Goats rock.

Competition, Comparison, Vulnerability

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I just spent a beautiful long weekend in Stehekin, WA, aka Magical Dream Fairy Land. It’s a town of about 85 full-time residents, accessible only by 50-mile ferry ride or a long hike through the North Cascades. There is not much happening in town aside from a kick-ass pastry shop, and it’s surrounded by gorgeous peaks and hiking trails in every direction.

Normally when I go out in the woods like this, I have some big goal: summit a mountain, cover a lot of mileage, climb some difficult cliff faces. This time, not so much. With the support of my group of friends, I approached the weekend with a distinct lack of major ambitions or goals to achieve. Instead, we decided to focus on being present, being open to adventure, and taking things as they come. This is something I think about a lot, but have a hard time doing in real life. The weekend was great practice. Even without having a plan, we managed to camp in beautiful places, go on long walks, eat delicious food, meet new people, have really enjoyable interactions with all sorts of characters and wildlife, watch the sky change color, find animal shapes in the clouds, do sunset yoga, clamber around rock formations, play music everywhere, deepen our friendships, talk about life and the universe, breathe deeply, race sticks down rivers, lose ourselves, find ourselves, forget about cellphones and email, be amazed, eat more, walk more, find a healthy dose of peace of mind.

On the car ride home from the ferry we listened to a podcast featuring Brené Brown on vulnerability, and it summed up wonderfully a lot of the thinking I had been doing. My natural state has always been to be ambitious, competitive, and a bit (ok, maybe a lot) of a perfectionist. In general, this has treated me pretty well so far. I’m good at a lot of things, so I can usually do well enough to be satisfied with my performance. I’ve done a lot of cool things that I’m glad to have done, and I almost always function well in society. But this is a dangerous path, and ultimately not the one I want to follow. It means deriving happiness from comparison with others, either by raising my own status or lowering theirs or both, creating an unhealthy feeling of self-importance and ego. This works really well for a lot of aspects of life, and it’s strongly encouraged by our society and capitalism in general. It doesn’t work, however, for cultivating happiness.

Here’s what I haven’t learned to do yet, but this weekend reminded me I need to be working on:

Being vulnerable

Putting myself out there, especially emotionally

Being okay when things don’t go as planned

Being okay with not being the best at everything

Asking for help

Letting the universe point me in new directions

Failing a lot

Doing what feels right

Taking things slowly

Getting hurt

Forgiving myself and others

Listening

 

It’s not a comprehensive list, but a good start. If you’ve got suggestions, let me know…

Meditate with Max!

A Veil of Perception

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I’ve been meditating regularly for the past several months, spurred on by an intensely quieting trek in the woods and a major life transition. It has been bringing to my mind all sorts of thoughts on reality, perception, and consciousness. It has also allowed me the mental clarity to focus hard on things like art and music, despite not having any sort of schedule or deadlines or external impetus. It’s a wonderful practice which I think can improve any life.

I should probably preface this by saying that I don’t really know anything about the subject, just a few things I’ve read and noticed. There are so many ways of describing meditation, but I’ve been noticing most recently changes in perception. Buddhist philosophy talks about about maya, the fact that our interaction with reality is an illusion. It’s easy to read these words, but harder to internalize them. Regular practice of meditation starts to give a sense of the truth in the idea.

At first, our perception of the world around us seems pretty accurate. Especially if you have good eye sight, things are probably pretty clear, depth is well understood by the brain, colors are intact and go well together. It’s pretty hard to know what things actually are, but it seems clear that they at least are something. But here’s the thing about perception: everything goes through our brains. And all of our brains are different. Who knows where some peoples’ brains have been. Even barring major malfunctions, they are filled with memories, fears, desires and intentions. Everything we see is tinted by everything we have seen, and everything we can imagine seeing. At the same time, the impermanence of these things becomes clear. We will only be here for a short while, memories of us only slightly longer.

This might seem like not such a big deal, but I think actually feeling the truth behind it is really important. Perhaps impermanence and the lack of uniform reality could lead one down a path of apathy and disconnectedness. Instead, I believe that in combination with a focus on compassion, it is freeing to know that nothing lasts forever, that fear and discomfort will evaporate as quickly as they arrived, if you let them. There is a certain levity and joy in this state of mind, one that allows full expression and easy improvisation. There is little danger in trying new things, in reaching out, and in putting yourself out there.

A gray, rainy day in Seattle can be miserable if that is how you perceive it, but it can also be delicious and refreshing. Either way, it certainly will not last forever, and how we interact with it is up to us.

Important Words

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I’ve noticed a shift recently in the words I’ve been thinking about the most, and the words to which I attach positive meaning. I’ve never really considered before what specific words define my life, but it seems like maybe a good way to examine transitions and values. Here are some words that have previously been important to me, but which are now receding:

  • Efficiency
  • Productivity
  • Achievement
  • Success
  • Money
  • Winning
  • Multitasking
  • Speed
  • Perfection
  • Sarcasm
  • Cleverness

They tend to be business- and achievement-oriented, but relatively cold and impersonal. I think this is a fair reflection of the pressure society puts on us to “make something of our life,” get promotions, and accrue wealth. You know, capitalism. In the past several months, however, my words have become much more touchy-feely, much more directed at emotional health and growth. A lot of these words still feel far away, but I do feel like I’m at least moving toward them:

  • Love
  • Compassion
  • Synchronicity
  • Play
  • Abundance
  • Flourishing
  • Authenticity
  • Gratitude
  • Joy
  • Improvisation
  • Intuition
  • Connection
  • Communication
  • Community
  • Creativity
  • Mindfulness
  • Intention

Coming up with these word lists was a fun exercise in stepping back and examining where my life is, and where I want it to go. I found it a lot harder to come up with words that used to be important but aren’t any more, because, well, I haven’t been thinking about them much. And writing them down makes me realize how much of a relief it is to let them go.

I think it’s important to note that some of the receding words like “productivity” and “efficiency” aren’t necessarily bad things, but they are also not goals in and of themselves. They say nothing of the value of the thing created. I doubt anybody has ever laid on their death bed, smiling and reflecting back on how wonderfully efficient his life had been.

What are your words?

Swirling Colors

Easy Decisions

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A friend just sent me this article, and it’s really great. Definitely worth a read, even if you aren’t a freshman in college anymore and didn’t go to Stanford. It’s never too late to be who you’re meant to be.

I especially relate to the section on “going with the flow,” the idea that we often choose a path because the decision is easy, even if the path is not. At a number of points in my life, I have chosen to do a specific thing (graduate school, traveling abroad, working in construction and then consulting) not because it meant my life would be the most comfortable, but because the choices were. It’s easy to go to graduate school immediately after college, and it eliminates a lot of hard decisions like where to live and what to do with your time and what to do about money. Deciding to travel was easy, too. I had friends who had gone to Europe to work on farms, and all I had to do was apply for an internship and buy some plane tickets. Not that it wasn’t an incredibly valuable experience; it was life changing. But it was an easy decision.

Deciding to quit my good office job and strike out on my own was a harder decision which opened up all sorts of previously decided variables (location, where to focus my effort, and again, money). But at the same time, it felt right throughout the process. Maybe I had already internalized some of what the author is laying out here, and maybe I’m optimistic enough to think that everything will work out no matter what I do. But it was definitely not the same kind of decision that kept me going on the common path I had already followed to grad school, traveling abroad, and working at an office. It took time and emotional processing and a lot of encouragement to make the decision. Now I am immersed in a world that works much differently than 9-5, one which demands boldness, creativity, and authenticity rather than stability, security, and risk-aversion. I’m still figuring out how to navigate it, and probably will be for the rest of my life. Suggestions are welcome!

Also, I’ve been painting a lot. Check ’em out!

Meditate with Max!

Neuroscience, Society

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A lot of the reading I’ve done lately has focused on neuroscience, taking a systematic look at how the brain works best. In many cases, this reinforces our intuition about human interaction. Often, it surprises us. More and more, these readings are highlighting for me areas where our society is at odds with how humans have always functioned and how we function the best. I’m not a neuroscientist (except, aren’t we all?), but here is what I’ve been able to put together.

On a fundamental level, we’re finding that the most important part of life in terms of cultivating happiness and fulfillment is our social engagement. It is a healthy functioning limbic brain (the emotional system common to all mammals) rather than reptilian (reflexes, instincts) or neocortical (higher cognition) that allows humans to flourish in society and not become reclusive, depressed, or psychotic. The limbic system is largely cultivated through close relationships, especially during childhood, but later in life as well. It sounds corny, but the word we’re looking for here is love. Parental love allows our brains to develop properly as infants, love from our teachers helps us learn in school, and love from a partner allows us to deal with difficulties throughout life. This is a wonderful thing to know and be able to put into action, but it’s a devastating lens through which to view our society. Here are a few areas that could be vastly improved by acknowledging the human need for love.

Technology

I’ve written about some of my qualms with the internet before, but this one is getting worse. We continue to replace our face-to-face interactions with screen time. Our emotional brains resonate through subtle cues in body language, eye contact, and touch which cannot be mimicked by text messages, email, or Facebook. All this technology gives us the sense of being connected to people, but without any of the deep emotional bonds that goes with it. Instead, we get a quick dopamine fix from the constant stimulation and fall in love with our phones instead of our friends. Have you tried saying hello to strangers on the street lately? It’s nearly impossible.

Welfare

Our society encourages parents to get back to work as soon as possible once they have kids, even though spending time with their children is the most important thing they can do for their kids and for society at large. It forces single parents to hold down full time jobs while paying for child care, which is no substitute for building the emotional bonds between a parent and child. Even maternity leave (and the occasional paternity leave) considered to be “generous” barely scratches the surface for a child’s emotional development. Combined with the stigma against full-time parenting, we’re churning out generations of emotionally-deficient youth.

Education

Kids learn the best when they have a strong connection with their teacher, and when their teacher is able to devote attention to the child’s needs and progress. Huge classes, teaching to the test, and low teacher salaries all restrict the strength of these bonds and reduce the effectiveness of our education system. Instead, we’re buying bombers and drones which aren’t making anyone happy, except maybe the executives at Lockheed Martin.

Food

Even our food system is suffering from a lack of emotional resonance. The food we buy is so packaged, processed, and reconstituted, that it’s often impossible to know what we’re eating. Eating, and especially eating in groups, is one of the most basic human interactions. As our food loses value, so does the meal itself. Factory farms would not exist if we maintained our emotional connection to the animals we raised for food. We are meant to look into the eyes of the cow that will become our beef and feel a sense of gratitude, gain an understanding of our place in the world. Why put time into preparing and sharing something so synthetic as what we call food today?

Business

Money will not make you happy. Studies are showing that once basic needs are met, more money does not equate to more happiness. We love to measure things, but GDP does not relate to the quality of a nation. Our society is awash in consumerism and the idea that more stuff is better. This is a devastating perspective, and will only lead to more greed and envy.

Health

It seems that doctors no longer have the luxury of actually spending time with their patients. Insurance companies ensure that these interactions are brief, and focus solely on the disease, not the person. It turns out we’re complicated organisms and much of the healing we’re capable of is powered by our emotions. Those who have good insurance might get coverage for a few therapy sessions, but therapy is meant to work gradually over several years. Considering how hard it is to even get decent insurance, we’re pretty much begging for illness and depression.

Justice

It seems like Republicans want more incarceration, Democrats want more treatment programs, but nobody wants to deal with the weak family structure that is so often the root of crime and drug addiction. This goes back to the welfare system. If we put more resources into allowing families to form strong bonds, our whole society would be stronger and less reliant on criminal justice to keep order.

Government

My thoughts on this one have been sequestered until further notice.

So, things are pretty bleak. Perhaps as awareness grows of how our brains work and what makes us happy, our society will begin to shift. Living in the bubble that is Seattle, it’s easy to feel like maybe things aren’t so bad. But in thinking about the country as a whole, I’m pretty sure they are.