Day: January 8, 2024

This will become clear when you circle back here after having read the whole thing, but opportunity costs really are everywhere.

In Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig talks about an analytical knife. A very deadly knife, he calls it, “so swift and sharp you sometimes don’t see it moving”. And today’s blog post, dear reader, is about a time when I wielded that same swift, deadly analytical knife. And what wielding it was, as you will soon see.

Yesterday evening, I had an epiphany. They are wonderful things, epiphanies. Particularly so if they are the product of mind altering substances. The trouble with these epiphanies is that they make a lot of sense while they wander around in your altered mind. But they, and the clarity they bring with them, are only ephemeral visitors. As soon as the mind altering substances have had their effect and are done with your mind, off they go into the ether, taking their  amazing clarity with them.

Many times have  I woken up the morning after, convinced that I had understood the world in ways that no one has before or ever will since. Only to find, alas, that the specifics are sadly missing. All I can remember is that the epiphany was awesome. But quite what it was remains firmly behind the veil of memory, and refuses to come out, no matter what inducements are offered to it.

But not this time. So epic was this particular epiphany that I made sure to note it down on pen and paper before I fell asleep. 

Move over foxes and hedgehogs, and other feeble attempts at classifying the people of this world. Here’s the definitive split, and it is a doozy: Rudyard was on to a good thing when he wrote Jungle Book, he just didn’t think it through fully, the silly fellow.

Think of our journey through our lives as walking across a jungle, with friendly guides and mentors around to help you on your travels. And the thing with these friendly guides and mentors is that they come in two avatars. They can either be a Baloo, or a Bagheera.

Bagheeras are lithe, agile, driven, focussed and motivated. They have places to reach, things to do, deadlines to meet, and they are Very Driven People.

Baloos on the other hand, are lethargic, lazy, passively curious and laidback. They are convinced they’re in the best part of the jungle, and they encourage you to have a look around, a look-see and while you’re at it, maybe also have a meal and a nap?

Bagheeras are all about Getting To The Destination Now, while Baloos are all about Enjoying The Journey, Because Isn’t That The Point?

Most of my best friends are Baloos, because us Baloos like to stick together. My wife, on the other hand, is a Grade A Bagheera, and that’s a very good thing. My PhD guide is a Bagheera, which was a very good thing for my PhD, and a very bad thing for me.

Upon reflection, you will find that almost everybody on the planet can be pretty neatly classified into either ends of the Baloo-Bagheera spectrum. Most business leaders the world over are Bagheeras, for example, as are most political leaders. Consider Milei. A Bagheera if ever there was one. Our own Prime Minister is very much a Bagheera. Not all of us may at all times understand where we’re being taken, exactly. But it is clear that the Man Is Always Trying To Get Somewhere. And that’s not a bad thing, now is it?

And please don’t over complicate matters. Don’t bring pesky troublesome words into our fun little analysis. Words such as “Good” or “Bad” are orthogonal to our current framework, and let’s just leave it at that. Putin, for instance, is a Bagheera. You might be tempted to say he’s Sher Khan, but you’d be missing the point. We ask one question, and one question alone: Baloo, or Bagheera?

Boris Johnson, on the other hand, is clearly a Baloo. A shade malevolent, you might  be tempted to say, with a raised and patently disapproving eyebrow. He’s actually a Ka, some of the more imaginative ones among you might venture. Again, cease and desist, and maintain the binary nature of our analysis: Baloo, or Bagheera?

Now, if Cowen’s Second Law applies, I cannot possibly be the first one to have employed this framework. Somebody somewhere must have written up a dreary academic analysis along similar lines (or maybe not)? In passing, note that both Tyler and Alex might look like Baloos, but they are the very definition of Bagheeras!

You might think that the world would be a far more efficient and productive place if only everybody channeled their inner Bagheera and got a move on in life. And they wouldn’t be wrong. But as the poet pointed out (a Baloo in spirit, this chap, for obvious reasons), a life full of care isn’t for us Baloos.

It is we Baloos who save the Jungle Book from turning into a slick Powerpoint presentation. “Found kid, raced across jungle and delivered kid back to Man Village with a TAT of 3 days, stat!” isn’t great literature, now is it?

In fact, both in life and in projects, one needs both a Baloo and a Bagheera. The latter because the project would never be completed in the first place, and the former because where’s the fun in it otherwise?

There are two projects I’m working on right now, and it is my great good fortune to be working with two out and out Bagheeras. It is, admittedly, their great misfortune to be working with one the best Baloos that ever lived, but into each life some precipitation must occur, now what to do. And I really am thankful to them (and you should be thankful for the Bagheeras in your life too!).

When push comes to shove, we Baloos are capable of bringing out our inner Bagheeras, so there. Why, even in the original classic (and I’m quite a student of the original Disney movie, I’ll have you know), Baloo does get a move on when King Louie kidnaps Mowgli. 

And in passing, aren’t there far too many King Louies in the world today, dammit?

Us Baloos, we’re underrated, if you ask me. Have you had fun reading this little essay on a Monday morning? Is it not a much better read compared to all those dreary prognostications you’ve been going through about wars and genocides and economies and Other Things of a Depressingly Serious Nature?

Ask yourself who could have written a piece like this, and you will realize that it could only have been a Baloo. Now sure, I could have written Something Serious instead in the time it took me to write this up. 

But surely a brief interlude like this is worth something, now isn’t it?