22: Four Moments of Your Time
We all have enough to think about. I'm not going to give examples, for fear of opening another load of tabs in your mindchrome, but you already know what yours are. So I'm hesitant to offer any more thoughts, but Eureka has been in dormancy since June. And you're still on this list. So I think I've earned enough credit.
Here's a few things I've been thinking about, and would like to experiment with. You're welcome to them, too.
One: The Wisdom of the Body, The Folly of the Mind
Sometimes it feels like we’re minds piloting bodies. Brains, grudgingly facilitated by brawn. And that can get worse as you get older: your body's frailties show themselves (I seem to have a dodgy knee), and you begin to feel encumbered by this thing that won't do what you tell it to. But it's a miracle that it helps you do anything at all.
And beyond that thought: what if the body doesn't help you, but is you? We think we live up here *gestures towards eyes*, but that's confusing identity with viewpoint. Up here is simply where the cameras are installed. Sitting behind that is a spongy mass that seems to call the shots... except when you're hungry. Or tired, or brokenhearted.
My darkest times this year are where I've been too much in my head. Mind always thinks it's right, even when it's saying something really unhelpful. And trying to debate your mind on its own turf – trying to argue it out of how it feels – well, that's stepping into the lion's den with a chair.
So, try to dodge the argument and listen to the body. Specifically, do things that the body… can't really understand? Things that you know you enjoy, but your mind couldn't give a great explanation for why. What, rationally, is the joy in dancing? In a hot bath? In a swim in the cold cold sea? I couldn't exactly tell you. And that's the point. Your mind is helpful, but it hasn't got you figured yet. So maybe it can be the follower, sometimes.
Two: You're More Than You Think
We're all following some vague strategies for life, handed down by our family, absorbed from our peers, or forged in a crisis and held onto. And you can just go decades executing a strategy without even realising that it exists for you, and doesn't exist for others, and is in fact one of many options.
The impotence of the year has helped me spot one of mine. I used to follow this program:
if you can create a clear, precise, and narrow self-concept, a brand, and just live it, everything will be fine and easy.
This comes partly from working in advertising, where people try to define brands with distinct personalities and distinct consumer benefits – not to mention the many practitioners of advertising to try to build their own brands in that way.
But it also comes from all that Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours stuff. In order to get really good at a thing, you have to FOCUS on that thing so PICK A THING and do it, DO THE THING-
-which involves saying an awful lot of no. To who, exactly? To yourself. And I just think I'm not cut out for that. There's a lot of parts of me that would like to be heard.
But what about the 10,000 hours, and being an amazing writer/musician/whatever? Fair question. But the people you admire are almost always broader than you think. Iain Banks loved playing Civilisation, as do I. Ursula K Le Guin made an album to accompany Always Coming Home (and it's great). M John Harrison loves climbing, and ended up writing a novel about it.
So, maybe a good life doesn't start with 10,000 hours of drawing or parkour or yoga, but 10,000 hours of being you. That's what I'd love to master.
Three: Nothing Is a Something
The pandemic took our options away, the things we could buy, the things we could do, and the internet flowed into every gap: read this, play this, take this class online, have stuff sent to your door-
I've spent a lot of time with an app called Waking Up (and I can get you a free month if you ask me). It's a really good meditation app, with fascinating theoretical bits, but maybe the best effect has been the meditation itself. A space of nothing, disguised as a something. Those nothings have added up, and in that silence you turn to yourself: who am I when I'm not all this?
This also applies to speech; as every Telltale game reminds the player, "Silence is an option." This year I've been in the presence of people's anxiety, frustration, and grief, and it's taken ages for me to realise the simple truth that they don't want you to talk them out of this. Sometimes, people don't need your words. They just need you.
Four: Thank Them For The Music
I've been shying from the jump of pushing out another newsletter for months. Various ideas have come, and gone. But the thing that nudged me into action today was an email last night. Someone who'd read my essay in Better Than IRL, and liked it, and told me so. It picked me up, and here I am.
We live in a world where many things seem abundant, but appreciation is a scarce resource. Which is strange, because it's free but for a little time and emotional energy. It's become clear how much we need each other, and generosity has been the water-wings that've carried us all over the sea.
So let us help people continue to give, by noticing them. There's nothing self-aggrandizing in this; it's human to want people to feel your impact. It refills the tank. You already know this – if you're part of Eureka then I know that you, too, are one with a lot to give. And that in 2020, you gave.
I thank you for what you've brought to the big table this year.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
James
London, 31/01/2020