Author: BMAN; Source: X, @BMANLead

I have been chasing AI since this year.

I installed openclaw, damn, I have to work on several projects every day.

Then I was amazed by lobsters several times every day.

Then, some limitations of lobster were discovered.

Then, I saw the anxiety filling the screen on Twitter and the news.

When I saw this screen filled with anxiety, I thought of a question:

When we are chasing AI, what exactly are we chasing?

Let’s look at two stories first:

Inamori Kazuo, the god of Japanese management.

He has done two incredible things in his life: he founded two Fortune 500 companies - Kyocera and KDDI - from scratch.

Everyone knows this.

But what really makes me wonder is not this.

When he was 65 years old, at the peak of his career, he went to Enfukuji Temple in Kyoto, became a monk, and became a mendicant. I get up at three o'clock in the morning every day, step on the stone road with bare feet, and go from house to house to beg for alms.

Someone asked him why.

He said:

"The more successful I became in my life, the more I felt that something was wrong. It wasn't until I stood at someone else's door with an empty bowl that I truly understood what it felt like to be grateful."

The god of management is looking for perfection in an empty bowl.

You may feel that this story is far away from you. Let's look at a closer one.

Tony Hsieh, Chinese-American, founder of Zappos. In 2009, the company was sold to Amazon for US$1.2 billion. He wrote a book called "Delivering Happiness" - Delivering Happiness.

He said that his mission in life is to deliver happiness.

But in November 2020, he died in a fire in a house in Las Vegas at the age of 46. A few months before his death, friends around him described his state as: extremely lonely, alcoholic, addicted to nitrous oxide (laughing gas), and locked himself in a shrinking world.

A person who has spent his whole life studying "how to make people happy" ultimately failed to make himself happy.

Is he short of money? No shortage.

Is he lacking intelligence? No shortage.

What does he lack?

There is a saying in Buddhism called "seeking outside" - those who keep looking outside will never find it.

So when we are chasing AI, what exactly are we chasing?

Have you used this lobster?

Have you tried that model?

Everyone else is using AI to make money, what are you still doing?

FOMO——Fear of Missing Out.

Afraid of missing out.

But the real problem in the AI era is not "what did I miss?"

But"How can I live a good life when AI can do almost everything?"

Inamori Kazuo’s answer is: pick up the empty bowl.

What Hsieh Jiahua’s story tells you is: if you chase someone else, you won’t be able to catch them.

Finally, share a story and an answer:

Tasha Tudor is an American children's book illustrator. He is well-known in New York and has won the Caldecott Medal.

But at the age of 57, she made a decision that no one understood: she moved to the mountains of Vermont, lived in a handmade wooden house without running water, wore 19th-century skirts, raised goats, planted flowers, made her own candles, and cooked with a wood stove.

That was the 1970s. The entire United States was embracing television, computers, and the space race. She is a rebel.

Then the Internet came, Silicon Valley took off, and the world accelerated. She still gets up every morning to feed the chickens, water the garden, and draw illustrations on paper.

Japanese NHK TV station went to film her documentary. In the camera, she is 92 years old, wearing a hand-stitched linen apron and standing among flowers.

The reporter asked her: "Don't you think you missed something?"

She said: "People are always preparing for life, preparing for life, preparing for life. Then suddenly they realize that life is over. I just decided not to prepare anymore."

In an era where everyone is accelerating,

Those who dare to stop are the real brave ones.

Those things you are chasing - efficiency, dividends, and not being eliminated.

Maybe you already have the most important thing, but you just haven't stopped.

Be water, my friend.