An Open Letter to Me
There are two types of people in this world — those who have something to say and those who don’t. I’m always one to take the approach that all things are two sides of the same coin. I don’t believe in a pure duality. For example a wave has a crest and a trough but one does not say a wave is either a crest or a trough. It is the successful combination of both, “if you have one to the extreme you will become very unscientific, but if you have the other to the extreme you become a mechanical man” ~ Bruce Lee. There are two sides to a magnet, but if you choose to lie on an extreme you must know that you do not exist without the other extreme. I am in relation to that. Identity necessarily involves difference and difference necessarily involves identity. All this is to say the same thing, those who feel they do not have something to say are one and the same as those who do. And those who do only do because they found themselves at one point with nothing to say. An image I love to remind myself of with regards to this is the ocean. The wave is something the entire ocean is doing, not what it is doing on its own. It is this way of thinking that helps me, whenever I find myself judging or looking at another person in a way that involves judgement rather than understanding, to realize that I am that. This is something I always tell myself when I see difference and I see myself judging rather than understanding — I say “I am that” — or as is said in Sanskrit “Tat tvam asi”.
“The wave is something the entire ocean is doing” ~ Alan Watts
Now there is one thing I want to note here, because this is a way of thinking I have often come across in my communities. I mention influences from various sources which have had an influence on who I am today at various points in my writing. But my mention of ancient Sanskrit knowledge, Buddhist knowledge, Chinese knowledge, idioms, is not a way to prop up one way of thinking or knowledge above another. It is not to say that this source has all the answers, or this source has known this for a long time and therefore the Sanskrit world is superior. I mention all these influences because they have sincerely connected me to myself in one way or another, but none of them are the way that I subscribe to and none of them are in my eyes above another. All paths lead to oneself or as Bruce Lee says, “All knowledge ultimately means self-knowledge”. It is with this approach that I mention the influences I do and I want to speak directly to any readers who approach the knowledge from any system I present in this writing and say, do not think because I have mentioned a Taoist way of thought that it is superior. Because if you do so you have immediately created a wall within yourself and this writing will not have the impact I hope it to have.
Now to go back to what I began with — those who have something to say and those who don’t. How then do you find yourself with something to say? As an artist, as a scientist, as a researcher, as a doctor, as a human being, you must approach your given form of expression with the self-awareness and knowledge that gives your expression voice. You must have something to say. As Quincy Jones says, “You have to believe in something to write”. Now how is it you find this belief? The process to me follows these three lines of questioning — 1) What do I feel? 2) Why do I feel what I feel? 3) Who would I be without that thought?
1) What do I feel? 2) Why do I feel what I feel? 3) Who would I be without that thought?
Now I want to make an analogy to you. When you go for a massage, would you ever walk up to your masseuse and ask them to massage where it feels good for you? No. Because if you did that you would feel no benefit whatsoever. You ask them to massage where it feels uncomfortable. Where it hurts. Jon Stewart’s one piece of advice to Hasan Minhaj, the last hand-picked correspondent on “The Daily Show”, was this, “Find what makes you uncomfortable and make that your home. Make that the source of your material”. Jon also says in an interview about his creative process that he sees it as a continuum. There is no beginning or end to the process, it is always underway. And it’s through this way that Jon is able to be the comedic genius he is today, Hasan is able to bring the genuineness through the comedy he does today, and both these people have found that they now have something to say. When you seek what is your discomfort, you are asking yourself, truly openly and honestly — without lying to oneself, What do I feel? The moment you begin to ask this you have questioned whether what you are right now is really what you are. When you start to question — is this true, this is how you can begin to go to a place of just receiving. The moment you begin to just receive, is the moment you can begin to flow from in to out rather than out to in as Kyle Cease says. This is how you experience change, and if you don’t have “the pliable flexibility to change with change” as Bruce Lee says, then you have no choice but to snap. This is why houses in Japan are built from bamboo so when that earthquake comes, you have the flexibility to adapt and change.
“Find what makes you uncomfortable and make that your home. Make that the source of your material”
Once you have truly asked yourself, what do I feel, you then push on to why do I feel this? Now when you ask this question, you have to be very careful. There are two ways to approach this, one is through your head the other is through your body. Your mind will give you all sorts of explanations — it will say, “I feel angry because my father is so inconsiderate. He’s always lashing out at me, but he never stops to take care of himself. Blah Blah Blah”. It will start to point to everybody else, everyone outside of yourself to stop you from looking into yourself. The mind is resistant to change because it wants to remain in what is comfortable. It doesn’t want to push into the uncomfortable, but comfort is the way to remain stagnant. And discomfort is the only way to push the brain to wire new connections. So your brain will try and push you to remain comfortable and not look within yourself. Now the second way to answer this question is to listen to your body. Simply sit and feel what your body is feeling in that moment. Does it feel tense, or does it feel relaxed with that thought? Does it feel light to hold onto that thought or does it feel heavy? Answering this question, will guide you in the last step which is asking yourself, “Who would I be without that thought?” Now if you find that thought heavy and you understand the reason for that thought, you can then begin to imagine the possibility of being someone other than that thought. That thought is no longer you and you no longer have to hold onto it. You no longer think that this defines you. And here, finally on reaching this place you can then go from a place of in to out rather than from out to in.
Comfort is the way to remain stagnant
What is so incredible about this whole process of trying to find what it is you have to say, you did not go and find anything at all! There was absolutely no effort involved in what you did, you simply received and felt. In fact the moment you put yourself in the picture and said, I have to experience this, you put a barrier between yourself and that experience. You put yourself in the middle of it. By doing this you then have to say how do I let go of this in order to move on. But you were the one to hold onto it in the first place!
Now obviously there has to be something to perceive and understand things. And there has to be some you to experience things, but that you is only one side of the coin. That you is only one wave in the ocean, but the entire ocean is working together to make that wave. So “in wheresoever there is life, in wheresoever there is experience, you are that” ~ Alan Watts. This is how you learn not only what you have to say, but that what you have to say is not for one person. It is not for one group of people. It is not for one race, one nationality, one community. It is for everyone, it is universal, and it is something which all of us experience by nature of being part of that ocean.
