After reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values, I developed a better understanding of quality. Quality is how good or bad something is. In life, you should always be striving for the best quality of any and everything.
Self
I chose the Arnold featured image because it speaks to exactly what it means by achieving the greatest quality body. Your body is your vehicle through this life. Those that don’t maintain it immediately speak to their value system. We all aren’t going to be Arnold but setting a high standard for yourself and your body is as good a place as any to start.
User Comments
One thing I’ve seen going to the gym, is you never see people laughing or making jokes on your expense, for lets say, not lifting enough or not doing the exercises perfectly. This is because all those people that look great now and lift 100kg, they had to work hard to get there and know how it feels to be a newcomer.
This might seem shallow, but this is exactly the reason why I (and probably many others) don’t find overweight women attractive. No one wants to be fat, if you are that tells me that either you don’t care about your own well-being enough to work out, or you do care but are too lazy to work for a change. Either way I value personal health and work ethic too much to be in a relationship with someone that doesn’t. (And let’s face it, being obese isn’t attractive either)
# of Views
Depending on how many views or comments content gets speaks to the quality of the subject. If I write a post that generates 0 comments, I can be fairly certain that I didn’t do a very good job. Videos on YouTube that get millions of views aren’t randomly getting these views. There is a compelling factor to these videos which is driving said traffic. Being able to know ahead of time whether content will go viral is an incredible skill that shows your ability to see quality. The smart minority of civilization strive to understand this.
Betting
The perfect golf swing
Betting is a good way of showing that you can identify quality. Betting on sports is more of a “fuck you Vegas” than it is about making money. I want to prove that I’m smarter than the odds makers. This is obviously not the case as I’ve lost thousands of dollars sports betting over my lifetime but I don’t play over my head, so I got that going for me. This is why you see me recommending golfers like Louie and horses like Exaggerator. I see quality and want to make a name for myself as being able to identifying quality. Alas, I seem very good at picking 2nd place which is a great way to lose money.
My High Standard
All I want to do is bowl a 300 and I’ll be satisfied. I’m not going out to bowl and have a good time (which I do anyway). I want to start every game with a string of strikes until eventually I roll 12 in a row. I’m well aware that I’m not going to be a professional bowler but I’m also not trying to be a squid. Once I get tired of bowling, I’ll move on to another endeavor but for now, I like to bowl to continuously improve my standard. I try to do this with all that I do.
“Is it hard?’
Not if you have the right attitudes. Its having the right attitudes thats hard.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values