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Observations from a life in motion

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#79: Organic signals and the paradox of overengineering

I drink plenty of water because I naturally crave it. I often wonder after a refreshing drink whether plants feel the same way after getting watered: nourished from within. And then I wonder why, despite my affinity for water, I too sometimes fall into a pattern of forgetting and getting dehydrated.

I read somewhere that we can mix up our thirst and hunger signals. When I first read this, I thought “hum, interesting, that’s never happened to me”. But now that I’m cultivating a capacity to observe, I see it happens quite frequently. The common thread in these moments is that I’ve lost my connection to thirst signals because of busyness or distraction (likely missed or overrode initial signals). When I haven’t had adequate water in several days, it feels harder and harder to trace my way back to that faint signal. Then drinking water becomes a task; another thing to track and remember, and not something I do naturally.

I notice parallels with a number of other habits including meditation, writing, movement, sleep, and human connection…essentially anything that feels lifegiving. When I lose that organic signal from within because of modernity’s squeeze, there is pressure to start tracking the when, the how and, the how much. There is pressure to engineer the optimal routine. But once designed, it all backfires. Rather than following that engineered routine, part of me stops wanting to do something that comes so naturally to me.

There seems to be an experiential difference between leaning into the organic nurture of a practice and over-monitoring it for output. For me atleast, one seems to release the creative expansion of the practice and the other somehow robs it. One makes the habit magnetic and the other a bit repellant. It feels as if my psyche is saying: “Give me the tools to make healthful choices, but set me free to interact in those lifegiving pockets without a script.”

I want to build evolving gardens and not static skyscrapers.

“When I refer to ‘creative living,’ I am speaking more broadly. I’m talking about living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert, journalist and author

#75: What is attention?

Is it intense pin-pointed focus on something or is it open awareness of the present, regardless of the object?

Does it come and go or is there an attentive part of us always waiting to be called upon?

Does it live in the body, like in the case of professional dancers or athletes? Where, over time, it takes the shape of muscle memory and mental interruptions are the last thing we need. Or does it live in the mind, like that of a scientist or a writer, deep in focus?

Is it in the achievement of the flow-state, where attention just courses through us without any sense of time? Or is it in the attentive preparation and effort that enables the sought-after flow state?

Is it better for attention to be unmediated by technology, like when we stare at the night sky and dream? Or can technology help us see what we couldn’t without, like a telescope that helps us see the contours of the night sky?

Do we create the world with our attention or is what we give attention to defined by the world we live in?

Is attention scarce or do we have enough of it and the struggle is really about where to apply this attention?

Could all of this be true?

“Before our minds create our world, the world creates our minds.” — Gabor Mate,  Hungarian-Canadian physician and author specializing in treatment of addiction

#68: Room for doubt

There are times where even a hint of doubt is undesirable. For example, high-stakes situations with immediate consequences; like landing an aircraft or performing life-saving surgery. For a lot of other things however we carry more doubt than we show and we tend to hide it even from ourselves. Maybe because action requires certainty and commitment to follow through and we fear if we dwell too long in doubt, we’ll melt our resolve to act. But suppressing doubt doesn’t nullify it. We carry uncertainty, hesitation and indecision perpetually.

A particularly poignant example for me is Mother Teresa, who continued in her good works despite a 50-year crisis of faith. She says in one of her letters to her spiritual advisor – “When I try to raise my thoughts to heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul. I am told God loves me, and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great, nothing touches my soul.” This is was written in the 1940s, relatively early in her work and roughly 30 years before her Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. These doubts never abated but she didn’t abandon her belief or her work.

It’s a difficult place to operate from…when something speaks to us intrinsically enough that we commit to it but know on some level that we know little and will never know the full picture. Parenting, faith, and entrepreneurship are some common examples but the biggest example is the human life itself. Most of our discomfort is tied to the existential questions. Can any of us say with 100% certainty, without any doubt why we are here, what the purpose of a human life is, and what happens after we die? We fill in the blanks with high-judgment estimates and go about focusing on our daily life and goals. We let the act of living guide and consume us enough to create a sense of certainty in aspects: “I don’t know what happens after but know I was made for this work”. “The only thing I’m certain of is that I love my kids”. “Math has always made sense to me”. “I feel at home when I play the piano”. And so on. Micro doses of certainty on the macro path of unknown. Moments of clarity interwoven with moments of doubt, fear and loss. 

My evolving theory on doubt is this:

  1. The clearest indicator of what we should pursue and how we should live is a faint and sometimes hard to hear signal that we carry somewhere inside. Even though we carry it within, it comes across only when we silence the noise of daily pursuits, and listen without judgment. Because we may resist what we hear.
  2. We have to act despite doubt. The action doesn’t need to be big or all at once.
  3. A shared space with other people doing similar work is a huge boost, especially if we aren’t comfortable with what we’re being called to do. If this space or collective doesn’t exist, we need to create it.

#3 is perhaps the most important part in working alongside doubt. It ensures that in difficult moments, we have the wisdom of others doing  their own but similar work. That we have a safe space to air doubt, gain perspective and courage to keep going. It’s important that they understand this specific practice we have chosen. Its nuance, its promise, its fear, its draw and terror, the joy of having taken this path and the ache of having given up other options. If we want to keep going, it’s important we create a space that helps us recommit when we stumble. 

“It’s not necessary to be a saint to do good. You need willing hands, not clean ones. If we wait for our souls to be totally clean, our time on Earth may slip away.”― Mother Teresa: Roman Catholic nun

#67: Thriving alongside cobwebs

Simply being alive creates mental impressions. There is no way around it. What so and so said or did that was loving or hurtful. What we did, didn’t do, or couldn’t do. And the longer we live, the more impressions we file away in our brains. The present passes through the prism of time and inevitably turns to sweet memories, painful ones, or regret. Then there is the future, where our goals, hopes and fears that are yet to materialize keep churning dreams and worries. All of these threads tangle up to become mental cobwebs.

We are often reminded that life is lived in the present but that is also where the endless cycle of thoughts, emotions and actions live; one constantly feeding the other and being fed in return. Thoughts: the maker of every action and a gateway to sneaky emotions. Emotions: the often invisible contributor to action, the yanker of our most painful chains and fussy thought patterns. Actions: our primary tool of outward expression, the creator of mental impressions and the fertilizer for more thoughts and emotions.

Simply put, the act of living spins daily cobwebs that may cocoon our psyche and limit our potential to flourish.

Meeting each moment with curiosity and non-attachment is a big part of contemplative practices. We train to drop the weight of past and future so we can move through life lightly with more fluidity and awareness. Some other terms used to describe this idea— A fresh mind, beginner’s mind, child-like, the place of now etc.  The invitation is to show up completely present in the service of the now so we don’t color our actions with regret, worry or fear; so a fresh new trajectory can open up in the moment. A feeling of calm might be what drew us to contemplative practices initially, but we’d be remiss if we stopped there. A sense of calm fills only our vessel but a sense of openess and presence fills every vessel we encounter. Thriving happens when we channel the gift of the human mind, when new growth sprouts amidst the cobwebs.

“What does the Earth ask of us? To meet our responsibilities and to give our gifts. Naming responsibility is often understood as accepting a burden, but in the teachings of my ancestors, responsibilities and gifts are understood as two sides of the same coin. The possession of a gift is coupled with a duty to use it for the benefit of all.”― Robin Wall Kimmerer: scientist, professor, author of Braiding Sweetgrass.

#66: Prototyping the everyday

I haven’t published in two months. I was building other parts of life that left little brainpower to review and edit. Or so I thought.

Over the last year, I saw my writing-voice take shape. But behind the scenes I was observing and getting to know myself through this part that likes to write. I saw how ideas arrive, which ones I select, how I process them, but also what I observe, what I care to write about and how I string together language. I was not only finding my writing-voice, I was finding my voice and wisdom. And because I sought discernment, I wanted to think things through a bit more before I published. I didn’t post last two months because I didn’t have time to think things through to the degree I would have liked.

I also noted that I had pieces at various stages of readiness. Some thoughts were supported only by quick scribbles to help me recall later while others were over 90% written, just needing final edits. Simultaneously, the inflow of observations and thoughts never stopped (I am thankful for this). So a mental traffic jam occurred. On one side, incessant mental downloads knocked on my brain waiting to be unfurled and on the other side half-written notes awaited attention. And there I was crushed in the middle…wanting to publish when my personal standards had been met. This act of turning off the publishing faucet created a creativity backlog so instead of flowing, my words felt like a tangled mess on my Notes app.

I’ve been learning prototyping tools and mindsets over the last couple of weeks. Today I realized that the prototyping mindset applies even to my writing. A prototyping mindset frees startups to experiment in front of potential users without being ashamed of failures and imperfections. The prototype only has one goal: learning. So it’s developed just enough to gain learnings and not an ounce more. Prototypes aren’t meant to be perfect, they are meant to be iterative. Each prototype a fertilizer for the next.  

The act of writing over the last year has been learning in motion for me. I write about this and then about that. An addition here and a deletion there. Sometimes poetic and sometimes prose but always a learning. When I stopped posting, I stopped learning. The desire for better got in the way of doing.

Thinking like a prototyper, I might have published more. Published more imperfect work that would have been enough to get the point across and taught me lessons not only for my writing but also other work and life. This writing isn’t meant to be perfect; it’s meant to teach me something and be of use to others. One prototyped post at a time.

“What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?”― Vincent Van Gogh: Dutch painter