Working Meditation

Observations on Human Connection & Contribution

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#117: The slack inside our heads

We allow ourselves slack when no one is watching and potentially judging. We may loosen our grip on perfection and ease into life, perhaps leave a few unwashed dishes in the sink, miss a Saturday shower, or spend a day lazily on the couch. There’s freedom, relaxation and even creativity in allowing things to simply be for a bit and emerge. But too much slack over a long period of time creates lethargy and disarray. Rest only feels valuable in relation to work, resources in relation to need. Endlessness of anything creates dis-ease vs. ease.

Same goes for what happens inside our heads. A lot of our life happens alone, even if we’re surrounded by people. That’s because the mind runs on a completely different level of ultrasonic speed that simply cannot be matched by words. We can’t share every emotion, thought or idea with another even if we tried. So most of these internal arisings and impressions stays inside us; wiring and rewiring us repeatedly. We may not get to share these thoughts but the thought patterns we allow inside our heads do show up in the outer world over time through our actions and interactions.

Simply because no one else has access to our endless thoughts is no reason to let them run amok in any one direction. 

“Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.”— David Whyte, Poet

#116: Choosing our axis and rotations

Rotation is the action of spinning on an axis or a center, and we often associate this movement with the planets. It is Earth’s habitual movement that gives us the experience of day and night. Living beings also seem to spin around an invisible central axis, which creates our visible rotations. Animals have recurrent migratory and homing patterns. Humans go back and forth to school, work, grocery stores, to spend time with loved ones, and to entertainment spots. All of us like kites connected to invisible threads anchored somewhere in our life.

The central axis around which any individual spins is determined by their biological needs—both physical and emotional—and these keep evolving as we develop. This invisible and ever-present axis manifests clearly in the combination of roles one inhabits: a student, a sibling, an entrepreneur, caregiver, athlete and so on. These roles in turn determine how we use our time: the places, people, and activities that fill our days. Just like for Earth, our axis (needs and roles) determines our rotations (time spent in habitual engagements).

But unlike Earth, our axis shifts in response to life changes, both big and relatively small: moves, babies, deaths, acute injuries, new friendships, or home repair projects. We take on new roles or drop old ones. Consequently, the makeup of our time shifts quite organically; where we spend it, with whom, and how alter without too much effort. A change in our needs and roles changes our lived footprint. A shift in axis, changes the rotation.

Axis and rotations are inseparable from living organisms. They create the observable footprint of our days and, over time, a life. We can intentionally choose them or they come into form on their own by the mere fact that we’re alive.

If we wish to change our life experience, a useful first step might be to note the axis around which our life is anchored. While it’s not always easy or desirable to shift our axis, we do it many times over a lifetime when we make big life moves. Rotations rarely venture far from the axis we’ve settled into. Even so, it’s easier to shift the structure of our rotations vs. our axis. We can choose the physical places and online spaces we spend free time in, the relationships and interests we cultivate, ideas and information we engage with, and our patterns of engagement and rest.

Most of us have more agency over our life and attention than we realize, and we must exercise it. When we don’t, we end up creating a life that looks nothing like the one we crave to live. Unlike our beloved Earth, we have the power to see our habitual patterns and make changes.

“We give no significance to human attention. Things open up and change only in response to attention. Otherwise old cycles repeat endlessly.”— Sadhguru, yogi, mystic and teacher

#115: Who we become on the sidelines of conflict

I’m part of many different professional tidepools, each with a group chat on Signal or Whatsapp. The Israel-Gaza conflict has surfaced in these spaces over the past month with layers of aches and perspectives. The personal and collective histories like a messy bundle of electrical wires: inextricably enmeshed and full of charge.

While Israel and Palestine isn’t the land of my ancestors, my elders experienced identity-driven geopolitical conflict alongside the fear, anger, hate and violence it generates. Their forceful expulsion from their birthland is full of stories of slaughter. I was also raised in a beautifully plural society and have experienced the turmoil that sometimes rears its head in true diversity. I’ve seen the nature of individual and collective conversations we have with each other during such times.

Our first step is ususally to share and explain our side. If we are genuinely and fully met in our grief, we feel more secure stepping out further to try and understand the other side. Most conversations get stuck at the first stage because we don’t typically acknowledge another’s pain in public (or private) discourse. We also shy away from acknowledgement because it invites action of some sort; which may be unclear, hard, or even impossible.

So the spaces for shared sense-making—where people bring in their deepest emotion, truest thoughts and questions, with a desire to shape a healthier future—are rare. This shared sense-making is hard enough face to face with people we love and issues we have known about all our lives. It’s even harder in group chats or social media with people and issues we know little about.

Although we all sense that group chats are a choppy tool for perspective sharing and sense making, we have the constraints and tools that we have so we engage. And like most spaces, a few voices step into the circle to share, some with more comfort and assertion than others. Whether we are inside the circle or silent on the periphery, we listen and digest. We learn about human nature and our own nature by coming to terms with our comfort, discomfort and boundaries. We gain a sense of how we like to learn and engage. We create perspectives about ourselves, people groups, and whole cultures. Often without realizing, we veer towards hope, helplessness or cynicism. All these become muscle memory.

Then one day down the line, even if we stand quietly in this conversation, we will step inside some other circle and share our thoughts. We might do this with nuance or binaries, with an attitude of sensing or ripping apart another’s perspective. One thing is for sure, how we behave when we enter that circle in the future will be guided by who we are becoming while on the sidelines today.

“At our best, we serve as inadvertent triggers for each other’s eventual illumination.”— Mark Nepo, Poet

PS: This is a good one about not having a hot take on everything, which forces us to have a definitive stance on issues when first a posture of learning and inquiry is better suited— Pick a Side. Pick a Side. Pick a Side. Now.

#114: Recalibrating the everyday mundane

I find it easier to notice and make space for the big events in life vs. the everyday mundane. I found it easier to line up my attention with intention, and my actions with hopes when I was planning to relocate to a different country, give a job interview, or build exciting new friendships.

It’s the everyday mundane that trips me up. Where I find it harder to see how my current level of attention and action might support larger intentions and hopes. It’s harder to see how my small silent actions will add up over time. Harder to see how that one missed walk with a friend will turn into weeks, months, then years of not seeing her. How long work hours and missed workouts will turn into muscle tightness and loss of flexibility. That a weekly yoga practice will create unexpected strength for heavy gardening. That the sweetest friendship will turn into a life-nurturing marriage. That a few gangly flowers will fill the yard with blazing color all summer.

Culturally too, it feels easier to acknowledge our big visible moments of joy, loss and growth compared to the everyday delight, grief or momentum we silently gather in our pockets. We tend to acknowledge the small moments as children, and for children, but it peters out as we grow. First externally and then even internally. Yet, our experience of life—which is very subjective—is shaped by the ever-flowing quieter experiences.

A moment of misdirected volcanic-anger at a loved one followed by a vulnerable and healing conversation can be as much of a life-changer as seeing someone we love after years. Friendships lost to distance and repeated moves can be as hard on us as breakups. The slow buildup of a beloved new skill as an adult can be as delightful as painting our first full watercolor image as a child. But we’ve internalized the message that experiences capturable by cameras are the ones we should seek.

When driving, we’re only able to notice the big trees and not the small wildflowers. Speed and distance make it hard. That’s modern life in a nutshell. It feels as if we’re being forced to drive through life faster and faster. For this experience to be checked-off so we can jump into the next. It takes some practice, but we can step out of this car and walk amidst the fragrance and thorns. Into the messy field where our joy, creativity and wisdom live.

“Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”— Mary Oliver, Poet

#112: What do you see?

I was speaking with my mom on video a few days ago, and she kept looking away from me. We live on different continents and sometimes our calls conflict with a TV show she likes to watch. She looks forward to it and I like that this show brings her joy. I also like that she feels comfortable expressing her eagerness to watch this show. It signals to me that my mom is secure in our relationship and, while she misses me, she feels connected enough that she can hang up and go about her day with ease.

So knowing this, I see my mom looking away repeatedly during a particularly connective conversation. I felt our loving bond and I wanted her eyes to return my gaze…but she kept looking away. We’ve done our almost-daily calls for years and this time it was my turn to comfortably express my need, so I asked her.

Me: “Ma, where are you looking?”

Mom: “Oh, there is something on the iPad screen. I’m trying to clean it…so I can see clearly.”

How many times do we think that someone we want to connect with is, metaphorically speaking, “watching TV” while all they are actually doing is “cleaning their screen”? We may perceive disconnection and get stuck in hurt but we rarely know what’s happening on the other side. If something is bothering us so much, could we just reach out and express our need instead? With sincerity, curiosity and without accusation.

Trying to see what they are seeing might just open the door to moments of real connection we seek.

“Words are the most powerful thing in the universe… Words are containers. They contain faith, or fear, and they produce after their kind.”— Charles Capps, American preacher

P.S. I hope my writing pauses aren’t coming across as a loss of zest. I participated in this mind-opening incubator over the last two months (link to our cohort page). My writing will be a life-long pursuit and a loving search for truth, and sometimes I’ll need to pause for sustainability. This was just one of those moments.