude:-

I was a man who thrived on SOLITUDE; without it I was like another man without FOOD or WATER. Each day without solitude weakened me. I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The DARKNESS of the room was like SUNLIGHT to me.

We have got into this mindless habit of keeping ourselves so much occupied that we have time for everyone except ourselves.

Even the “contract” of free time has been allotted to the social networking sites. As a result, self-thoughts remain elusive. All we are left with is the thoughts of others.

Cal Newport in his book, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World has termed this state of incessant connectedness as Solitude Deprivation. He defines it as the state in which we spend close to zero time alone with our own thoughts, free from input from other minds.

What is depriving us of our solitude?

In our brain-dead pursuit of signing up for every hot service that’s “freely available”, we have delegated our “freedom” to a bunch of good-for-nothing applications. These purposefully designed applications keep us addicted by cashing in on our sense of delusion that people want to hear from us, thus, robbing us of one of our most important resources i.e. our Solitude.

The importance of Solitude can very well be understood from the above-quoted words of Bukowski. Solitude is like food and water for an intellectual’s mind. It’s the place from where most of the great acts of humans have originated.

#2: Only You Can Save Yourself:-

Nobody can save you but yourself and you’re worth saving.
It’s a war not easily won but if anything is worth winning then this is it.

With so much advice floating around from the so-called motivational speakers, social media experts, and self-proclaimed subject experts, it’s getting really difficult to decide whom to listen to. Bluntly speaking, most of them are not at all concerned about what’s wrong with you. Their sole aim is to create an audience of miserable people and make money from their miseries.

Bukowski is here to solve your dilemma of too many choices. Through the above-quoted words, he makes it very clear that nobody can save you but yourself. That’s unarguably true because,

Does anyone know your situation better than you?

You can follow people for short-term advice and all but when it comes to the longer perspective and what you want to do with your life, it’s you who has to take your role as the chauffeur of your life a little seriously.

It’s not something that can be known from someone’s advice. It’s something that has to be found out with continuous trial and error and only you can do it for yourself.

Because, as Bukowski said, Nobody can save you but yourself.

#3: Don’t lose Your Power of Reasoning:-

Almost everyone is born a GENIUS and buried an IDIOT.

Our environment, our company, our circumstances, almost everything we indulge in shape us to some extent.

We all are born with immense potential but as we grow up, we are forced to feed on the irrational customs of our intimidatingly flaky society which if not questioned severely impacts our potential.

The Problem:

Further, with the penetration of the internet, we have been inundated with so much irrelevant information that there is an imperative need to activate some kind of filtering mechanism to stop being shaped by the utter moonshine.

Why will you be interested in what Mandy is eating in breakfast?

Which song is Nimrat listening to?

Which book is Jasmeet reading?

Unless you are stalking someone, such input is worthless. It will only lower the eminence of your output.

The Solution:

There are only two ways to deal with this juggernaut,

Either take the driver’s seat and start keeping a check on the information you are feeding to your brain.
or, surrender and continue processing the irrelevant information and keep losing your intellect insidiously.

The second one would single-handedly ensure the preciseness of Bukowski’s words that almost everyone is buried an idiot.

#4: Take Actions:-

For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can’t readily accept the God formula, the big answers don’t remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god.

You are your own God. Just inculcate in you, the belief that it’s you who has to face your miseries. It’s you who has to solve your problems.

Even if you are someone who accepts the God formula, you can’t deny the fact that there are more than 7 billion people who need help. That figure alone could make any sane human give up their inexplicable sense of entitlement that God will help them.

So, instead of waiting for your turn, get up and act.

#5: No Feeling Is Final:-

Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I’m not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you’ve felt that way.

We all often feel low, and that’s perfectly fine. It’s part of being a human. Always remember, No Feeling Is Final. This too will pass.

A Hemmingway quote is very popular in the writing world. It goes as,

The first draft of anything is shit.

Apply this rule to your negative emotions and never let its 1st draft dominate your mental sphere. It’s not only foolhardy but also an act of underrating your true caliber to entirely base your decisions on a fleeting negative thought.

Go with Bukowski’s advice and give your thoughts time to settle down by transmitting your attention to all the good times.

#6: If You’re Going To Try, Go All The Way:-

If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery–isolation. Isolation is a gift.

We all participate in certain activities just for the sake of participating. As a result, we don’t give our 100% and then, when the results are not in our favor, we try to find rescue in the blame game.

Shaping our future is not a one-day task. It is a series of causes leading to a series of effects. And not every cause has the same effect on the final outcome.\

Let me state Pareto’s principle to add weight to my argument.

Pareto’s principle states that for most outcomes, roughly 80% of the consequences come from about 20% of the causes.

It doesn’t end here, this ratio can be even more skewed in reality. It can be as skewed as 90:10 meaning, 90% of the desired results come from 10% of the contributing factors. So it’s all about, identifying the causes that are consuming much more than they are supplying.

Eliminating the poorly performing causes, as is evident from the above-quoted words of Bukowski, could result in a lot of losses but in the bigger scheme of things, these losses would serve as positive reinforcements to your endeavor of living a better life.

#7: Don’t Let Trivial Worries Eat Up Your Relationships:-

We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.

Now, this is something extremely important. We all are mortal beings. At least, until the future projected by Yuval Noah Harari in his book, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow is realized, let’s accept we are mortal.

And, we have death approaching. Acceptance of the reality of our ephemeral existence should alone encourage us to take our problems less seriously.

Shedding our worries and not letting our trivial thoughts threaten our already compendious existence is very empowering in nature as it gives us the freedom to embrace risk and accomplish what we actually want to accomplish.

Thus, if we accept the reality then mortality can, in fact, serve as the foundation for everything we want to achieve in life.

#8: There will be Bad Times:-

Learn, he says, that there will be hours, days and months ahead of feeling absolutely terrible
and nothing can change that;
neither new girlfriends, health professionals, changes of diet, dope, humility, or
God

We all suffer to some extent. The only difference lies in the magnitude of our suffering. Suffering is an inherent part of human existence but that it is what gives happiness its charm.

I can very much relate to the words of Jordan Peterson on this topic. He says, ” You choose your damn suffering.” This is so true because there are hurdles on every path. It’s just about selecting the path whose hurdles you would enjoy facing because of your cultivated or maybe even inherent love for the reward on that path.

#9: Hurdles Help You Find Freedom:-

Those who escape hell, however, never talk about it and nothing much bothers them after that.

Every problem you solve bestows you with a new layer of immunity. If a problem you solve is really big, it gives you freedom from the problems of similar and lower frequencies.

The inference to draw from this is that life is a series of problems to be solved. And with every problem you solve, the inventory of your fear is debited an amount in proportion to the difficulty of the problem you solved.

Corresponding to every debit transaction in the inventory of your fear, there is a credit transaction in the inventory of your freedom.

The bigger the problem, the bigger the freedom.

#10: Importance of Taking Breaks:-

This is very important — to take leisure time. Pace is the essence. Without stopping entirely and doing nothing at all for great periods, you’re gonna lose everything.
just to do nothing at all, very, very important. And how many people do this in modern society? Very few. That’s why they’re all totally mad, frustrated, angry and hateful

Taking time for ourselves gives our brain the much-needed space to reboot which, in turn, not only increases our concentration and productivity but also gives us a chance to think deeply, thus, increasing our problem-solving skills.

It further helps us better understand ourselves by helping us know― what drives us, what inspires us, what excites us. This, in turn, can have a positive impact not only on the quality of our relationship with ourselves but also on the quality of our relationships with others.

#11: The Importance of Escaping the Job mindset:-

How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 8:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?

For those who like working hard, working hard for your own venture will be much more fun because every penny you make will be yours. There will be teething problems but you will gradually win over them.

The problem with most of us is that our planning is always short-termed. We never consider what we can do in the next 5 or 10 years if we work for ourselves.

The Trap:

The thought of the increased pay package the next year serves as a carrot for our short-term planning and we never look beyond that carrot. T

hen there are incentives to keep us enough satisfied to keep working but at the same time a little dissatisfied so as to prevent the sense of fulfillment from seeping in, so that we keep fighting for the next step on the staircase while remaining oblivious to the presence of the elevator.

#12: Everything You Do, People Will Find Fault:-

If you get married they think you’re FINISHED
and, if you are without a woman they think you’re INCOMPLETE.

Let us first emphasize a well-known but less implemented fact that, there is no single method of doing things. There are multiple paths leading to the same destination.

Leave society, devise your own ways of dealing with life. Let them not tell you which degree to pursue, how to dress, to follow a religion or not, whom and when to marry.

There are so many schools of thought floating around that even if you keep track of a few, you will be termed wrong according to others.

#13: Manage Your Finances Well:-

At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves

This is the most important part for anyone who wants to be a LIFELONG LEARNER. Learning for the sake of learning is only possible if you are financially intelligent. Financial intelligence is an indispensable component towards the path of becoming a lifelong learner.

We all, driven by the consumerist mindset bury ourselves under so much financial burden that learning no longer remains an option because true learning can only be done with a free mind.

That’s why it’s important to ensure financial intelligence because money not only reduces our suffering but also helps us save our time and effort by giving us an option to delegate our unimportant tasks and hence helping us in monopolizing our attention for cognitively demanding tasks.

Also Read: Best Books To Learn STOCK MARKET & INVESTING

#14: The Importance of Disconnecting in a Hyper-connected World:-

The telephone is needed for EMERGENCY purposes only.
These people are not Emergencies, they are CALAMITIES.

Do you feel short of time too often?
If yes, I have a panacea for you that would solve all your reasonable issues emanating from a shortage of time.

Pro Tip: Reduce your Accessibility.

The free internet, the free calling have made us so easy to reach out that anyone can reach us in a matter of seconds. Why do we need such intimate connections from people who are not so intimate?

The seductiveness of the easy accessibility will only rob you of your limited stock of attention and time thus, leaving you short of time for things that actually matter. Also, as Bukowski said some people really are calamities.

And yes, I’m inaccessible on weekends 😉

#15: Skip trivial arguments:-

So I let them have their little victories which they need far more than I do.

We can always avoid participating in a bootless battle. Always, make sure that the battle you are fighting for is worth your efforts. There is no compulsion to participate in every argument. Prefer peace over trivial victories.

This is obviously easier said than done. Competition is deeply inveterated in the human culture. And, skipping participation is really a daunting task, no matter how pointless the bout is. This reminds me of Mark Manson’s Law of Avoidance, which I read in the book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson.

Manson’s law of avoidance states that the more something threatens your identity, the more you will avoid it.

The phantom of competition has become a part and parcel of our identity and not participating seems to threaten this self-manufactured identity of ourselves. Not competing seems to threaten the values we have chosen for ourselves and hence, we tend to avoid it.