The Limits of Choice

 Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions

- Simone Weil

It has been difficult to gather enough motivation to write another entry. I am wondering why. Looking back over previous posts I see a single-point focus on breaking free from the influence of others... but now that intention is gone. In its place are a variety of interests, a variety of paths, a variety of truths and new perspectives. But which of these should I communicate via this blog? Hesitation. The single-point focus is now without a point. Surely the last two years at Harvard have revealed many things to me... but were these things important? I find it hard to say. Even if they were, I now feel that we each must follow our own path in life. Our own path of learning, of experiencing, and of doing neither. We are free to look deeper, but only when we are ready to do so. Attempting to influence another may be misguided and, in the end, futile. Perhaps in breaking free from the influence of others, one also breaks free from the urgency to influence others. Perhaps I had been trying to influence and guide others all along... without really knowing the way.

*****

I will be attending the annual three-month meditation retreat at the IMS in Massachusetts. We humans have this intriguing and perfectly natural propensity to attach to particular lifestyles, particular worldviews, particular ideologies... or, put more broadly, particular ways of understanding reality. By attaching, we inadvertently imprison ourselves to that particular way of understanding... limiting our perspective to a mere slice of the whole. Religion is a useful metaphor here. By psychologically attaching to (i.e., believing in) Catholicism, for example, we limit our openness and, hence, understanding of other religions. In doing so, we deprive ourselves of the bigger picture, of that kernel of truth that lies waiting. This applies not only to religious traditions, but to practically any conscious or unconscious value, idea, principle, belief, opinion, comparison, judgment, understanding, etc. If truth is our goal, then our natural propensity to attach is the barrier. If in a hallway with twenty doors you walk through one, the others disappear from view. If enough time passes, those old doors disappear from memory too. Meditation is one of several curious life experiences that can pull you back into that hallway. Death, drugs, and great loss are others.

And now, standing once again in the hallway of doors, how do you choose? You do not.

Slowly, in the light

The compensation of growing old, Peter Walsh thought, coming out of Regent's Park, and holding his hat in hand, was simply this: that the passions remain as strong as ever, but one had gained -- at last! -- the power which adds the supreme flavour to existence -- the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it round, slowly, in the light.

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

Originally, this blog was intended to chronicle a career change. I now think it served a much greater purpose.

In my early/mid twenties, I seemed to value what society valued: a hefty paycheck, an impressive job title, an enviable rolodex of "powerful people", a fancy car, a chic apartment, an athletic physique, etc. I valued this identity for the message it transmitted to the outside world: "Hey everyone, I have my shit together." That was nice. But then something happened. A quiet voice inside of me had been whispering, "yo dude, you don't truly value any of these things." And what began as a harmless whisper grew into an incessant blare, leaking a corrosive inauthenticity into my thoughts, decisions, and actions. Only my feelings, as harrowing as they had become, seemed to harbor the final remnants of truth. I was not happy.

The Great Imbalance

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. 

We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.

-Albert Einstein

As preposterous as this may sound, each of us are in fact two. The presence of this division of human experience may become one of the greatest psychological discoveries of our time.

The pop-psych understanding that one part of our brain handles "reason" while the other part handles "emotion," is not entirely accurate to reality, but it is pretty damn close. For simplicity's sake, let's call reason the "left side" and emotion, the "right side." Again, remember that these labels are oversimplifications of the truth. Allow me to add a little more meat to the bones of reason and emotion.

On Kindness and Worms

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars, but in ourselves.

- Shakespeare

Lately I have been curiously attending to my interpretation of experiences. The phrase "things aren't always as they seem" is wrong; for things are indeed always as they seem. Things are always something other than what they seem, as well. All interpretations are valid... as well as none. Kindness to others, and interestingly also to ourselves, depends on our ability to relieve our own perspectives from their place atop golden pedestals.

I'd like to share the following story recently recounted by a Harvard professor.

Happiness on Fire

I hold that to need nothing is divine, and the less a man needs

the nearer he does approach divinity

Socrates

Happiness. I have reoriented my life towards understanding it and what have I learned? The desire to be happy does not lead to happiness; and in this paradox lies the key.

Although some of the following concepts are also found throughout literature and philosophy, they may not be understood easily or quickly as they require some unweaving of established perspectives. Let's unweave.

The Broad Road Through

If you would be a real seeker after truth, 

it is necessary that at least once in your life 

you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

-Descartes

I had a difficult time accepting this aspect of myself, but compared to the average person, I am really bad with details. I’m not sure if it’s because I find them boring or because I’m simply bad at paying attention to them. Due to this, I’m not good at recalling facts or dealing with practical matters. I’m beginning to accept however, that I have substituted that skill with a different one.

The Inferiority Radar

Girl at the Mirror, courtesy of Ken Worley

Better is the enemy of good

Voltaire

We all strive to be better. We are continuously encouraged to improve, and sometimes even pressured to do so against our will. We've embraced the idea of lifelong enhancement as an unquestionable aspect of what it means to be human. And why shouldn't we? It seems noble enough, and largely preferable to the alternative, for a person that quits this struggle for betterment is peppered with negative adjectives such as lazy, unambitious, useless, good for nothing, etc. If we read between the lines however, we encounter a surprising paradox.