SECOND SHOT

November 27th, 2018

“Sorry, couldn’t hear you.  What did you say?”

Upon hearing this, how many times do we say something different than what came out the first time?

The chance occurrence of our sound vibrations failing to zip across space and light up another person’s brain in just the right way offers a common and unusually ripe situation which elicits a rare case when we are impelled to pause and think for just a moment longer about how we want to impact our surroundings and the people we wish to connect with.

Normally we don’t feel the urge to slow down and think carefully before saying something.  We just say it.  But just like the phenomenon of walking away from some discussion or altercation and only later thinking of the brilliant thing that we could have said, this circumstance gives us a similar perspective.  Our lack of impulse to pause before speaking, and our obsession with rethinking what we’ve said after the fact clearly indicates that we usually only have an opinion about what we say after it’s been said.  It’s almost as though what we hear ourselves say is a bit of a surprise.  A surprise that is often underwhelming and seems somewhat disconnected from what we originally felt we were thinking.

What can we infer from this about all future things we will say?  Chances are good we’ll wish we’d considered our words just a little bit longer before speaking (or tweeting).

It may seem ridiculous to screen every word before utterance, but this would not be the remedy.  A brain practiced in mindfulness develops an ability to notice thoughts as they happen.  It’s almost as though there is a second mind, or second sight on what happens in real time.  With steady practice, this makes our words feel like a second shot instead of the trigger-happy first.

Mindfulness is merely a different relationship to thoughts and anything that arises in consciousness.

To put this into perspective, we can couch the matter in a more approachable question:

Would you like it if all of your relationships with family, friends and strangers were better than they currently are?

Only the deluded narcissist would say ‘no’.

Can you imagine any benefit to having a better relationship with your own thoughts and feelings?

Like most anything, how can we expect progress without a dedicated, consistent focus towards that end? 

Just as consistent discussions around the dinner table improve our family relationships, and bonfire talks strengthen friendships, meditation is an example of that time needed to improve our relationship to our own thoughts and feelings.

Time spent with a loved one helps our ability to notice their hopes, their needs, and the ways which we might add to their life.  Time spent in concentrated effort with our thoughts and feelings, likewise helps us notice their flow, course and aim.  Developing this ability to consistently and potentially constantly notice such internal workings enables us to guide them, change them, or downright leave them be.  Such mindfulness does not erase the ability to feel anger, but it does give one the ability to watch the anger happen without acting on it.

How often do we look back and wish we hadn’t said something?  Wouldn’t it be better to look back and think “I’m glad I didn’t act on that anger.”

Those second shots we get when someone fails to hear what we say, may be one of the best ways for someone to glimpse of what life is like with a meditation practice.

THE MISTAKE OF NO REGRETS

November 26th, 2018

It’s on bumper stickers, it’s tattooed on bodies, it’s hashtagged and shouted to the heavens, adorning t-shirts and digital profiles. 

No Regrets.

Such a declaration is worn with a self-righteous pride so strong that it harks of a kind of desperation, for a certain identity - for certainty, plain and simple. 

There is an insidious thread of poison that runs through such a belief.

In order to untwist the concept and take a look at it flattened and spread against the firing wall of our mind, we’d do well to start by properly defining the main word, regret.

The New Oxford American Dictionary defines regret as “feeling sad, repentant, or disappointed over (something that has happened or been done, especially a loss or missed opportunity).

To truly live without regrets would be to live without the ability to feel sad, repentant or disappointed.  This is frankly ridiculous, and somewhat psychopathic.

Another way of phrasing this is to evince the connection between the meaning of regret and the word mistake.

To live without regrets also translates to living without ever having made a mistake, which is either impossible or the result of deluding one’s self to a truly magnificent level.

For example we can look back on a mistake that was a fairly benign missed opportunity, like selling a stock instead of holding on to it.  If the stock rises, we can view the chance to hold on to our stake in the company as a missed opportunity.  All forking paths that pinpoint the instances in life where we make and act upon a decision could ultimately be seen through the lens of this framework. 

Often this sort of logic is combated with quaint phrases such as “it all worked out anyway.”  So there’s nothing to regret.

But this is a haphazard attempt at logic.  The problem is with the initial condition of desiring the state of no regrets.  Everything else gets rationalized in some way to fit a false original condition in this kind of belief system.

Rectification requires loosening up with this concept of regret.  This may in turn require examining ideas and feeling of shame which might accompany such an admission.  But such a difficult exercise may ultimately be tempered by tying the notion of regret a little closer to the idea of a mistake.

We all make mistakes.  This statement is paradoxically and laughably stated just as often as the ‘no regrets’ slogan, and yet their coexistence in someone’s belief system does seem to smack of a contradiction.  We all make mistakes, in the cultural milieu appears to come from a somewhat vulnerable and defeated space.  It may not have the darkly lit pall of dwelling on the past that the word regret seems to carry as evidenced by the concept’s flat out denial in psychological life (or at least the vocal and loudly pronounced part of that psychological life), but the statement we all make mistakes, does not seem to carry anything more than limp sympathy, unfortunately.

Those feelings of sadness, disappointment, and repentance, while uncomfortable, are very useful, so long as they don’t become a habitual mainstay of a dwelling mindset.  Those uncomfortable negative feelings arise to tell us something about our choice in the past.  The feeling is indicating that it probably would have been better to do something other than what we choose.  And that’s a very good mechanism.  It helps prep us for future situations that might seem eerily similar.  When reality starts shaping up into a form that we’ve already experienced, those feelings of sadness and disappointment, or happiness and verve help us navigate a like situation in a wiser way.

How much would this framework suffer if we were to deny ourselves the experience of regret?  And yet this framework is exactly how our intuition is compiled.  Intuition is in essence a sort of truth-telling mood ring, that only pings us with emotions to give us hints about what might be the better decision.  We can imagine this instrument being poorly calibrated or really fine-tuned to reality.  How would having no regrets effect this decision-making apparatus?  Trying to accomplish this is akin to leaving out half the ingredients while trying some new recipe – it’s incomplete, which appropriately enough makes us more likely to make another bad call because we denied our intuition the chance to grow from a regret.

The precious concept of identity in general seems to be constructing an evermore-rickety tower on which to flee all sorts of dangers that might challenge it.  The hope that an identity might somehow make itself invincible by eradicating or neutering all potential dangers and challenges seems to be at the heart of the symptomatic declaration of having ‘no regrets’.

Simply put, the slogan ‘No Regrets’ is the pinnacle of narcissism.  Implying that such a person has nothing to learn, feels no sadness, no repentance, no disappointment, nor the ability to interpret any part of their past as a missed opportunity.  Could any sort of identity predicated by this notion be anything but self-absorbed and fragile?

What such a flimsy goal fails to take into consideration is the huge benefit that comes from damage and mistakes.  Just as a muscle that has been challenged with a difficult workout actually overreacts to the stress and rebuilds itself so that it can withstand more stress than what it actually encountered, so too would our sense of being benefit by opening up our concepts of identity and who we like to think we are to worthy challenges and potential damage.

It could be a mistake, one that we could even learn from.

But, if we’re already living with no regrets, where’s the harm in trying if we’re just going to ignore the outcome anyway?

This episode references Episode 17: The Identity Danger and Episode 213: Relay Racing and the Thumbtack.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: REITERATION SIMULATION

November 25th, 2018

After a long and interesting life, Lucilius went to bed, and in sweet slumber, he passed away.  Unexpectedly, he awoke and before him was a small square glass window.  He realized he could not move nor feel his limbs, but he could still hear.  The small glass window was incased in a metal door that appeared to be incasing Lucilius in a chamber.

Lucilius could not turn his head, nor even speak, but there seemed to be commotion outside of his chamber.  Something moved passed the window, and then came back.  A man’s head bobbed in the lit square, peering in at Lucilius.

Then the door opened.  As light poured into the small chamber, Lucilius’ eyes adjusted and the silhouetted man came into focus.  He was holding a glass panel with all sorts of stats and levels and measurements lighting up the screen.

“Ok,” said the man, “83 Years at level 41, scheduled upgrade to level 42 with lifespan in 21^st century.”

The man hummed a little tune while he clicked through different screens, and since it was a simple pane of glass, Lucilius could see a reverse of the man’s screen.  At the top Lucilius could make out the heading “Lifetime Score” and below was a list of metrics for 41 iterations and at the end of each line was a small video montage where Lucilius could just barely make out a vision of himself in each one doing different things.  In one he was pulling a line on a ship, in another he was on his knees crying, watching a huge building burn, in another yet, he was dressed in primitive furs walking through a thick forest staring intently at the ground, and in another he simply sat cross-legged with his eyes closed.  Each one was scored with different percentages for aspects of performance and development and at the bottom of the screen was a combined tracked score labelled “Soul Development Progress”.

“Ok,” said the man, flipping to another screen that was filled with alerts and instructions.  “Gonna have to transfer you to a different life pod.  This one is scheduled for hardware upgrading.”  He tapped a few buttons on the screen and suddenly Lucilius jolted from the chamber cradled by a mechanical upright bed that Lucilius could partially see reflected in the glass screen.  He could see his feet and legs with some sort of support restraint holding them and different wires and tubes that fed into the restraints and presumably from there into his body.

“It’s just over here,” the man mumbled to himself as the mechanical bed turned on a track and began to zip along with him down a long corridor packed with identical chambers.

A chamber door opened and Lucilius was swiveled again and the bed began to back into the chamber.  Just before the man blocked the view, Lucilius could make out a face behind one of the small windows on the other side of the corridor.  The man was tapping away, selecting settings.

“Scheduled birth will be 2018, you originally asked for the 3^rd astrological sign, but according to the data accumulated from your last iteration, you’ve now decided on a December birthday.”   The man chuckled a little. “Oy, you really set yourself up for a challenge on this one.  Which is strange, you’ve been scoring so well.”  He looked up at Lucilius and studied his face for a moment. “Your score credits could easily get you starting in a better situation.”  Then a sly smile crept across the man’s face. “Aw, you’ve had a lot of this figured out for a while, you’re one of those soul monkeys.  Well that’s what we’ve started calling them lately.  People who’ve intuitively figured out the soul-building algorithm.  Yea, yea, I get it, shit’ll be way harder but if you can score even remotely well, your soul branching will totally level-up.  There’s a bunch already who’ve already unlocked 4^th dimensional organisms and stuff.  Pretty neat how all of it is coming together.  Anyway, you’ve really got your cake cut for you, some tough decades you signed up for on this one.”  The man laughed. “Damn those are some doozies and with your lack of resources, well, good luck.  Have a mince pie for me why don’t ya.”  He smiled and swung the door shut.  In the small window, the man winked, and just before Lucilius’ consciousness went dark, he saw the image of the man in the small window flicker purple, the man’s movements stuttering, the whole of him disappearing for the tiniest slice of a second.

THE OPPOSITE OF A CONCLUSION

November 24th, 2018

Conclusion comes from the word ‘conclude’, this word comes from Latin and means “completely” + “shut”.

The word ‘shut’ implies some kind of barrier with an opening.   We might visualize a container or a physical border like a fence or the walls of a house.  In such a visualization, a ‘conclusion’ would be like locking up the house for the night.  Closing the door, and ensuring that it stays that way. 

But the word – conclusion - as we use it primarily refers to concepts.  The container here is our mind and the ideas that propagate as thoughts and ultimately give rise to actions and behaviors.  To conclude is to shut off one’s mind from other ideas that are different from the ones that already have their home made in our head.

We’re all familiar with how arrestingly difficult it can be to change such a person who has already come to a conclusion.  Unless the hinges on their mental door are well oiled and they keep an open door policy, chances are we need a talented locksmith, or worse, and more commonly, we try to use brute-force to knock the door down.

Why do we lock the doors to our homes at night?  It’s a silly question, we do so in order to keep ourselves safe.  We imagine and fear intruders who would walk right in and do all sorts of terrible things. While physical violence here is at the top of the list for potentially good reasons to keep the door locked at night, we might want to wonder why such fear and locked conclusiveness extends to our mental world.  Does a new idea really present the risk of doing some kind of physical violence to our mind?  The answer is yes.  We can mentally swallow an idea so bad that it has ramifications in our behavior that could lead to our own harm.  This is a very scary thing, but it has an important stipulation.  That idea has to become a conclusion, meaning, once that idea is through the door, the door gets locked and now we are somewhat trapped in the house of our mind with the bad idea.  As many scary movies like to remind us, the only thing worse than having an intruder in the house is being trapped in the house with such an intruder.  But that stipulation is our saving grace in such a situation.  Just as the open-door policy creates the risk of potentially bad ideas coming into the mind’s field, having no lock and well oiled hinges means that we are never trapped in our own mind with a bad idea.

 The mental habit of coming to conclusions, to shutting the door and locking it feels like a safe idea, but just as in a real world situation, it can turn out that we create our own trap.

In this framework it seems like there are two options:

Either we shut the door and pray that we don’t find ourselves trapped with a bad idea that has found some way to get in.

or

we keep an open door policy and experience a much greater diversity of concepts, both good and bad.

But is there an inbetween here?  Might it be better to have temporary conclusions, as though shutting the door for some time, but not locking it and throwing away the key?

Interestingly, there aren’t really any conclusions in science.  There are theories, which are similar.  They are ideas, but they constantly keep the door open for new evidence that might disprove the theory.  This process of science seems innately devoid of fear, but this open-door policy is what ultimately makes it so effective.  If a theory does not break down under new evidence, then it remains useful.  More importantly however, new evidence that does break a theory always leads us to a greater understanding of reality.  The process of discovering evidence to disprove a theory is literally dispelling illusions, giving rise to ideas that are more useful and more faithful to the nature of reality.

And isn’t this what we should want in an idea?  Usefulness?

What does it mean to cling to a useless idea or an illusion?  Are we perhaps forfeiting a better life and a higher state of well-being for ourselves and others by holding onto a useless idea that we keep safeguarded from new evidence that might adversely effect it?

Perhaps the monster that is trying to break in is doing so because it is desperate to help us.

To conclude, it smells as though all conclusions are temporary, or should be.  Such a conclusion, however, is probably also temporary, and serves here as an organizing principle for testing strategies. 

We come to a certain conclusion about a set of ideas that form a strategy, shut the door on more influences and test the strategy. 

If it works out, then great, and if it doesn’t, we’d naturally want to do the opposite of a conclusion and open the door again, to more and potentially better ideas.  Best to keep the hinges well oiled.

MONKEY WORK

November 23rd, 2018

Everything becomes monkey work,

After you’ve figured it out.

The only way to stay fresh, keep the brain growing, is to keep finding new things to do and figure out.

This is one of the best ways to get out of a slump.

It’s often touted as such limp and quaint statements as “take up a hobby!” after say, a particularly grueling break up or after retirement.

Often though there’s a lot of truth to this.  After a bad break up, one might rebound well.  Feeling new freedom and invigorated to try all sorts of new things.  (Though the more interesting question is probably why such a person didn’t go out and try these things while still in the relationship? 

Point being: we only hold ourselves back.  Unless you are literally in a cage, blaming someone else of that is a form of laziness.  A lack of courage really. 

What can be learned from this little pocket of human experience?

Say there is no big break up, or retirement or sudden empty nest.

Can something still be garnered from knowing of this phenomenon?

Yes.

Continually seek to do things that feel difficult.

The process requires figuring things out, rewiring neurons, flexing the brain.  Other areas seem to import the flexibility.   Courage in one area might spur courage in another area.  Virtuous cycles are born spinning off other virtuous cycles. 

So occurs that feeling when everything seems to be ‘clicking’.

What’s the key to the slump?  Climbing a mountain.  Figuring out something new; anything to get away from monkey work.  Or at least augment it with something the brain can chew on.

Sure, this can be a new hobby,

Why limit though?  Think bigger. Harder.  more.  difficult.

Raise the stakes and the payout just might be better than you could have hoped.