Speed is everything in our world today.

Cliche as it sounds, I think the phrase captures at least a part of the truth – for in my mind, it is unquestionably true: how fast you do things, how fast you decide to do them – all of that features in the grand exposition of what defines success and failure in this modern world.

In a way, this makes a lot of sense – in the grand totality of all perishable and improbable endeavor, regardless of how strong you are, it is useless if you cannot hit a target; if you go first, you become a first mover and can dominate the competition. In a world where so many other factors can exist but are just a little less relevant, here then is the limiting reagent around which others tiptoe, their entire existence negotiable; and in a world where the fast define the agenda and where competition is the norm and not the exception, a fast world isn’t out of expectation and neither is it unfair – it is the logical consequence of our life in what we might call a late-stage capitalism society.

I’m not writing this to complain about it – in fact, if I were to be honest with myself, I rather enjoy it.

I enjoy living in a fast-paced world, a place where we get things done quickly and efficiently, where daily is the process of moving faster and getting better, more efficient, more skilled, even in a world where everyone is moving forward as quickly as possible – all of us time-bound – refining the small and daily things that I do without a clear limit or end to the sequence of improvements in body and mind.

If I reflect a layer deeper, I begin to wonder if I am the way that I am and we are as we are not just because of competition – but perhaps because I, or we, have the sense that time is running out even as every human being moves forward at the same rate with the same constraints under unique and differing challenges of life.

I don’t have an answer to all of that – and the only answer I suppose that the universe will give is the universe it displays to all of us as individuals as we look around us, move forward, reference the actions, behaviors, attitudes of the billions who live on this planet as well.

Perhaps my having written what I wrote reveals me as part of the problem for those who cannot stand the pace of this world – one of those who normalize this pace that we move at, cherishes how we find ourselves constantly in an onward push, considers the inner workings of the clockwork within him the wholly normalized character of the machinery whether it is true or not; after all, we are not isolated from culture or society.

Hello everyone, welcome back. In the last post, I talked a little bit about how influencing means changing people’s behavior, and I also talked about how I like it.

Yes, I very much do.

It gives me a sense of interest and investment that somehow because of what I said or what I think in some way, people change the way that they behave.

Some people have different terms for this. One of them is “power” – the ability to change things in some way, shape, or form.

But, of course, the words that we use shape the way that we interpret these ideas; calling someone a person who has secured power is different from calling them an influencer.

In the first case, notions of authoritarianism and control come to the fore.

In the latter, the idea of people just being persuaded and swayed like they would be if they were little children listening to the Pied Piper might be as they sway, swagger, and walk along as the flute plays to the musician’s intended destination.

I align a little more with the latter in the sense of making people move closer and closer towards something they had always wanted.

But the longer and longer I live, the more and more I come to realize that what I’m becoming able to do is to use power in certain ways that maybe not everyone can make use of.

It’s a little strange to see or to think about, but that’s just the reality that we’re facing at the moment.

Why things ended up this way and why I became able to wield institutional power in some ways is itself, I think, a funny story which I might want to talk about someday.

But well, it is what it is.

Either way, I know what I want to be in spirit… But things have made it so that in terms of consequence I’ve become able to do certain things that were not possible before.

Looking forward to seeing what’s next!