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Monday, February 9, 2009
Post-Bowling Existentialist ArtI was on my friend’s myspace site this week and I was surprised to discover that he was friends with
another old friend of mine. The first of these friends is an artist and the other friend is none other than the man who hired
me at the PBA back in 2000, PBA Chairman Chris Peters. The two are myspace friends because Chris is now an L.A. area artist
specializing in Pop-Surrealist Vanitas paintings. In layman’s terms, that basically means Chris does paintings of collections
of strange, seemingly dissimilar objects for the purpose of offering a reflection on the transience and meaninglessness of
materialism and life. OK, so maybe that wasn’t so layman-ish…let’s just say he draws cool pictures of skulls
and stuff (my favorite is one titled “Los Angeles” that features a skeleton leaning up against his car in front
of a gas pump with a Shell logo that is cleverly positioned so the right edge of the frame cuts off the “S” in
Shell…I think I like it most because that is pretty much how I felt about working for that company!)
In
my book, I wrote about Chris as one of the people who’ve had the biggest influences on my life and the development of
my own personal philosophy. I discussed how Chris taught me the true value of learning and acquiring knowledge and that the
information you want and need to get where you want to go is just an internet search or a trip to the library or bookstore
away. At the point where I left off talking about Chris in the book, he had just begun to pursue a new career as a working
artist. My recent discovery of Chris’ website (http://www.chrispeters.com) has validated that he has succeeded in reaching this goal, which, knowing Chris, is really not much of a surprise at all.
I have so many fond memories of working with Chris in the early days of the “New PBA.” From the time at
Bowl Expo that a person asked him if he was familiar with Excel and Chris dryly replied, “Yes, I’m sort of familiar
with Excel…I did write the first couple versions of it, after all.” To the trios scratch league we bowled together
back in 2000-2001. To all of the questions I used to ask him about the nature of success…profound questions like, “Dude,
don’t you ever just want to fill your bathtub up with money and take a bath in it?” I’m sure he enjoyed
those times just as much as I did…maybe.
In all seriousness, though, Chris was always extremely humbled
by his success and always very insistent that it had as much to do with luck as it did with his intelligence, skill and hard
work. I always discounted the luck factor and wanted to believe that there was a direct line between the tangible, controllable
things and the degree of success that any individual reaches…but as I get older, I’ve found myself moving more
and more near to Chris’ original position. It is no surprise then, that Chris’ paintings focus on the impending
certainty of death juxtaposed with objects and items that the vast majority of us are so fixated upon in life…things
like money, beautiful objects, and recognizable items from pop culture.
I’m sure a lot of folks probably
feel that realizing and/or implying that the things we do in life are meaningless is an extremely somber, even fatalistic
view of the world. To me, it is just the opposite. To me, it is extremely liberating to look at the world from this perspective
because it shines a light on just how precious the fleeting time we have to live our lives really is. It is this thought that
makes me want to live each day to its fullest and to give my best effort to each thing I choose to pursue, because in light
of the end, all pursuits…whether they be bowling, or making art or working as a doctor are rendered equal in importance.
In the end, we each give our own meaning to the lives we live and we will never find that meaning if we are looking outside
ourselves.
In speaking of bowling performance specifically, I also believe that this perspective is of great assistance
in shaping our attitude for playing the game. It teaches us that we should always strive to be our best, but when we fail,
it is not the end of the world. That approach helps eliminate the usual feelings of loss (of confidence, of stature, of ability)
that we experience when we don’t live up to our potential and gives us the strength we need to honestly assess our progress
and plan out the work we need to do to continue the journey toward being our best.
If nothing else, I strongly
encourage you to check out Chris’ artistic work (click here). You may not find it as entertaining as watching a PBA telecast on ESPN, but I can assure you that the same enthusiasm and
energy that Chris has put into his work at Microsoft, his leadership at the PBA and his many other pursuits can be found right
there on the canvas. Plus, they’re just plain cool!
See you next week!
Contact me at: jason@jasonthomasbowling.com
Click here to check out a new interview with Jason Thomas about his book “Livin' The Dream: How to Get
What You Want, Find True Meaning and Save the World by Bowling!” To purchase a copy of the book, click here.
Click here to read “Jason’s TV Recap - Uncensored” on PBA.com.
To check out the latest episode of The Bowling
Show click here.
1:14 pm est
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LIVIN' THE DREAM:
How
to get what you want, find true meaning and save the world by bowling!
AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR
Q:
What is the book about?
A: The book is about how the valuable
lessons I learned through my lifelong involvement in bowling saved my life and transformed me from an unhappy cynic into a
blissfully happy optimist.
Q: What made you decide to write it?
A: I had been out of the bowling industry for about two years and I had hit a very low point in my attitude about
life. Through the help of a family member, I was able to rediscover the important lessons about success, spirituality and
connecting with others. I was so excited about this transformation that I decided to write a book that attempts to detail
the metamorphosis while outlining the important lessons I remembered.
Q: How is this
book different from other self-help books?
A: The book is different in a number
of ways. First, I am a very unlikely person to have written a self-help book. If you had known me before I'd written the book,
you'd know precisely what I mean. But that fact alone reveals how strongly I felt about writing it, because I knew that if
I could change for the better, then I felt anyone could do it and that there was a good chance that I could help a lot of
people by describing the process and arranging the pieces in a way that could be easily understood.
The
other key point of difference is the way the book is arranged. The story is structured into three parts, The Method, Some
Cool Tricks and For the Hard-Core Cynics, each of which contain the important lessons I wanted to share. Every chapter is
also broken up with a narrative of my personal story, told for the purpose of detailing my amazing attitude transformation.
It begins with the extremely low point when others felt the need to reach out to help me to remember the important things
in life and goes on to detail the many people that helped me to learn the most important life lessons, including: my childhood
friend Robert Smith, my father (a former President of Disneyland International), PBA Chairman Chris Peters and former PBA
CEO Steve Miller.
Q: Is the book as funny as your blogs?
A: Yes! But there is also a serious side too.
Q: How is your book different from
something like The Secret?
A: My book is similar to The Secret
in that it proposes a method for success, but it is different in a number of ways. First, it is a bit more practical when
it comes to outlining the method for achieving success. The Secret comes very close to describing a similar method
for success in its "Ask, Believe, Receive" mantra. In my book, the first two of these elements ("Ask"
and "Believe") are integral (although I call them "Dream" and "Self-Belief"), but I believe
there has to be some proactive work done to achieve the goal. I call it hard work (which turns a lot of people off, of course)
but to use the model of The Secret, you would simply replace the word "Receive" with "Retrieve."
The best part of all this (and the good news for the folks who don't want to have to work hard) is that once you decide on
what you want and then you begin to believe you can get it, the work is no longer hard, but becomes a fun activity that fills
your days with joy and purpose.
Second, my book spends a significant amount of time discussing
how to deal with your success once you've attained it (and that conducting yourself in this manner before
you reach your goals will actually help you get there even faster). Probably the best way to describe my
book is that it's a cross between The Secret and the late Randy Pausch's book, The Last Lecture.
But I also quote a number of more research-driven books like Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, Sam Harris' The
End of Faith and Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate to help me make my point.
Q: Do you have to be a bowler to like this book?
A: Absolutely
not! Bowling obviously plays a major role (although it really serves more as the setting rather than as the primary focal
point) because of my involvement with the sport my whole life. But the lessons bowling taught me are lessons I could have
learned if I had chosen to be a golfer or a doctor or a writer (oops, I guess that one's a bad example now). My hope is that
the book will find its way into the hands of people who don't bowl and that these people will come away with a new appreciation
for bowlers and the sport of bowling.
Q: What is your goal with the book?
A: That is a simple one. To help as many people as possible to experience the gift of embracing an optimistic way
of life and to help them reap its many rewards. 
