Twenty-Something Thoughts
I think a lot. And I don’t mean that in a good way. It’s usually not overwhelming but it’s constant. So much so that, quite frequently, I feel dissociated from reality, almost as if there were a layer, an unusually thick veil in between. Anyway, I digress.
I’ve just had dinner and on a quiet Friday night like this, I feel like looking at some of those thoughts that float around me. Curated, of course.
Note: This is meant to be a note-to-self more than anything else.
Finding Purpose and (its cousin) Passion
What is one to do in life? There’s the standard “Do something you are passionate about; find your purpose”. But most of us, I think, don’t know what we are passionate about and purpose seems like a distant, nebulous concept. We haven’t had to think about it on the preset path we have been on since birth. Only when we become the CEOs of our own lives does it come into focus.
The question assumes a central position. What is one to do?
It, however, seems to have something to do with doing. That most of the times, the problem is our inaction more than our not knowing. Because inaction is such an easy thing to do. You do nothing! It’s an easy trap to fall into, to lie around and wait for “passion” or the “aha!” moment.
But that doesn’t work. It’s better to allow actions to beget passion than wait for passion to jerk us into action. Inactivity, if not chosen by design, is insidious. It can eat away our lives.
But, where do we start? Where do we go? Which direction, which branch do we take and act upon?
Trees and Branches
“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
~ The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
Ever since I read this passage, I’ve lamented about the fig tree, about how most of the paths we can choose in life are mutually exclusive. We can’t have it all; we can’t live it all.
Yes, Plath’s symbolism is deeper and darker but still, whenever I saw trees, with their branches spread out, I’d sigh. Especially, when the trees didn’t have leaves so I could see the branches in their naked exclusivity.
Why can’t we be this and that and that too? Why can’t we experience this and that and that too? Why can’t we…
Why do we have to choose?
Sure, we can switch careers, try out a lot of things, but at the end of the day (actually, life), we live one life. And that seemed so restrictive, so limiting. So paralyzing.
Lately though, I’ve come to see — as a lot of things can be seen — the same thing in a different light. I’ve grown to accept, even like the fact that trees have branches. I’m glad of it.
Branches are cool. They spread out. They’re all for exploration and choices: a different world for every branch. So many possible worlds, so many possible choices and when we have a forest of trees-with-branches, we have a forest of possibilities.
That’s beautiful in a way, how it sort of feels limitless when we stop being overwhelmed, take a deep breath in, and see it as it is. How we can do almost anything.
As long as we start somewhere.
(I’m also grateful for the roots and the trunk that have lifted me to a place where I can see and follow the branches. I’m grateful to have this privilege of choice.)
Starting with the self
Starting with the self is a good start. That includes self-awareness and self-love.
One of the most important things to do in one’s life is knowing oneself. Cliched. I know. But it’s important.
I mean you’re the one who is with you 24/7: through all the shitty things in life, through all the stupid things you do, through all the funny-yet-too-trivial-to-share moments you encounter, through all your happy times, through your moments of weakness, through all the stare-at-the-ceiling-close-to-midnight times.
Would you spend so much time with someone you don’t know and love? No, right? So it makes sense to know and love that person.
What does it mean to know ourselves? It means knowing what things affect us and in what ways. What’s our natural disposition? Is that natural or did it arise out of some experience of ours? What’s our emotional disposition and stability and unstability?
In what way are we crazy?
Self-awareness exercises, reflections, writing journals or even thinking helps.
Similarly, learning about the world we live in and humans in general — through books, travel, interactions — is also part of knowing the self. Because that gives us insight into all the forces that have shaped us and made us as well as all the forces that could mould us differently. We are not a detached piece of the Universe. We are a (tiny) part of it. Connected. We need to have good mental models of the world and also of the self.
And, love is important too.
If we aren’t our best friend — supportive, accepting, loving — then everyday life becomes an uphill battle. It’s like walking around with a weight attached to our heads.
Heavy.
The Worshiped and the haunted
“Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship — be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles — is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.”
~ This is Water, David Foster Wallace
One aspect to understand about ourselves is what we worship and what haunts us.
Everybody worships something(s) and usually, they are haunted by what they worship.
If we worship other people’s opinion of us, we are haunted by the fear that they’ll see our bad sides. If we worship acceptance, belonging, we are haunted by the fear of being alone, cast away or conversely, we could be haunted by our own conformity in our quest to “belong”.
Knowing about these aspects of ourselves isn’t to judge what we worship. It’s to find out what commands us into doing the things we do, into taking the actions we take. It’s to be deliberate about what’s in our head.
Because it’s all in the head.
The Mind
The Brain — is wider than the Sky —
For — put them side by side —
The one the other will contain
With ease — and You — beside —The Brain is deeper than the sea —
For — hold them — Blue to Blue —
The one the other will absorb —
As Sponges — Buckets — do —The Brain is just the weight of God —
For — Heft them — Pound for Pound —
And they will differ — if they do —
As Syllable from Sound —~ 632, Emily Dickinson.
We once had a talk event at work with the theme: “What superpower would you want if you could have any?” and one of my friends had something along the lines of “Mastering my own mind”. It didn’t stump me over at that time but it has grown on me. That is indeed a superpower. Not because it could help us delude ourselves into eternal bliss but because it is, to a certain degree, attainable and can enable us to live the way we want to.
Because we live and die in our heads. Our minds make our thoughts.
And our thoughts make us: they make us unhappy, make us happy, make us feel stupid. Make us feel pain. Make us ecstatic.
So it’s vital to not be its slave. To instead master it or be its friend.
A good way to master it is to watch our thoughts and choose what and how to think. That’s the biggest choice we have and can make use of.
Of course, that’s so much easier said than done.
The mind is a roller-coaster that goes both down into the depths of hell and up into the glories of heaven, through thoughts of all kind: murky, clear, midnighty.
Footnotes and Links
- “This is Water”. Beautiful, beautiful commencement Speech to Kenyon College class of 2005 by David Foster Wallace. I nearly cried the first time I listened to it.
- On life purpose and (Screw) finding passion by Mark Manson.
- Mental Models, Farnam Street. Heavily inspired by Charlie Munger.
- “Know Yourself”, a detailed chapter on knowing oneself by The School of Life.
Related self plug:
