Out of Time

I'm out of time. Not running short on it: I'm outside the usual stream of it. One way of looking at this unit that we measure our lives by is that it's like a bunch of different streams all running in the same direction. I feel like Asha and I are in our own little stream here in Madrid. Partly it's because we traveled here: the act creates its own offshoot stream in time through the oddly shaped days, byproducts of moving across time zones. Travelers dip in and out of these offshoots, unique streams that eventually vanish as one adapts to the rising and falling of the sun in a new place. Adapting here in Madrid is made more complicated by the fact that Spain has a whole different rhythm than home. It's like that scene in Whiplash: "Not quite my tempo." Breakfast isn't the deal I make it at home; lunch waltzes in late; dinner hides until late into the night.

I'm not complaining, really. It's just that we are in this one stream of time and I keep looking at everyone else in that bigger stream, wondering what it feels like.

Sometimes this feeling of out of time is a revealing one: the strange aliveness of early mornings or late nights. Riding those streams, one can capture different parts of the human experience. Still, being out of time like Asha and I are at the moment isn't always what one wants: it's fun to be not only the same place but the same time as everyone else. If time is subjective, there might be some value in buying into the collective experience of a community in time. I think Asha and I might be chasing that more than anything as we wander through Spain.

Eventually, we will return to the bigger river and the stream we're passing through right now could be lost forever. For this moment out of time, though, we are in a whole new world of experience. Maybe "suspended in time" means that you've temporarily stepped out of the main community of time to exist in your own stream for a moment. From this place out of time, you can look on at the main river and wonder where it's all taking us. I guess all we know is that it's somewhere downstream.

Stories in the Sky

Watching movies on a comically tiny screen is a required ritual of traveling by airplane. All those movies that I would never go see in the theaters become the perfects companion for the twilight hours I spend in a metal box flying through the sky.

Asha and I were deep into one of these movies on our flight to Madrid when something unusual happened. As a rule, I try to appreciate any art. No matter the quality, it takes some effort to create and we should always begin our experience with art with that in mind because it allows us to lose ourselves in a story. I like to give every story a chance and see if it can take me along for a journey.

This movie we were watching, though, upended my normal approach, fracturing my viewing experience. Normally it's not until after a movie ends that I take of the hat of the pure viewer and try to reflect on what I saw. Almost immediately upon watching the film, my viewing experience began to bifurcate: Daniel lost in the story and Daniel with a bird's eye view of the narrative.

I got a sense that certain parts of the film's story wore thin, some felt just right, and others lagged a beat too long. This scene had the wrong dynamic to it; that scene didn't quite move the story as intended. At the same time, I was still enjoying the movie: certain narrative tools always make me smile. The whole experience was kind of like trying on a coat. I was at once wrapped in the coat, inundated with the story as Daniel the viewer, and viewing how it looked in the mirror, seeing the whole arc of the story as Daniel with some perspective.

The simultaneous experience of these two viewing experiences was strange, but highlighted the importance of each. Both are not only essential important to enjoying a film's story but also your own story, too. Without the ability to get lost in your own narrative, you miss out on the moment to moment magic that the present can offer. Without the switch to seeing your story in the mirror in all its beauty and flaws, you lack the chance to mend the story for the better and to see how it all fits. But when you do find the right coat -- the right story -- for your life you don't need to do anything but put it on and keep moving.

It Comes In All Shapes and Sizes

Asha and I are heading to Europe for a few weeks. I've finished up my internship this summer and have a long stretch of time before classes begin again in late September. Asha doesn't start her new job until October, so now is the perfect time to grab our bags and get out of town for a while.

I've never been to Europe before; neither has Asha. We'll be roaming around Spain, France, Italy, and Greece. I suspect that we've packed things a little too tightly with our schedule, but we've counterbalanced a full itinerary with light backpacks. Packing light never gets old: I love it when people ask, "That's it?" Yes, I say, this is it, but there's so much more out there.

Things have been a little crazy getting ready for this trip. Asha moved across the country to San Francisco and we found a place in the city close to my family. Between wrapping up the internship, doing a few interviews for next summer, apartment hunting, and trying to nail down some logistics for the trip, I haven't really had a chance to really think about traveling in the first place.

Things were different with my trip to South America. I had a lot of time to dream about the mythos of the traveler and envision what it would be like to venture alone through the varied landscapes. However, I only had a plane ticket to Lima, Peru and no fixed plan or point of return. I hopped from one place to another on more or less a whim.

Now, it's only a hot second before I hop on the plane that I'm starting to imagine what the stories of tomorrow look like, but I have the vessels for all those stories laid out for me: a timeline for cities and travel, AirBnBs booked, transportation arranged.

Granting that not everyone can travel and that it's not some panacea for the soul, if you do travel, it's worth exploring the different ways you can bottle the experience. I'm curious to see how this upcoming trip will interact with its constraints. I suppose that's all you can really ask for at the beginning: raw, open-minded curiosity.

The Act of Killing

I recently watched the documentary The Act of Killing. The premise of the film is somewhat confusing, but it is about the people involved with the killings in Indonesia from 1965-66 as a result of an anti-communist purge. The documentary follows a few individuals reenacting their roles in the killings in a bizarre fashion.

In many ways, what the viewer witnesses in the film is indescribable. As the director Joshua Oppenheimer reflected, "It’s as though I’m in Germany 40 years after the Holocaust, but the Nazis are still in power." The perpetrators of the killings are open, honest, and at times even outright boastful about their past.

As the film progresses, you witness one of the main characters, Anwar, painfully wrestle with his past. At the beginning of the film, you see him gleefully discuss how exactly he killed people on the roof of a building. We find out that despite this apparent pride in his role in the killings, he has frequent nightmares about the people he killed. Later in the film, Anwar plays a victim in one scene and refuses to go on, distraught and unable to continue acting. At the close of the film, Anwar revisits the same roof and retches.

Watching The Act of Killing is a challenging experience. In a recent conversation with Sam Harris, Oppenheimer hits right at the core of that experience at around the 42 minute mark:

Recognizing that virtually every act of evil in our history has been perpetrated by human beings like us, it's uncomfortable because it means that we might, if we lived in other situations, do the same thing. If we grew up in any of these perpetrators' families in 1950s Indonesia, come 1965, we might make the same decision. We would hope that we wouldn't, but most of us are very lucky never to have to find that out. And that's uncomfortable.

Oppenheimer continues, digging a little deeper:

But if you overcome that, you quickly realize that recognizing that every perpetrator is human with very few exceptions and shares the same human morality is the only hopeful response because if there's just monsters among us then we either have to surrender ourselves to this kind of thing happening again and again and again in a kind of despair, or we have to isolate the monsters and somehow neutralize them. And then, how do we stop ourselves from becoming the monsters?

Answering his own question:

Whereas if we can build societies in which we foster the widest possible empathy and where we also foster doubt, where we teach children to doubt what authority tells them so that it's more difficult to incite people to join groups that would betray their individual morality, then we ought to be able to build societies where this kind of unimaginable violence truly becomes unimaginable, where it becomes impossible.

This recognition that Oppenheimer speaks of takes far more courage than simply categorizing the people who carry out these despicable acts as the other and the epitome of absolute evil. It's only when we sit with the uncomfortableness that it could've been us given another circumstance that we truly equip ourselves with the tools to engage with this kind of violence.

The Act of Killing (trailer; Theatrical and Director's Cuts available on Netflix) is worth your time and attention.

Being Human is a Process

What does it mean to be human? John Powell answers:

I think being human is about being in the right kind of relationships. I think being human is a process. It's not something that we just are born with. We actually learn to celebrate our connection, learn to celebrate our love.

This idea is important. Just like any skill, being human benefits from an ongoing education. The school? Life itself.

The whole conversation is wonderful. Listen (or read) here.

Turning Inwards

I recently finished my first year of law school. As that recognition sank in, I came across feelings that were nowhere to be found when I finished my freshman year at college. I felt pangs of nostalgia for the rapid learning process of the first year and its many formative moments. I swam in a pool of regret, interrogating myself to see if I had worked hard enough to squeeze ever ounce of worth out of the year.

Those who are close to me know that I am not one interested in getting stuck in the past. I’m a dogged adventurer in search of the elusive present and I view nostalgia and regret with suspicion. From my view, they are the poison-tipped weapons of time past. Wary of their toxins, I’ve spent a lot of time since the year ended trying to sort out the feelings of nostalgia and regret.

To make sense of those feelings, I decided to get extremely close with them. From my own experience, you cannot truly understand what’s going on in your mind unless you are willing to sit with it all for a while, even when it gets uncomfortable. If you can weather the storm, you might just make it to its eye and see things a little more clearly.

With fits and starts, I got close – and found that the feelings dissipated. Regret and nostalgia were simply veneers; something different sat beneath the surface.

It was not the feeling of regret for what was left undone in the past that was pulling at me; it was a fierce commitment to learning and growing in this moment and the next. I was not regretting my navigation of the first year of law school, I was trying to gather the lessons about focus, balance, and care in order to bring them to bear on today. It was a reaffirmation of the virtuous hustle for worthy ends. I wasn’t lost in the past, I was only finding my bearings and making sure I was still moving in the right direction.

It was not the emotion of nostalgia that I was feeling; it was the pressure of a bursting soul. The year’s end finally offered a moment to turn inwards, unencumbered by the distractions of the day-to-day, and, in a flash, I witnessed all the energy I had taken in during months past and subsequently made my own. While I’ve felt a lot of confusion and doubt this past year, plagued by questions of whether law school was even right for me or what should come next, I’ve also slowly built a process of becoming, the sort that Kurt Vonnegut pushed us to chase after. I mistook the opening in the present for the growth of the last year to show itself for a longing for the process of growth itself.

Stripped of these veneers, I had a clearer sense of what was swirling in my head. With that clarity in tow, I re-read both a journal entry from the midst of my first quarter and an essay on capital-H Hope I wrote in the wake of the death’s of Michael Brown and Eric Garner – all the more relevant after the tragedy of Charleston – and noticed that in both cases I was mulling over the same wonderful language from Victoria Safford’s “The Small Work in the Great Work”:

“You know I cannot save them. I am not here to save anybody or to save the world. All I can do — what I am called to do — is to plant myself at the gates of Hope. Sometimes they come in; sometimes they walk by. But I stand there every day and I call out till my lungs are sore with calling, and beckon and urge them in toward beautiful life and love…

There’s something for all of us there, I think. Whatever our vocation, we stand, beckoning and calling, singing and shouting, planted at the gates of Hope. This world and our people are beautiful and broken, and we are called to raise that up — to bear witness to the possibility of living with the dignity, bravery, and gladness that befits a human being. That may be what it is to “live our mission.”

I am wondering and wandering into a sense of how I might stand at a gates of Hope. I feel in myself an intensity that I have touched before but am only now systematically feeding. Where that intensity takes me, I still do not know. As I wrote in that journal entry, I’m not due some clarifying realization. To be honest, anyone who tells you that they do know is fooling themselves. I revisit Paulo Friere’s words often – “We make the road by walking.” – because they hold so much truth.

Far from regret and nostalgia grabbing at me from the past, the feelings brought on by the close of the year were instead rooted in the present: a commitment to the hustle today and tomorrow and a thankful witnessing of my growing soul. As the next moments tumble into one another and the steady beat of my footsteps slowly carve out the road ahead, I would do well for myself to regularly pause, turn inwards, and not lose sight of the true feelings underneath it all.

A Poverty of Listening

I am energized by good conversation. It is often how I make sense of the world. Solvitur sermondo: It is solved by talking. (A dismal adaptation of Solvitur ambulando: It is solved by walking. I apologize in advance to anyone who actually knows Latin.) I have good intentions when I speak my mind. I am curious and interested in different perspectives. Still, I can’t shake the feeling that I contribute to a poverty of listening.

One lesson from my time studying in India has stuck with me: listening well can require more energy than speaking. My group was working with a local non-profit that worked on rural development projects in agriculture, environmental sustainability, finance, and gender equality. A few weeks into our collaboration with them, they initiated outreach with another village in the area to explore the potential of a new partnership. The foundation invited us to take part in an exercise called a Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA).

A PRA is a tool rooted in a fresh-take on developmental philosophy: an organization brings together a representative sample of a community in order to get a sense of the community’s conception of its own needs. For the PRA I attended, women, men, children, farmers, businesspeople, students, and elders all gathered to share how they perceive their own space. Farmers explored the village’s history of crops; women described their average day of work; a hodgepodge of community members drew a map of their resources and problems. It’s a way of figuring out what the community truly needs and wants by flipping the script: they are the experts on what work should be done, not the people coming into the community. It is tough to embrace that role reversal and many times during the PRA I struggled with the format. The more we go to school and the more “educated” we become, the more we assume that it is us that knows everything. Granting that there are cases where substantive expertise is essential to good outcomes, one doesn’t have to look far to see the failures of supposed “experts”.

What’s the converse of this hubris? To listen, really listen. To give our attention to the act of listening is to unlock immense potential. Sincere listening encourages the essentials of good decision-making and growth: collaboration, innovation, and flexibility. It makes us better coequal partners in the greatest project of all, humanity. Through the act of listening, we are chiseled by others’ voices and made into better human beings. I witnessed the simple power of committed listening during the PRA as the community began to tell their own story: where they’d been, where they were, and where they wanted to go. Afterwards, I was given the best compliment I have ever received: one of the leaders of the exercise told the gathered community members that when we had broken into small groups for discussion, he didn’t need to translate as much for me because we had “listened with our hearts”.

What would happen if we were rich in listening with our hearts?

How would our interactions with the Social Web change if instead of seeing blog posts, Facebook updates, and tweets as objects of consumption we saw them as opportunities to connect, learn, and listen?

What would our relationships with our friends, family, and partners look like if we were to give all of our attention to the lost art of listening instead of constantly formulating our next comment or response?

In my future career in law, what would it look like if lawyers, necessary for translating the complexities of the legal system, were to commit to listening to their clients and community’s needs?

What would our politics look like if, instead of getting on the hamster wheel of cheap points and news cycles, our elected officials were willing to listen to their constituents and their opponents?

If we had really listened to the stories from people of color indicting our society with systemic racism, would these damning statistics continue to be true?

I have a hunch that, just as addressing economic poverty unlocks a number of problems, the world would be radically different if we were to take seriously the poverty of listening. How can we all take part in its alleviation? Let’s work towards a world rich in this forgotten skill.

What do you think? I’m listening.

How We Spend Our Days

I recently perused Daily Rituals, a compendium of the daily habits of creatives. I am fascinated by rituals and routines: they provide anchor points for our days. Naturally, I loved exploring how people went about the work of their lives. Over the course of reading the book, I took some time to think about all the things that I want in my routine.

At first, I thought about a regimented plan of attack: wake at this time, complete this and then that and so on. I had constructed my routine like a factory manager might construct an assembly line: in goes the serialized events to be executed and out goes the ideal day.

As I tried to maintain this factory, I quickly recognized its shortcoming: when one thinks about the day as a series of appointments, the joy of living fades. Life is not a series of calendar events, but a confusing and flowing river of experiences. Planning an ideal day of rituals using time proved foolish.

The answer, I think, is to imagine the ideal day of experience. I recalled an essential short essay from James Shelley: The Ideal Day. I re-read the piece and set to constructing an ideal day not through time but experience. Shelley provided a good starting point and I’ve borrowed liberally. Here’s what an ideal day might look like:

Wake up refreshed. Spend some quiet time in meditation, reflection, and gratitude. Be patient and curious with the learning of the day as to stretch the mind. Seek out invigorating conversation. Write something. Practice loving kindness towards others. Have space between commitments throughout the day. Spend time in nature. Move the body. Relax into the evening with value in mind: good art, cooking, and creating. Reflect and meditate again.

Doesn’t that sound wonderful? More importantly, doesn’t it sound completely within reach, starting tomorrow?

I haven’t abandoned my love of routine. I’ve simply traded a foundation of time for a foundation of experience. Some amount of scheduling may inevitably follow from these idealized experiences. Maybe, for example, in order to wake up refreshed and have the space to meditate and reflect in the mornings, I have to make sure to budget for sufficient sleep and time. But what dictates this schedule is a principle of experience, not time.

I promise that this is a distinction with a difference. When we think critically about first principles, things begin to fall into place. How we ground our motivations for action in the day to day, the month to month, and the year to year profoundly matters. After all, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” Find your ideal day for the current space and time you are in this moment and edit ruthlessly until you get there.

Meditative Nature

This past fall, I took my first trip to Yosemite National Park. I went for a weekend with a good friend, Jo, who I met while traveling through South America. We had made plans to explore Yosemite together when saying goodbyes in Bolivia and we were incredibly excited to journey such a renowned reserve of nature.

After a long drive from Stanford, we found ourselves in the park and in the midst of the first rainfall in months. California, suffering the crippling effects of the worst drought in over a thousand years, gratefully welcomed the active gray clouds. I, on the other hand, worried that the rain might spoil our adventures for the weekend.

I was wrong. The rain was a blessing, offering a heightened experience of both sight and smell.

One of my favorite words is petrichor. It’s a wonderfully specific word meaning “a pleasant smell that frequently accompanies the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather.” The word comes from Greek, a combination of petros (“stones”) and ichor, the fluid that flows like blood in the veins of the gods.“

The word first appeared in a Nature journal article from 1964 with an enticing title: Nature of Argillaceous Odor. Two researchers, Bear and Thomas, posited in the original article and a follow-up a year later that the unique smell was a result of an oil released by plants during times of duress causing a retardation of seed germination. In simpler terms, the oil is a way to prevent plants from trying to grow in a resource challenged setting, a stop sign for nature. As the oil is released, it, seeps into clay-based soils and rocks. During a rainfall, the water disperses the oil molecules into the air, producing the unique smell, one borne of a meeting between a survival mechanism and a quintessential component of our cycle of life, rain. (For a more visual explanation, see the It’s Okay To Be Smart Video, "Where Does the Smell of Rain Come From?”)

As Jo and I hiked the tough Upper Yosemite Falls trail the first day, petrichor greeted our nostrils. If there was a time to encounter petrichor, it was during a rainfall in the midst of a severe drought. The smell opened my awareness to the other senses and I began to notice something spectacular: the effect of the rain on my visual field. The greens felt brighter and the browns richer, as if the rain had unlocked a deeper layer of color. The rain had stripped the thin veneer of reality. Looking at the trail, the trees, and the sky, I felt like time was suspended.

Surely, this perceptual boost is an explainable one. It likely something to do with the reflection and refraction of light, that, when combined with dispersion, give us the phenomena of rainbows. Still, it’s tough to grapple with the experience with only the abstractions of science. Instead, maybe one of Jo’s great photographs can illustrate (for more great shots, check out his site):

river shot

Petrichor is a stop sign of nature, a defense mechanism. I think that petrichor and rain are also stop signs for us. Pause, petrichor says, witness the smell. Wait, rain beckons, take in the vivid colors. I wrote previously about the meditative life; perhaps petrichor and rain are meditative nature. Maybe they are gentle offerings of altered sensation. They are explainable and fascinating – the products of evolution and the properties of light and water – but they are best when they are experienced, not understood.

Today, take whatever gentle offering comes your way.