In writing Law of the Die I had two agendas. The first was to tell a fictional story that carried the highs and lows, joys and pains, whimsical lightheartedness and philosophical depth that my first book, In Pursuit of Weightlessness, aimed to relay.
The second was to bottle the insight and wisdom of dicing for life options, the bizarrely effective practice a cohort and I tinkered with for several years back in Shanghai.
If you haven't read In Pursuit... or The Essence of Lightness, you might be surprised to learn that embracing randomness and letting the number atop the die dictate fully committed actions can result in rather profound and effective transformation - both internally as well as to one's social dynamics.
But... there are rules. Or rather, laws.
In the book these Laws are interspersed throughout - at the beginning of various chapters - the backdrop of the story adding some color and depth to them. And recently, I've made a few recordings breaking them down for those that may want to consider the practical philosophy underlying the fictional narrative. In this video:
...I discuss a law from the chapter A Real Naked Jerk:
| Law of the Die: |
Commitment to action without expectation of outcome is the
diceman’s greatest edge. A close second is a discerning
intuition adept at filtering those options that should be cut
short in favor of other, untested avenues. Maturing filters are
necessary in order to graduate from puerile dabbling to
intentional life-design. This requires time and tutelage, for
which there is no better teacher than the die.
This law contains several points of tension that are fun to dissect, among them:
- If one is striving for results, how can they be free of expectations?
- If one must commit to acting on dice-dictated options, then how can they know when it's time to cut and run?
- How can one "mature" at filtering random options?
This is a bit of a break from my general mind-body shares, but it's highly relevant to that meta-domain of performance, under which, Weightlessness resides. I've said before that Weightlessness is the mind-body solution to uncertainty in life, and dicing is the social solution. They both contain gaps that the other remarkably fits.
Love it or hate it, roll with it.
It's a fun journey down the rabbit hole of optionality.
Be weightless!
Tom Fazio