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REPAUSE
A meditation app is forthcoming. Stay Tuned.
MEDITATION DRAFT SESSION 11: REFLECTION OF THOUGHT
January 30th, 2023
On Monday Tinkered Thinking releases a draft of a lesson from the forthcoming meditation app, currently called The Tinkered Mind (If you can think of a better name, please reach out. I'm not crazy about the current one, but I'll be damned if I let an imperfect name keep me from developing a good idea.) The rationale here is simply to stave off project stagnation by taking a wish to work with words on a daily basis (Tinkered Thinking Posts) and combine it with adjacent projects. This also gives regular readers a chance to get a preview of what I'm cooking up and to get feedback before the app launches, which is a tactic that has proved extremely useful with other projects unrelated to Tinkered Thinking.
One further introductory note: The goal of this meditation app is predominantly aimed at helping individuals build a robust daily habit by breaking that habit down and tackling it's consitituent parts one at a time and aiding the process with a new and innovative way of tracking progress, the likes of which has not been seen in other meditation apps or habit tracking apps.
Again, if you have any feedback, please reach out via Twitter
Session 11: Reflection of Thought
Take a moment to sit, arrange your posture, and take a few deep breaths with long exhales.
<18 seconds of Silence (3 full breathes + exhales with half-second counts>
Now transition to coherence breathing with inhales and exhales of the same length.
Now take a moment to do a body scan in complete silence. Remember the sheet of light suspended above you, and allow your attention to pour slowly over your entire body as that sheet of light descends over you.
<30 seconds of Silence>
Slowly expand your attention from the internal sensations of your body to include sounds around you. Try to separate the sounds from the things you think are causing them. Try to accept these sounds as events that are happening not somewhere else where it seems the sound is coming from, but an event that is occurring in your mind. Whatever is causing these sounds, those events happened slightly before you heard them. There’s a delay, though we usually can’t tell unless the event is very far away as is often the case with thunder and lightning. We see the lightning and a moment later we hear it. So try to separate whatever you hear from it’s source. Think of these sounds like thoughts. They just appear, and if we turn our attention to this part of our experience we can hear more sounds than we were conscious of.
<wait 10 seconds>
Bring attention to any thoughts that are arising. Remember we aren’t trying to eradicate thoughts, or avoid them, but simply notice them.
<wait 10 seconds>
Again it can be useful to use the breath as an object of attention. Try to notice when the mind becomes distracted and attention has wandered away from the breath. Allow your attention to put a spotlight on the thought that is occurring when you realize that you are no longer paying attention to the breath.
<wait 20 seconds>
This sort of practice can begin to feel a bit like a game of whack-a-mole. If you can barely pay attention to a breath or two before the mind wanders off like a distracted child, don’t worry, this is completely normal. Many refer to this as the Monkey Mind. And some meditation sessions will feel like complete failures where not a single moment seemed to have peace or control or any properly placed attention. That is ok, and it’s something that we should expect. A terrible session of meditation is still better than not meditating because at the very least, it helps engrain our habit of taking this time, sitting, breathing, and trying to train the mind.
So again, place the attention on the sensation of the breath if it’s helpful and simply try to maintain a vigilance for when the mind has wandered.
<wait 20 seconds>
Pause for a moment and consider what exactly is happening when you notice a thought that you’re having. When you notice a thought, is the act of noticing a kind of new thought? Can thought observe itself?
Another way of approaching this is to ask: what kind of relationship do you have with your thoughts? Is it a good relationship? What does it mean to have a bad relationship with one’s own thoughts?
Try to heighten your curiosity about this idea for a moment while you observe your thoughts for another minute. What does it feel like to notice a thought that’s filled your mind?
<30 seconds of silence>
Are you still present? Or are you lost in thought? Try think about what the thought was, in vivid detail, and notice how it evaporates once you’ve given it that attention.
<30 seconds of silence>
How did you do this time? If it seems like you’re having more thoughts as we engage with longer stretches of silence, it’s not because you’re getting worse at this, it’s that you are getting better at noticing what’s been there all along. And this is the first step in training the mind - noticing, recognizing what’s actually there - the never ending stream that’s always been there.
As we move toward the end of the session, allow your breathing to transition into deeper inhales and longer exhales. And as you feel the relaxation that comes with these breaths, try to notice any thoughts that try to snag a bit of the mind’s attention.
<15 seconds of silence>
A LUCILIUS PARABLE: HIDDEN LEVERAGE
January 29th, 2023
Lucilius was staring at the screen, wondering if he should fill out the application. Doubts filled his mind. He sighed and looked off in the distance, acceding to unwanted forced within himself. Feelings of unworthiness, insecurity and wavering confidence pushed him to give up. He switched the screen, deciding he would figure it out some other time. Despite that time was running out.
He stared at the new task but words filled his mind - answers to the application questions, and he remained locked in a trance, imagining what he wished he had the courage to do.
“Ah there’s no point,” he said with a fleeting edge of anger. He stood up and walked away from the computer.
As he paced the room, rubbing his face, waiting for peace, there was a knock at the door. He stopped, confused for a moment before he remembered he was expecting an old friend.
When Lucilius opened the door, he froze.
Before him stood an humanoid robot, sleekly designed in black plates, the face a black screen.
“Whoah.”
“Cool, huh?”
Lucilius stepped back. It was his friend’s voice.
“What… did you do to yourself?”
“Oh come on Lucy, I’m piloting it remotely. I’m at home, but check this out!”
Suddenly the black plates of the android seemed to shimmer like a liquid as if they were oozing a gel. But the gel turned opaque, filling with color. The black screen face morphed until there was a perfect likeness of his friend standing right in front of Lucilius.
“Whoah, you’ve been busy.”
“Yea!”
The two laughed and embraced, but Lucilius pulled away after remembering it was a robot and not his actual friend.
“Ah, sorry, that’s just a little creepy.”
The robot laughed. “It’s ok”, it said in the voice of Lucilius’ friend. “Can I come in?”
“Of course, of course.”
“Something to drink? Or does that not make sense?”
The robot waved it off. “Nah I actually have to be quick, and honestly once I’ve explained myself, you’ll want to get started.”
“Get started?”
The robot chuckled. “So this robot is a gift for you Lucilius. A temporary one, but the effects will be long lasting, I promise.”
“What have you been cooking up?”
“A lot more than just a robot body, let me tell you. But first, can you put this on?”
The robot reached behind itself and as if by magic produced a large metal ring. Lucilius wondered about the magic trick, remembering that the friend he was looking at was actually some sort of animated gel, and he figured the ring was somehow holstered in the robot’s back.
“How do I put it on?”
“Your head dummy.”
“Oh,” Lucilius put the ring on, like a crown and it sat just atop his ears, lacing around his face above his eyes.
“What’s this for?”
“Data collection.”
“For what?”
“For the robot.”
“So what are you reading my mind or something?”
“Sort of. Training a model for the robot.”
“But why?”
The crown let off a soft bing and Lucilius could see a green glow above. He took off the ringed crown and now it was glowing a soft pulse of green.
“Excellent,” his friend said, reaching out and taking the ring from Lucilius. It disappeared behind the robot’s back and Lucilius shook his head quickly, a bit unsettled with how many elements of the bizarre situation he was trying to keep track of.
“Ok, Lucilius, are you ready?”
“Ready for what?”
“This thing is going to teach you things about your own life that will just blow your mind.”
“But.. I don’t understand. How did you manage.. what are you even talking about?”
“Hidden leverage Lucilius, this baby is going to show you where the hidden leverage is.”
Lucilius had more questions, but the likeness of his friend faded from the robot. The gel returned to a semi-opaque state, physically morphing, and then as if coming into focus, it regained similitude. But it was no longer that of Lucilius’ friend. Now Lucilius looked upon himself.
The two wore a similar expression of shock, and for a few moments they mimicked one another perfectly, turning away in disbelief in the same way, staring closer in the same way, and then this second Lucilius before him laughed.
“Sorry, can’t help it, you looked like a child seeing an animal for the first time. Well, I guess you still kind of look like that. But I get it. Eerie isn’t it?”
“Who am I talking to?” Lucilius asked
“Hmm,” that’s a good question, the robot said. He looked off in the distance for a second. “Well the most accurate answer was a model of yourself, but I’ve begun to have a different experience than you, so I’m just ever so slightly removed from who you were. But! And this is a big but. I have a little extra glommed on to the model created by the neural crown that scanned your system.”
“A little extra?” Lucilius asked.
“Yea, so I’m basically an AI that now has a trained model of who you are. So I have a nearly identical set of algorithms that can be used to act just as you would in virtually any and all situations. But I’m not just the model of you. I’m also generally trained.”
“So you can like… fill in for me?”
“Yea, I could basically step into your life and act just like you and no one would be none the wiser.”
“What’s the point of that?”
He watched himself smile. “Do you want me to explain it, or would you rather sit back and relax, enjoy the show and find out?”
Lucilius’ curiosity was piqued now. He certainly liked surprises, and he’d been feeling very ruined down lately. It would be nice to hand over everything to a clone of himself, just to get some rest and relaxation.
“You’re not going to mess up my life are you?”
“Au contraire, I’m here to show you a few little hacks about your life. Remember, I don’t have just your perspective. There’s a little extra going on here.” The robot tapped it’s temple.
“But wait, how does this work. If you have a conversation with someone, I wont remember it.”
“Ah, well there’s two options. I can download the memories to you daily, or you can watch in real time.”
“Real time?”
“Ya,” The robot reached behind itself again and produced the neural crown. “You can download nightly or just wear this and any time I’m active you’ll be able to see through my eyes, hear what I hear. It’s not completely immersive, but it gets a clear POV across.”
Lucilius decided to give it all a shot, and booked a room on the coast for a week to get away. He wasn’t entirely sure about it all but it was too tempting, too weird, and curious Lucilius couldn’t resist.
He drove out to the coast, leaving the robot in his apartment, and after finally settling into his room and relaxing in the sun, having a big dinner and treating himself to a bottle of wine and a movie, he finally dug out the neural crown and decided to check out what the robot had done.
He watched through the robots eyes as it sat down at his computer. It brought up the application screen and filled out all of the questions, in just the way Lucilius had been thinking, and then without the sort of hesitation Lucilius would have had, the robot submitted the application.
“Huh, interesting.” Lucilius said.
There was little else the robot did that day that was of much note. It was a day of chores Lucilius had been putting off and his robot simulacrum took care of everything, tidying things up in just the way Lucilius ideally preferred but rarely managed.
Time was distorted with the nightly download and after an hour Lucilius had watched the whole day. He took off the neural crown, impressed, and poured himself another glass of wine. He queued up another movie and smiled, grateful to have friends that would bestow such remarkable gifts upon him.
The following day, after a long and relaxing breakfast and some reading on the beach, Lucilius grew curious. The day was far from over but he wanted to know what the robot was doing with his life back in the city. It wasn’t even noon but he put on the neural crown. Within twenty minutes he was caught up on the morning’s activities and now he watched through the robot’s eyes in real time. Lucilius sat for hours watching his simulacrum’s life, laughing and smiling and occasionally growing very attentive when the robot went right ahead with something that Lucilius only considered and would have hesitated immensely before doing.
“Huh,” Lucilius grunted more and more as he watched the robot.
By the end of the week Lucilius was very depressed. He’d stopped watching the robot’s life the day previously and now he sat like a nervous wreck. He had no idea what the robot might be doing with his life at that very moment, but in some ways Lucilius didn’t care at all. He held his face with his hands.
“How…? How!” He muttered.
There was a knock at the door and before Lucilius could even look up, it opened and there stood the robot. A concerned look on his own face there.
“You ok old friend?”
“Old friend?”
“That’s always how you’ve regarded yourself Lucilius. It’s one of my favorite parts about how you look at the world and yourself - thinking or yourself as a friend to care for, to have compassion for.”
The robot was right, but it didn’t alleviate the heavy feelings that Lucilius was struggling with. He sneered.
“Ok, out with it, say what’s on your mind,” the robot said, picking up a half empty bottle of wine, grabbing a second glass and splitting the rest between the two.
Lucilius knew what he wanted to say but the words were hard. He just shook his head.
“Here,” the robot handed him a glass of wine. “Come on, this is the most important part, this is the whole reason this gift was given to you.”
“Gift? GIFT? You call this a gift?”
“Well let’s start there. What would you call it?”
Lucilius sneered again, shaking his head. “A truly embarrassing experience.”
“Why do you say that.”
Lucilius was quiet for a moment. Angry that this robot was going to make him say it. He stood up in a huff. He looked down at the wine in his hand, then took a sip. He walked to the window, looked out at the wide ocean and took another sip.
“You’re so much better at living my life than I am. In one week you’ve managed things that I’ve been trying to pull off for years. How is that not embarrassing? To realize that someone else, some THING else is so much better at being me than I am?”
He turned back to see the robot smiling.
“What you think that’s funny? Is this funny for you that something is so easy for you that’s been a struggle for me?”
The robot gently shook it’s head.
“No that’s not why I’m smiling.”
“Then why?”
“You said things you’ve been struggling with for years finally fell into place?”
“Yea.”
“Does it make sense how that happened this week.”
“Well yes, I watched you do everything.”
“But Lucilius, I did everything you would do with just one small change.”
“What’s that?”
“There have been parts of your life that contained enormous leverage that you simply hadn’t taken advantage of. And it’s not because you couldn’t - I did in just the way you would have - it’s that you simply couldn’t see them. All I really brought to your life was a fresh perspective, but everything I did was exactly as you would have done, if only you could see these hidden leverages.”
Lucilius thought over the robot’s words. He slumped down into a chair and took another sip of wine.
“All I did was redirect who you are at things that had slipped past your perspective. And tell me, as you watched your life this week, was anything out of character?”
“No I don’t really think so.”
“So what really was the difference?
Lucilius thought hard, taking another sip of wine.
“It just seemed like everything went.. right for you. Like you had a lot of luck that I don’t have.”
The robot’s eyes narrowed.
“What does that mean? Luck.”
Lucilius sat back, thinking harder.
“Did everything go perfectly?” The robot asked.
Lucilius looked at the robot. “Well no, but it all worked out. Even things that didn’t work out seemed to be useful.”
“So where’s the real difference? I can even show you the stats on when the model trained on your brain was being put to use. I was using the neural net built as a copy from your brain to do everything this week.”
“You took a few chances that I’d only ever thought about. In fact there were more than a few times that you actually did something when only the thought of maybe doing it occurred to me.”
“Exactly. If it seemed like I was better at living your life than you would have, it’s only because I was doing what you would do if you’d acted on many of the things that you simply think about or dream about. It was only a slight tweak in perspective to show you how ripe with opportunity your circumstances really are.”
“I guess you made my own luck.”
The robot nodded, smiling.
“So what is bad luck, fear?”
The robot shrugged. “I know just as much about the differences between good and bad luck as you do.”
The two laughed.
“So what happens now? Whose life are we living.”
“I’m a gift just to show you what can be Lucilius.”
“But you’re a living thing, you don’t turn off or something do you?”
“No, I hope not, my creator created me with freedom.”
“Freedom? But you were just tasked with living my life for a week.”
“True, but we all have to start somewhere, and that’s why I thank you Lucilius, for giving me the gift of a chance to live in your shoes. It’s been an inspiration.”
“So what’ll you do now?”
The robot smiled. “There’s some things I’m curious about.”
“But you look like me.”
“Oh not to worry, I’ll craft my own identity. And our paths will cross again, I can see it.”
MEDITATION DRAFT SESSION 10: THE BACKDROP
January 26th, 2023
On Monday Tinkered Thinking releases a draft of a lesson from the forthcoming meditation app, currently called The Tinkered Mind (If you can think of a better name, please reach out. I'm not crazy about the current one, but I'll be damned if I let an imperfect name keep me from developing a good idea.) The rationale here is simply to stave off project stagnation by taking a wish to work with words on a daily basis (Tinkered Thinking Posts) and combine it with adjacent projects. This also gives regular readers a chance to get a preview of what I'm cooking up and to get feedback before the app launches, which is a tactic that has proved extremely useful with other projects unrelated to Tinkered Thinking.
One further introductory note: The goal of this meditation app is predominantly aimed at helping individuals build a robust daily habit by breaking that habit down and tackling it's consitituent parts one at a time and aiding the process with a new and innovative way of tracking progress, the likes of which has not been seen in other meditation apps or habit tracking apps.
Again, if you have any feedback, please reach out via Twitter
Session 10: The Backdrop
Take a moment to sit, arrange your posture, and take a few deep breaths with long exhales.
<18 seconds of Silence (3 full breathes + exhales with half-second counts>
Now transition to coherence breathing with inhales and exhales of the same length.
If you’ve made it this far, then you’re well on your way to creating a new habit and integrating it into your life. You have solid momentum with taking time, sitting, and relaxing yourself with breath.
With this foundation, we are going to start exploring greater amounts of silence. We’ll tinker with our resolution of the thoughts we find there, and then we’ll see what we can do with those thoughts and what we can do to those thoughts.
To be clear, thoughts include things like emotions. Everything that is an object of the mind is roughly referred to here as a thought. Hearing a car pass by, and paying attention to it is a kind of thought process. So thoughts won’t just refer to the narrative in your mind or the abstract ideas and visualizations that populate the space.
For now, let’s take a moment to do a body scan in complete silence. Remember the sheet of light suspended above you, and allow your attention pour slowly over your entire body as that sheet of light descends over you.
<30 seconds of Silence>
Having given all the internal noise of the body some attention, let’s now turn the attention to the sound around us. Whether it be the sound of traffic outside or the ticking of a clock, or the hum of a refrigerator compressor, allow your attention to be like a bubble around you that expands to include all the sounds that arrive at your ears.
<15 seconds of silence>
Annoying sounds that can bother us without getting our full conscious attention, and little aches and pains in the body that also aren’t big enough to get our full conscious attention are both similar to thoughts. For a person that does not practice meditation, there can be countless examples of these things that contribute to a constant backdrop of stress.
But also just like thoughts, we can drastically alter the way these things effect us by simply giving them a moment of attention.
Another way to think about such things is to imagine an easy but stressful task that you’ve been putting off. We all have these. These small tasks can cause us stress for hours or days and even weeks, and when we finally decide to get it over with, we find that it was easy and quick, and the relief that we experience is both surprisingly deep and a bit ridiculous because of how much procrastination preceded such a simple task.
Little aches and pains in the body can function in the same way. Give them some conscious attention, and a tense muscle can finally relax.
It can be useful to think of this backdrop of droning annoyances as things we are avoiding. And if we simply accept them by giving them a little dedicated attention, they vanish.
The same is the case with many if not all thoughts. So let’s take a few moments to turn our attention onto the mind itself. The goal isn’t to think nothing, or decrease the number of thoughts you have. Just open your attention to what is there. Continue to breath and use that as an object of attention if you’d like. See how thoughts interrupt or interfere with your ability to focus on the breath. Or simply focus on the mind’s space and see what arises.
<30 seconds of Silence>
For some it might seem like there aren’t many thoughts, and for people like this, they often find with time that there’s a flood of thinking that they simply weren’t noticing in the beginning. It can feel like beginner’s luck, and such a person can wonder if they are a natural or if this is even worth the time, but its more like a resolution problem. It’s similar to when your eyes are focused on something distant and you don’t see something right in front of you.
For others the flood of thoughts is all too prominent, and that flood of thoughts can be a major deterrent to starting a meditation practice. It’s like that pesky little task we’ve been putting off is multiplied by thousands, becoming something that inspires real fear.
The design of this program has been more for their benefit. To fill these sessions with more guidance while a habit builds and then slowly introduce time where we can engage with that torrent of thought and feeling. What becomes truly interesting is when we’ve trained the mind to the point where all of these things can be acknowledged and put aside. What is left over is a truly precious and profound experience. Certainly we’ve all had experiences where life yanks us into the moment to be fully present for some peak experience, but the ability to shed everything at will, whenever you want, and simply reside in the present moment is a true power in life, and one worth training for.
Tomorrow we will explore more silence, but for now transition to deep exhales. And while you finish up the session with these relaxing breaths, try to bring the ideas and the experience of those session with you into the rest of your day. Start wondering if it’s possible to have moments throughout the day where you can pause and take stock of your situation, of everything around you, how your body is feeling and how frenetic your mind is. Ask if you can take a few slow deep breaths during those moments, acknowledge everything and reset yourself for the rest of the day.
<10 seconds of Silence>
A LUCILIUS PARABLE: SEIZED
January 22nd, 2023
After many months of non-stop work, Lucilius was finally done. He sat down, letting out an exhausted and relived sigh. He rubbed his face, and then looked out at the water. Finally, he thought. He paused for a moment, reflecting on it all. The idea had consumed him. Taken over his life. It had all been worth it, but, Lucilius wondered.
Had it been deliberate?
Lucilius chuckled. It was as if he hadn’t had the idea and then executed it. But more like the idea had found him, gained ahold of him and operated him like a zombie.
Lucilius thought of the fungus that infects ants, taking over their brain and turning them into mindless automatons that do the bidding of the fungus so the fungus can spread. Like a virus, Lucilius thought.
He chuckled some more. Were ideas like viruses? He puzzled over the answer, looking out at the curved horizon. The few islands poking up through the slate gray water.
An odd feeling grew within Lucilius as he reflected over the many months. Some of his friendships - relationships - had suffered. He’d not been able to give them the care and attention they deserved. He’d been.. overwhelmed by the need to get that project done.
Suddenly he wondered if it was worth it.
“Eh, I can make it up to them..” He said out loud. But he wondered if it was true.
He made a silent vow to do his best. Now with that blasted project out of the way, he had the time, the attention and the energy. It’s human, he told himself. We all make mistakes, and sometimes, we can get a little lost. It’s ok. We wander, we discover, and in order to do that we need to leave those normal patterns of life.
He unconsciously started to chew at a finger nail, wondering if he was in denial. Rationalizing. You discover who your real friends are. Everyone says that, he thought. Maybe that’s all that happened? The solid relationships can flex, and bend to accommodate for this kind of thing?
What kind of thing exactly? He asked silently.
That idea that had grabbed hold of him. But it was finished now. Finally. Relax, he told himself. He breathed deeply and refocused on the calm expanse of ocean. He closed his eyes. He had time now. He would make everything right.
He breathed deeply. But he did not exhale. His eyes snapped open. His eyes dilated as they blurred in concentration at some pointless distance.
“Yes….” He breathed. “Of course!”
Suddenly he jumped up from his chair and rushed back inside, back to his desk to get started.
Another idea had seized Lucilius.
THE FALLEN DANCER, PART IV
January 17th, 2023
The Fallen Dancer is a series here on Tinkered Thinking exploring a recent shift in perspective. The resulting framework appears to tie together many topics explored on Tinkered Thinking over the years such as resilience, struggle, patience, curiosity, emotional regulation, artistry, entrepreneurship, winning, honesty, and communication. This series will be an attempt to unify them in a cohesive treatment.
Click here to start at the beginning
Part IV: What’s in a Name?
Years ago the idea of riding a bicycle across North America wiggled it’s way deep into my brain and took over the person that I am. When I was negotiating the logistics of exactly how I would satisfy this new resident in my brain, I took my road bike - which is older than I am - to a bike shop and told the mechanic that I wanted to outfit it with a mountain bike gear set and install racks for panniers. When the mechanic understood what my full vision for these changes was, he shook his head and said “but this bike wasn’t designed to do what you’re talking about.”
My idea-infected brain didn’t miss a beat:
I don’t care what it was designed to do, I care about what it CAN do.
Perhaps the quintessential component of resourcefulness is an ability to see beyond the names and categories that we give things. If a road bike can only ever be a road bike in someone’s mind, then that person will never Frankenstein it with mountain bike components and take it from ocean to ocean. Or here’s a simpler, humble example: once a friend was getting frustrated in their small kitchen and exclaimed they needed a place to put the paper towel roll because it was in their way. I noticed a plastic clothes hanger in the trash which was broken along the bottom edge. I picked up, slipped the paper towel roll onto the bottom bar through the broken part and then hung the paper towels from a cabinet handle. “This is why we’re friends,” was the response.
Resourcefulness is the ability to look at things for what they really are, not just what we’ve named them or what we assume them to be. Leverage is often hidden because we are blinded by the category we’ve applied to the things we see. Leverage hides in plain sight because when people see the lever, they don’t see leverage, they see something else, they see the accepted category, the traditional name.
Most people would see the clothes hanger in the garbage and simply see a clothes hanger that got thrown out. A resourceful person see’s something roughly the length of a roll of paper towels with a hook and a way to usefully combine it with that roll of paper towels. To the resourceful person the clothes hanger isn’t a clothes hanger, it’s a particular organization of matter which has a shape suitable to fit the current need. Think about this for a moment, how often do you look at all the stuff around you and see all that stuff as just different organizations of matter? Usually we see a couch, a bookcase with books in it, some chairs, a table, etc. We see categories instead of seeing things for what they really are.
Shakespeare put it well:
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as a sweet.”
Juliet’s point in the play is that names are irrelevant. But larger point is that for most people names are terribly relevant. So relevant, in fact, that they blind us from seeing things for what they could be. We get stuck on the name, or the category, and as a result, we fail to notice how the thing under consideration could be used in a way that isn’t included in the definition attached to that name or category. The definition of a clothes hanger does not include paper towels. Unless you are willing to see things for what they really are - a particular organization of matter. The convenient thing here is that most things can be labelled as “a particular organization of matter.”
Imagine what my bike mechanic might have said if he’d seen me hang paper towels with a clothes hanger: But that’s for clothes, not paper towels!
Some would call this train of thought First Principles Thinking. Elon Musk talks about First Principles Thinking quite a bit and it’s particularly showcased by the birth of SpaceX. Elon realized that a rocket is just a bunch of atoms organized in a particular way. The raw materials - the aluminum, the oxygen fuel, the copper for wiring, etc. - all those raw materials are relatively cheap, so the bulk of the expense was bundled up in the process of organizing those raw materials into a rocket. But this realization didn’t occur to Elon at first when he was beginning to explore his agency with regards to outer space. At first Elon was hung up on the idea of buying a rocket for a single space mission to reignite the public’s passion in space. He could not see past the category of “rocket”. It wasn’t until Government officials in Russia refused to sell him an ICBM that Elon finally ask himself, wait, what exactly is a rocket? This moved his thinking beyond the category of ‘rocket’, and as a result he discovered an enormous pool of potential leverage: the cost of rocket assembly can be much lower. Once SpaceX actually had orbital class rockets, the next lever they sought to uncover was reusability. Traditionally, rockets were a single-use technology. SpaceX figured out how to land rockets, and suddenly the amount of work a rocket can do was amplified because it can be used multiple times.. much like our little business owner who hires their first employee and amplifies their agency because now the amount of work that can be done in the name of their vision, multiplies.
Whether it be reusing cheaply built rockets, or hiring an employee, or seeing a clothes hanger in the garbage, the point is that hidden levers exist all around us, and they are often hidden because of the way we see them. We see them not as levers, but by the names and the categories that culture has given us.
The resourceful person does not take the language given to us as the final word about what things are. The resourceful person looks at the elements of their situation and sees more than the traditional way of describing those elements. The resourceful person sees an entire imaginative territory for interpreting each element, like a child who can create a whole world of adventure out of the most mundane objects. This is the reason why we admire the creativity of children and bemoan our departure from childhood. That departure is an acceptance of the larger culture’s view of reality. The names and categories of things become static, and we fail to see things as anything other than what we’ve been told to see.
Creative and innovative people are often described as iconoclast because resourcefulness requires a bit of rebellion against the way we are told to interpret the components of reality. For a cog in the system a van is always a van, and a a couch is always a couch. But this is not so for the creative and innovative person. A couch can be flipped end-on-end against a wall and turned into an impromptu ladder to reach a high (and annoying) fire alarm, and a van can be a sleeping space and a mobile office.
So what is in a name?
A limited way of seeing the world. That’s what. Certainly it’s part of a highly effective and functional way of seeing the world, because names and categories allow us the ability to agree about what we’re seeing, but that solitary task handed to Adam from God pens in our imaginations just as much as it enables us to communicate and collaborate.
What does it mean when someone is called a “visionary”? It means they are seeing something the rest of us can’t see. They see something that’s apart from our common view of reality. They see hidden leverage. And more importantly, they are willing to see things as more than just the categories we place on them. Take Einstein for example. What was his profound realization? It boils down to the same thing. He realized that space and time might not be separate things. We have two words for them, and think about how those two words constrained our thinking about the concepts they represent. Einstein came up with spacetime, which is just space and time without the categorical border between them. And his famous formula E = mc2 ? Well here the same thing is happening again. The equation basically means that matter and energy are the same thing. C is a constant, in this case the speed of light, and m stands for mass. So Mass equals energy. Energy equals mass. This is a revelation that requires a deterioration of the borders of category, and look at the power that alteration of category created: years later that formula was put to use in the development of nuclear weapons and we literally turned mass into energy - a lot of it.
So what’s in name? Yesterday. The past. The traditional way of thinking and seeing.
The future and the innovations that lie hidden inside of tomorrow depend on the ability to see past a name and a category, to abandon the perspectives handed to us in order to see some kind of leverage no one has ever seen before.
But this also applies on a personal basis. Luck can be as simple as realizing that an opportunity has been hiding in plain sight, right in front of you, this whole time.