WHAT'S YOUR PASSION?

April 21st, 2018

The word ‘passion’ and the language that surrounds it today form some very destructive ideas. 

New-age books and speakers love to use this word and surrounding phrase. For good reason. It functions like a mythical promised land. Those who don’t have it dream of some idealized future when they might finally find it. Those who claim to have their passion, wheel it around like a grand prize in the identity game. For ‘new-age’ writers and speakers, this helps form a sort of inner sanctum that people who feel lost will PAY to get into, or PAY for the knowledge to enter this coveted space of identity.

This is a sham.

And it’s a shame that such language is so widespread throughout our culture. 

For those without a ‘passion’. They feel demoralized about themselves.

For those with a ‘passion’? Many of them wear it like a badge of accomplishment. Like the Easter egg was found, and now there is no more finding to do. This perspective limits. People who parade their passion in such ways are far less willing to explore new areas. Even if they don’t parade it around, this identity can still have the same effect internally on the mind.

This word and the language that surrounds it does not inspire people.

It divides and alienates.

(Perhaps it’s fitting that the etymology of the word ‘passion’ comes from the latin ‘pati’, meaning – ‘to suffer’. True to its roots, the word is doing it’s job.)

A new word is not needed. Simply a shift in focus. 

The problem with making this shift has to do with our innate love of certainty. A passion feels certain, well-defined. Reliable. This well-defined quality is what creates that strong mental division in the mind regarding those with a passion and those without a passion. The shift in focus must be away from this certainty, which is uncomfortable. But if that discomfort can be embraced, it will aid both the passionate and those who think they lack a passion far more.

How about this question:

What are you curious about?

Curiosity carries no serious commitment of identity. The concept is far more childlike, full of wonder, unafraid of mistakes, and wide-ranging. It is the opposite of the way that the word passion is limiting. If one’s ‘passion’ is a well defined box, curiosity is like a spot-light that wheels around and looks in all sorts of directions. But it lacks that comforting certainty, and that – I’m willing to bet – is why curiosity gets pushed aside by the grand idea of ‘a passion’.

As a sidenote: The threads of sado-masochism that run through the three major religions might also have something to do with this focus on passion instead of curiosity. A focus on suffering and being a glorious martyr has some obvious parallels to the cliché of a suffering-poor-struggling-artist.

It is doubling fitting that the root of the word curiosity is from the Latin curiosus – meaning ‘careful’, but not in the cautious sense, but as in being ‘full of care’ with regards to something.

This is what the passion-camp is trying to say: what do you care about? But that sounds lukewarm compared to the magnificent crepuscular force of the word Passion. But – drawing a box around something to highlight it invariably divides the world into those inside the box and those left outside – the very reason that passion and it’s surrounding language often undermines many people’s ability to explore and progress.

Forget about finding some passion. Waiting for some divine force to whisper it in your ear is a waste of the precious gift of time. Just look around, allow your curiosity to take the wheel and wander. Who knows what you’ll find.

Have a grand passion? If it’s so strong, so grand and so great. Then it can definitely stand up to the slings and arrows of some healthy doubt, some questioning, maybe even a hiatus. Who knows, maybe some curiosity in another field will help you make your next break-through regarding… whatever you’re passionate about.

Intense focus is great. But it’s always good to look up and around every once in a while. You might see that you’re focusing on the wrong thing.

Forget passion.

Find curiosity.

INCUBATION

April 20th, 2018

A butterfly is not built in a day.  A bird’s egg takes time and warmth.  And ideas have their own shell.  A shell that must be grown to protect, and busted open when that idea has matured.

Substantial changes in personality, mood, conduct, opinion.  These never occur instantly.  Even on the rare occasions when it seems like they do.  (William James has much to say about this sort of instant conversion.)

Changes incubate. 

Our brains entertain all sorts of idea-guests.  We come across a new concept  and the brain recreates the idea, allows it some rental space in the cocoon-cranium, and there it interacts with all the other ideas the brain has recreated from example or created from scratch. 

Some are tossed into a sort of prison: a collection of anti-identity: The ideas and things that most define what we are NOT.

Others are readily welcomed into the fold.  Usually these ideas and concepts are much like the ideas and concepts already there.  Easier to recreate, easier to integrate.

In some sense this sounds like a neighborhood.  Or a country with an influx of immigrants. 

Some of these foreign ideas can come in like a rock-star and gain an admirable following quite quickly.  But rock-stars don’t really change the world as much as they simply entertain.

Within the context of this metaphor, this community of ideas, how IS substantial change achieved?

A surge of motivation for self-change and drive might result in reading all sorts of books.  Munching through bestseller lists, and what not.    This is a good thing.  This is a curious mind searching. 

While it is important to never stop searching, it is also important to pause.

When something particularly valuable has been found, it does not mean that it has been totally integrated.

If emotional reactivity is a problem that has plagued us for years, one pass through Seneca isn’t going to do much.  Even if every other sentence feels like a light bulb going off. . .

We must find those concepts that will help us and go over them many times until such words  and ideas become the root of our works. 

Reading something that feels like a refreshing splash of water in the face is simply recognition.  We trick ourselves by thinking that such a flash of recognitive pleasure is proof that we have integrated the meaning of the quote, the idea and the way of thinking it advances. 

Think of the times we try to retell a joke we have only heard once?  More than anything we usually only remember the feeling that it caused and we laugh as we butcher a poor, haphazard version.   Ideas we want to integrate require repetition, and saturation, in the same way that a joke must be practiced before it can roll off the tongue smoothly.

Otherwise, we find our actions betraying the notions that we have singled out with awe.

Integrating useful concepts requires an investment of time, effort and patience. 

These concepts must be welcomed into the brain regularly.  To mix more frequently and more numerously with all those concepts already in our head.  After enough time, and enough familiarity, a tipping point will eventually be reached.

 Our brain will have recreated for itself these useful concepts so many times, that their occurrence will be more numerous than previous ideas that gave rise to our less-than-ideal behaviors. 

After many readings, or many exposures to – whatever the resource or influence may be – after all that consistent regular effort… the petri dish will be overwhelmed by a new culture.  A new culture of thought.  And from that culture of thought, new actions will rise

Always search and wander.  But always return regularly to those seminal influences that definitely point in the direction we wish to progress.

The cranium-cocoon on our shoulders is always incubating.  The actions that bust forth always spring from the ideas we have chosen to feed it: those thoughts we allow to repeat and form the regularity of our internal life. 

If that internal life is to change: a new, consistent diet of concepts is needed. 

Eating healthy once or twice, or even three times does not grant us the gift of health. 

Just as reading a book full of wisdom once or twice, or even three times does not make us wise.

CLENCHED FISTS CLIMB NO WALLS

April 19th, 2018

An obstacle shows up in your path. Unexpected, perhaps  even planted by someone to hinder you. 

How do we react?

We may get upset.

And this is a reasonable –predictable- response to expect from any person.

But is it a reasonable approach to the obstacle?

Does such a response help you see the obstacle like a wall that can be surmounted, or even better, see it in a way that can help you? Who knows what advantage might come with the view from the top of such a wall. A view that might provide insight that never would have been possible had you been moseying along your way with no obstacle to block you. 

What is the better response? To care nothing? To be totally unfazed? 

This is likewise, uselessly extreme, and like any pendulum, rest only exists in the middle since.

A wall cannot be climbed with clench fists, but limp hands are no good either.

DETERMINED VS. STUBBORN

April 18th, 2018

What is the difference between these two words?

A person who is determined is trying to do something. Trying to make something happen. Trying to make the world be a certain way.

A person who is stubborn is likewise trying to do something. Trying to make something happen. Trying to make the world be a certain way.

Where lies the difference?

Those who we deem ‘determined’?

We approve of their goals.

We want such people to succeed. We want to see the world become their version. We want to see them climb that mountain, start that business, ace that test.

How do we feel about the goals of those we deem ‘stubborn’?

We are generally less enthusiastic. In fact a stubborn person’s goals are antithetical to how we see and understand the world and how we want it to be. We do not approve of these goals. 

These two words are describing the same quality but with opposing value judgments. One describes the quality as positive, and one describes the same exact quality as negative.

The difference is inherent in the outside perspective of the stubborn/determined person.

Following this understanding, what does it mean when someone says:

“I’m so stubborn when it comes to… [insert whatever]”

Just like a procrastinating student:

We all know what work we need to do.

BUILT-IN LIFERAFT: THE A.N.S.

April 17th, 2018

ANS stands for Autonomic Nervous System

It’s an ancient system embedded deep in all our brains.  Before our species had personalities, we had Autonomic Nervous Systems.  Personalities, curiosity, ingenuity… all that stuff came later.  The ANS controls all the things that keep us alive that we don’t have to think about: heartbeat, respiratory rate, pupillary response, and that massive winding digestion system.

It keeps you alive while you do other things.

It keeps you alive while shit happens.

No matter the difficulties of life – as long as they are not fatal to the body – The ANS keeps you going, even when you don’t feel like it.  Even when you feel down, blue, in the dumps, and even when you feel like dying. 

The ANS was rigged up to ignore you and your sometimes counter-productive thoughts.  It’s a system with a built-in faith for who you’ll be tomorrow.  Faith in what you might do when the storms of emotion pass, when the torrents of feeling are tamed, when calm and clear thinking begins to trickle back into our consciousness. 

Through everything, the ANS is there for you.  Making sure that the machine keeps working.  Even when you don’t feed that body properly, or exercise it, the ANS does the absolute best it can with what it’s got

While old ways of thinking and being slowly fade, as we slowly build a new perspective, the ANS sustains us.  So many religious traditions have settled on this idea of the spirit – an eternal essence of a person that transcends the flesh.  If anything, it’s the other way around.  As we become better, older, wiser versions of our self, the body sustains us through that – often painful – transition. 

Life support, until that part of our brain where our personality rises from is ready again for that first breath of fresh air. That glimpse of a better life.