Working Meditation

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

#73: The chokehold of finite games

We all choke at some point in life. When we intend to do something, and the moment arrives and passes without us having done it. Maybe it happened because we didn’t really want to do it in the first place or the complete opposite. That we really wanted to do this thing but it felt difficult and overwhelming; we didn’t feel ready or enough and not trying eased the pressure momentarily.

The stakes either felt pointless or high. But regardless of the emotions underlying the chokehold, the mind likely saw this game as finite.

James Carse, a history professor, wrote the book Finite and Infinite Games in 1986 and it offers a practical way to think about our work and commitments. Per Carse, a finite game is played to win and an infinite game to continue the play. In finite games, we obey rules, play within boundaries and announce winners and losers. In these games, like politics and sports, we seek power and strategize to win in front of an audience. In the infinite game, since our purpose is to continue play, we play with the boundaries themselves knowing they exist to support the goal of unending play. In this game we seek internal strength to keep participating alongside other participants. A symphony or parenting might be good examples.

Two other notable points in this text – 1) Participation in every game is voluntary and, 2) there can be many finite games within a larger infinite game but not the other way around. Extrapolating from these I wonder…even if forces larger than us pressure us to play in a certain (often finite) way, we can exercise a choice in how we operate. We can do the same work and choose to view the larger game as infinite.

When we think of our larger context as a finite, zero-sum, winner-takes-all game, it’s harder to play like an infinite-minded player and summon the perspective, creativity, playfulness or ease that might come with thinking regeneratively. In the finite mindset we strive to dominate through winning but in the infinite mindset we strive to keep on playing.

This doesn’t mean that we’ll never choke when we play the infinite game. It means that the sting will feel more manageable and we’ll have the stamina to keep going.

“Strength is paradoxical. I am not strong because I can force others to do what I wish as a result of my play with them, but because I can allow them to do what they wish in the course of my play with them…
Infinite players are not serious actors in any story, but the joyful poets of a story that continues to originate what they cannot finish.” — James Carse, Professor of History and Literature of Religion

#65: Coloring the work in our own colors

Two people doing the same work will do it differently. They will color the work with their context, perceptions, judgments and resulting actions. There are examples abound in our everyday lives but here are a few public ones from politics and business to clarify the point—Barak Obama and George W. Bush held the same office with the same supporting structures but their governments ran differently. Imagine if Steve Jobs built Amazon instead of Apple or Jeff Bezos built Facebook instead of Amazon. Those that follow these leaders and their unique styles might be able to extrapolate the kind of companies Amazon or Facebook might have been in this alternate universe. Each of these humans has unique strengths and blind spots given their life journey and wiring. It’s easy to see this blend—of strengths and failings, informed perspectives and gaps in understanding—in public figures because of their magnified influence on society and culture but these forces exist within each of us.

I’ve noticed however that when I care enough for something, I want to support it with all of my strengths and none of my failings. It’s how parents might feel when they hope to pass along all their good traits to their children but none of the suboptimal ones. But of course, this is impossible. The next generation pulls from the entirety of our genetics, DNA, capabilities and gaps. The same applies to work. Good work asks that we step forward as our whole selves which includes our ideas, perspectives, and strengths but also our blind spots and failings. Trying to surgically suppress our shadows only turns us into distorted and inauthentic caricatures of ourselevs. Also note that suppressing our limitations is different from understanding them, which is critical if we care about the impact of our presence and work.

The contradiction buried in a good life and good work is that we have to step forward completely with our blind spots and imperfections, and bring along a commitment to keep broadening our perspectives. We need the audacity to show up with all our warts and the humility to keep learning. The alternative is to just freeze and be paralyzed with fear of being proved imperfect, and this approach serves no one.

“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”― Maya Angelou: poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist.

#5: The Dennis Rodman within

I watched The Last Dance, the Michael Jordan and Chicago Bulls documentary, on Netflix. One of the things that struck me was Dennis Rodman’s psychological makeup and his contrast to Jordan. Knowing Rodman’s history now, I can see the through line and understand what created the powerful need in him to escape into the wild and release pressure periodically. If it happened to be in ways that were optically unfavorable to him, he didn’t care. He needed to shut out the demands to perform so he could recapture a part of him.

Lately I’ve been noticing the Jordan and Rodman inside me. The striver, methodical planner, relentless doer, unquenchable attainer. The one who creates structure and pushes me to keep going. Then there is the independent and stubborn – almost Husky dog like creature – that feels claustrophobic after too many days of heavy structure. It wants to play without agenda. The type of play that doesn’t have a secret goal of coaxing out productivity. It doesn’t want endless sleep or Netflix, it craves exploration; random travel, conversations, art, play, laughter. When it doesn’t get what it needs, it becomes lackluster, glassy eyed, lethargic, and less of who it naturally is. I never let my Rodman-Husky play because the striving Jordan needed to build stability and it feared that the wild and independent one might venture too far from home and never come back to do the work. Probably for the first time in my life, I’m giving the Husky a chance and it’s sniffing the trails to uncover long buried gems. My life feels richer for it.

“Then you will see gardens with secluded rose bowers, and they will all be inside you.” – Rumi

#1: A box of crayons

A friend recently asked me impromptu questions about innovation and creativity. As I spoke, previously unthought ideas appeared from hidden caves in my mind to form an unexpectedly clear picture. I said that it seems like each of us are given a box of crayons that are uniquely us. Some crayons are available from early on in life and others become available – as if getting unlocked – over time as we gather experiences and perspectives. Sometimes the crayons are the same color as before, but get more vibrant and saturated with pigment over time. Other times, we may get entirely new and unexpected colors as we progress through life, and these colors may challenge and change who we think we are. Examples started popping up on the fly too –  Chimamanda Adichie, one of my favorite writers, and Schitt’s Creek’s, Dan Levy surfaced as examples of pigments that became more saturated over time and John Krasinski as an example of progression, from acting to writing, directing and producing.
 
The question isn’t who is innovative and who isn’t. It might be more useful to ask who isn’t holding back on experimenting with all their crayons and who is, for reasons within and outside their control. Will I tune-in to my unique box of crayons? Will I play with the sometimes unexpected and often evolving color palette that is uniquely mine?

“We are notes in this beautiful concert of existence. If we don’t play ourselves, nobody will.” – Rodrigo De Souza, Mozart in the Jungle