OBJECT OF EMOTION

February 19th, 2022

Emotions are rather dumb. They lack object, direction and boundary.  All they often have is a source - an initial cause for being, after which they spill into virtually all parts of the psyche, and often all parts of life. We’ve all had this experience: some new vagary of life springs into our awareness and fills us with anger, enrages us, and during this unfortunate tantrum someone totally unrelated to the issue - often a loved one - an innocent bystander, walks in and suddenly takes the full brunt of our emotional attitude. It’s totally uncalled for, but that’s the nature of emotion - it has no specific object even if it had a specific cause. 

The unintentional graft of emotion is often touted as one of the issues that can be solved with a meditation practice. And certainly, with a strong mindfulness practice, we can gain the ability to raise walls in the mind to route and reroute emotion properly so that they do not contaminate our life by influencing parts that aren’t relevant. This is maybe the first and largest return-on-investment when it comes to spending time sitting and meditating everyday - a person generally becomes less of an asshole.

But the mental powers generated by a solid mindfulness practice go beyond an ability to simply keep the emotional monsters penned in. The unintentional graft that occurs when an emotion bleeds beyond its realm of relevance can be consciously implemented in circumstances where it’s usually very unlikely but would be helpful. For example, during the practice known as meta, one concentrates on the gratitude and compassion you feel for someone for which it’s easy to conjure such feelings - someone you get along with very well and who you admire and appreciate. Then, once these emotions are fully felt, graft them on to someone for whom it’s difficult to conjure such emotions - someone you don’t like, perhaps even, yourself.

Even though emotion can be highly valenced -that is very negative or very positive- they remain a fuel which can be funneled to any end. For example, anger can be redirected to power a good workout. A sense of compassion and gratitude can be extended to someone who we have a difficult relationship with.  It is a kind of situational building block, like play dough for a kid, but sometimes it comes in our least favorite color. It would be a mistake to think that we can’t still do something fun and useful with it, simple because of the color - but that’s exactly what the majority of adults do when it comes to the emotions life gives them. Instead of seeing the wide variety of utility and potential, we take the most superficial aspect of an emotion as the most substantive. The various sources of all emotions are somewhat irrelevant - emotion is a fact of life, and nearly every situation is going to provoke at least a little emotion. It’s what we do with that emotion once we have it - how we regulate that emotional faucet, which determines the kind of life we lead.

PLAYGROUND FALLACY

February 18th, 2022

Shakespeare once said that all the world is a stage. The sentiment is a cute one: to poke fun at all our petty squabbles, to pull back the curtain on our myriad charades. But for a moment take it literally. The stage is a playground of pretend. Is not every job and relationship just a recapitulation of the playground games we played as a kid, but with higher stakes, taken more seriously? 

In adulthood their are bruised knees and betrayals, they just exist on a different magnitude altogether, but the method and the scheme is the same. And declaring adulthood a whole new magnitude might actually be taking it a bit far. The bruised knees and ruptured alliances of the playground were taken very seriously, with tears and retribution, with strategies, confusion and fun. If anything, the stakes of the playground felt just as high, if not higher. The simplest thing could feel like the end of the world.

The fallacy is that kids are allocated playgrounds. You play over there, during this time, but this place you don’t play. The fallacy is that we learn a false separation between the playground of our youth and the rest of the world we encounter as we get older. Shakespeare saw plainly that we never leave the playground, it simply expands until finally the realization dawns that the playground has no borders - it never did. The games change, but they are still games.

The fallacy is thinking we all left the playground. And then we find ourselves admiring those who can recall or maintain a childlike sense of wonder, curiosity and creativity. The joke is on everyone who has convinced themselves miserable while surrounded with all the potential of the giant sandbox of adulthood that surrounds. 

Perhaps there’s some option fatigue to blame: being unable to pick anything to do because there’s just too much choice. Strangely kids never have this problem, no matter how many toys the room is filled with. They just get started and gooo. Decision fatigue is probably a self-fulfilling disease - one that can infect simply by dint of learning the concept - a proxy name for a deeper problem, the problem of thinking that adulthood is something wholly different from the curious experimentation of childhood.

The playground fallacy is a failure to realize that all ground is fair game.

SLEIGHT SOLUTION

February 17th, 2022

The search is often big, the solution, often small. Few problems require a gargantuan answer of immense complexity. And if if a problem appears as though it does need such a sizable answer, it’s because such a solution is a tapestry of solutions, answering complementary and myriad problems, each chopped and truncated into smaller pieces. But even with the smallest module of problem, the search for the equally small solution can still be outsized.

No matter how complex or simple one’s life, we have all experienced this. It’s as simple as looking for a misplaced item. The whole day can be spent tearing the house or apartment apart. And yet, when the missing item is finally found, the location is usually quite understandable. Of course, it’s right here, we often think. And this is much the same mixture of obviousness and foolish feeling as when a lesson is finally realized while learning something.

The solution is always simple - it’s the process of arriving at simplicity which can be complicated - or at least drawn out. This really makes persistence and an ability to endure the crown jewel of personal attributes. Everything gives way given enough attention and effort.

It’s almost as thought solutions hide in plain sight. Like diamonds mixed in with shattered glass. They often remain invisible because our lens by which we search for solutions is the problem itself, and the problem is usually poorly defined. Our search for a solution is often a process of refining the nature and composition of the problem itself, which in turn increases the resolution of our search for a solution.

A perfectly defined problem inevitably outlines its own solution. It’s not the answer we should seek, but the exact question to illuminate that unknown answer. It’s a kind of sleight of hand, but one achieved with a manipulation of perspective: understanding the problem in the right way makes the solution obvious, as if it was always there, right in front of us, waiting to be noticed.

SUBLTE SIGHT

February 16th, 2022

What’s your gut tell you? 

We seek advice from others to confirm our own hopes and plans. The smarter ones welcome detours and edits to the plan in order to get to the final goal. But when there are too many forks in the road, and all advice is aimless, reflective and people bounce the question back:

What does your gut tell you?

Often, when quiet, there is a gut feeling - a hunch, that one direction is better than another.

But what about all the times when we aren’t searching for an answer? Is that gut feeling still online, quietly whispering deeper insights on deaf ears for a mind too busy with the business of the present moment, cluttered with its noisy details, shuddering all chance to realize better directions?

How often do we take a step back and quietly reflect about our direction, our method, our mood and drive, letting all fall quiet so that a deeper insight might be heard?

All week there was something fluttering about the back of my mind. A hunch and a suspicion relating to a friend’s ongoing problem. And it’s so very strange. When I finally consciously addressed the idea in the back of my mind, it wasn’t as if it was a bolt from the blue. I was also suddenly aware that I’d been thinking about nearly constantly without even realizing I was thinking about it. The hunch turned out to be very fruitful - a piece of the puzzle clicking into the place of a solution.

It makes me pause now to wonder: what other hunches have been patiently waiting in the wings to be noticed? What wisdom do we contain and generate, but pass up?

What subtle sight is taking in our life, commenting on it like a future version of our own selves, noting paths unseen, unrealized, as if earmarking life for hindsight.

What have you been thinking about without acknowledging?

SARGASSO

February 15th, 2022

There’s a portion of the the mid Atlantic where a particular type seaweed called Sargassum pools in an enormous gyre. Most people know it as the area of the Bermuda Triangle. It’s infamous for doldrums where sailors would get stranded with not a lick of wind for days if not weeks and months. It’s a watery no man’s land, that once entered, is hard to escape from.

The human mind has such places, and can make itself one when the right conditions arise. Despite exciting plans, interesting projects and what is normally a pretty revved up sense of drive and determination - something can feel stuck and spinning with nothing to spin against.

Days flitter by, escaping by way of binged TV and half considered attempts to finally get it together.

Like depression it can seem like an omniscient monster that must somehow be fought. But brute force cannot be administered upon itself. Better to use the opponent’s momentum to our advantage.

Put another way, it’s easier to slowly turn a ship than it is to push on the oncoming bow with an aim to bring it to a complete halt and eventually shove it in the reverse direction.

So what is the momentum and direction of something that seems typified by going nowhere?

The answer lies in the illusion that nothing seems to be happening. Take for instance the quintessential activity of the last few years: binge watching TV. We all know that other things can be done while watching TV. We all have more than enough experience eating whole meals while watching TV. So this sort of distraction can be used while compounding tiny tasks for something larger.

A juggernaut does not spring into action, but slowly gains momentum, and it’s possible to inch forward without much the mind noticing, distracted as it is by the candy of culture. All that’s needed is to readdress expectations about what should get done to be more in line with what can get done. And it’s accomplished quite simply: what’s the easiest low-maintenance item I can get done that requires no brain power? There’s likely a few piles that fall into this category. And while the work might go slower with a little distraction, at least something is getting done.

While we wait for wind, there’s no harm in a slow row, if only to pass the time, and a bit of distance.