thisoldtown1978
Member
- Joined
- May 29, 2013
- Messages
- 351
Hi guys, I recently wrote this short essay to help me understand my own restless and dissatisfied feelings. I'd love your honest feedback and thoughts on the matter.
Lately, I've been feeling bored, restless and dissatisfied. With what? I'm not sure. It's a difficult feeling to explain, which makes it even more difficult to remedy. It feels a little bit like being stuck inside your own head. You know there's a big world out there, you know there's something you should be doing and there's something that will make you happy, but it's always on the horizon. You can't get close enough. And in a world of infinite possibility, the onus is on you to be making the right choices. We think that choice must be the reason we can't get close enough.
Does the following sound like you? It sounds like me. You pick up your guitar, which you've been meaning to do for the last few months, and strum the few chords that you can remember. It doesn't sound great, so you grab your phone and bring up that tutorial that you never quite finished. But then you realise the tutorial's not really giving you the information you need to play the song you want to play. But do you even want to play this song anyway? Is it one of your favourites? While you're waiting for another tutorial to load, you realise that you haven't checked your messages in a couple of minute. No one has messaged you, so you assume nothing's happening. Just to be sure, you check Facebook. Perhaps there's a message that hasn't come through yet. The tutorial's loaded, but you haven't got time now. It'd be counterproductive to force yourself to play when you don't feel like it. You bookmark the tutorial so it can be summoned at the tap of your finger when the time's right. When the time's right, you'll nail that tutorial. But you need your energy first. Time for lunch. There's nothing in the fridge, but there's plenty in the freezer that you just need to pop in the microwave. Now it's a waiting game. You've got eight minutes. You'll send out a group message to get something moving this weekend. You type it out, but it doesn't sound funny enough yet, so you'll wait until after you've eaten. When you've had time to think. You've still got five minutes. Now would be a good time to grab your guitar. The tutorial's only three minutes. But then I'd have to play my guitar in the kitchen, and that'd be weird. You flick the television on. There's nothing good on this channel. Or that channel. Or that channel. Lunch is ready. Tastes weird. No problem, I'll just grab something on the way to town... And on, and on, and on.
I don't know about you, but this sounds like hell to me. The world around us literally falls away when we apply pressure. There's nothing to lean on, to structure your behaviour around, to grapple with. The world around us demands no attention, just the flick of a switch.
We live in an increasingly frictionless world. And it's our human instinct as problem solvers to make it that way. Juicing oranges is messy business, so we buy juicers. Navigating a busy supermarket can be an ordeal, so we order online. Awkward conversations can haunt us for weeks, so we'd much rather send a text. We save a lot of time and energy, and that's terrific, because we generally have better things to be doing than juicing, trolley-pushing, and dealing with other people. We design an environment that demands little of us in return, so that we can turn our attention to what matters most.
While we all agree that cutting out the middleman is generally productive, we employ them every day to avoid getting our hands dirty. And the middleman takes many forms; technology, convention, fashion, even language. I needn't go to the trouble of proving my devotion to my girlfriend when I can say "I love you" once in a while. I needn't worry about encountering strangers when I'm shielded by etiquette. I needn't worry about embodying my philosophy when it's tattooed behind my ear. Technology and language, for example, can connect us to the world in ways that would be unthinkable without them, but when they become substitutes for genuine connection, as opposed to extensions, we have a problem.
When the world around us yields at the flick of a switch or the click of a mouse, don't we lose a sense of what and who we are? How are we supposed to measure our own actions when the consequences are out of our control? How do we figure out what needs to be done when there's nothing to be done? There are no reference points. No yardsticks. And when our environment demands nothing from us, what's the point in us at all? The challenge shifts from mastering the environment to becoming a master decision-maker, because that's all that's left to do. By separating decision-making from the actions that follow, we create the perfect conditions for analysis paralysis, which we all know and love.
Most of us have been brought up to believe that we can be whatever we want to be. The sky's the limit. But this has always made me feel more dread than inspiration. It means that there's no hope of discovering who you are, because there's nothing there to discover. You need to create yourself, from scratch. I don't know about you, but this kind of responsibility keeps me awake at night.
Whether we like it or not, we're growing comfortable in this frictionless world. We squirm when we really bump into our environment head on. When we get into our first scuffle; when we cook our first meal; when we sit down at the piano; when we step out onto the pitch with experienced players; when we read our stories aloud to others at the table. In these instances, our actions and their reactions are authentic and unmediated. We are laid bare. Our reaction is often, "I'm not cut out for this," and we retreat behind our curtain. But these experiences, which we acknowledge as risky, novel, strange, painful, and clumsy, provide rare glimpses of what and who we are in the real world because they connect us to it. For brief moments, our actions and their consequences are back to back. When we see ourselves in context of a living, breathing world, we realise that we're not floating heads, we're not removed, we're real people.
Grappling with the world around us can be scary and uncomfortable for the same reasons that it can be joyous and thrilling and intriguing and fulfilling. When we interact directly with our environment, and not through some middleman or representation or substitute, we can begin to understand our own actions and who we are. We're released from the anxiety of having decide our purpose, because we are discovering our purpose as we go along. A pre-existing structure reveals itself that we can anchor ourselves to, that we can ground ourselves on, that we can rely on.
There is a big world out there, but it's not up to us to decide what it means. It's up to us to discover what it means, one tiny success or failure at a time. We can only do this when we step out from behind the curtain and tackle our environment head on. An environment that demands our attention if we want to get anything out of it. This is the point at which we climb out of our head and start living in the moment.
For these reasons, my 2017 resolutions are to:
Lately, I've been feeling bored, restless and dissatisfied. With what? I'm not sure. It's a difficult feeling to explain, which makes it even more difficult to remedy. It feels a little bit like being stuck inside your own head. You know there's a big world out there, you know there's something you should be doing and there's something that will make you happy, but it's always on the horizon. You can't get close enough. And in a world of infinite possibility, the onus is on you to be making the right choices. We think that choice must be the reason we can't get close enough.
Does the following sound like you? It sounds like me. You pick up your guitar, which you've been meaning to do for the last few months, and strum the few chords that you can remember. It doesn't sound great, so you grab your phone and bring up that tutorial that you never quite finished. But then you realise the tutorial's not really giving you the information you need to play the song you want to play. But do you even want to play this song anyway? Is it one of your favourites? While you're waiting for another tutorial to load, you realise that you haven't checked your messages in a couple of minute. No one has messaged you, so you assume nothing's happening. Just to be sure, you check Facebook. Perhaps there's a message that hasn't come through yet. The tutorial's loaded, but you haven't got time now. It'd be counterproductive to force yourself to play when you don't feel like it. You bookmark the tutorial so it can be summoned at the tap of your finger when the time's right. When the time's right, you'll nail that tutorial. But you need your energy first. Time for lunch. There's nothing in the fridge, but there's plenty in the freezer that you just need to pop in the microwave. Now it's a waiting game. You've got eight minutes. You'll send out a group message to get something moving this weekend. You type it out, but it doesn't sound funny enough yet, so you'll wait until after you've eaten. When you've had time to think. You've still got five minutes. Now would be a good time to grab your guitar. The tutorial's only three minutes. But then I'd have to play my guitar in the kitchen, and that'd be weird. You flick the television on. There's nothing good on this channel. Or that channel. Or that channel. Lunch is ready. Tastes weird. No problem, I'll just grab something on the way to town... And on, and on, and on.
I don't know about you, but this sounds like hell to me. The world around us literally falls away when we apply pressure. There's nothing to lean on, to structure your behaviour around, to grapple with. The world around us demands no attention, just the flick of a switch.
We live in an increasingly frictionless world. And it's our human instinct as problem solvers to make it that way. Juicing oranges is messy business, so we buy juicers. Navigating a busy supermarket can be an ordeal, so we order online. Awkward conversations can haunt us for weeks, so we'd much rather send a text. We save a lot of time and energy, and that's terrific, because we generally have better things to be doing than juicing, trolley-pushing, and dealing with other people. We design an environment that demands little of us in return, so that we can turn our attention to what matters most.
While we all agree that cutting out the middleman is generally productive, we employ them every day to avoid getting our hands dirty. And the middleman takes many forms; technology, convention, fashion, even language. I needn't go to the trouble of proving my devotion to my girlfriend when I can say "I love you" once in a while. I needn't worry about encountering strangers when I'm shielded by etiquette. I needn't worry about embodying my philosophy when it's tattooed behind my ear. Technology and language, for example, can connect us to the world in ways that would be unthinkable without them, but when they become substitutes for genuine connection, as opposed to extensions, we have a problem.
When the world around us yields at the flick of a switch or the click of a mouse, don't we lose a sense of what and who we are? How are we supposed to measure our own actions when the consequences are out of our control? How do we figure out what needs to be done when there's nothing to be done? There are no reference points. No yardsticks. And when our environment demands nothing from us, what's the point in us at all? The challenge shifts from mastering the environment to becoming a master decision-maker, because that's all that's left to do. By separating decision-making from the actions that follow, we create the perfect conditions for analysis paralysis, which we all know and love.
Most of us have been brought up to believe that we can be whatever we want to be. The sky's the limit. But this has always made me feel more dread than inspiration. It means that there's no hope of discovering who you are, because there's nothing there to discover. You need to create yourself, from scratch. I don't know about you, but this kind of responsibility keeps me awake at night.
Whether we like it or not, we're growing comfortable in this frictionless world. We squirm when we really bump into our environment head on. When we get into our first scuffle; when we cook our first meal; when we sit down at the piano; when we step out onto the pitch with experienced players; when we read our stories aloud to others at the table. In these instances, our actions and their reactions are authentic and unmediated. We are laid bare. Our reaction is often, "I'm not cut out for this," and we retreat behind our curtain. But these experiences, which we acknowledge as risky, novel, strange, painful, and clumsy, provide rare glimpses of what and who we are in the real world because they connect us to it. For brief moments, our actions and their consequences are back to back. When we see ourselves in context of a living, breathing world, we realise that we're not floating heads, we're not removed, we're real people.
Grappling with the world around us can be scary and uncomfortable for the same reasons that it can be joyous and thrilling and intriguing and fulfilling. When we interact directly with our environment, and not through some middleman or representation or substitute, we can begin to understand our own actions and who we are. We're released from the anxiety of having decide our purpose, because we are discovering our purpose as we go along. A pre-existing structure reveals itself that we can anchor ourselves to, that we can ground ourselves on, that we can rely on.
There is a big world out there, but it's not up to us to decide what it means. It's up to us to discover what it means, one tiny success or failure at a time. We can only do this when we step out from behind the curtain and tackle our environment head on. An environment that demands our attention if we want to get anything out of it. This is the point at which we climb out of our head and start living in the moment.
For these reasons, my 2017 resolutions are to:
- Call instead of text.
- Ask my neighbour before I ask Google.
- Share a piece of writing once a week.
- Play my bass with other musicians.
- Juice my own oranges.