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Today, I went to the park to do a quick workout at a playground close to my apartment. Afterwards, I was sitting on a tree stump next to a small grove near the playground when a small boy ran in my direction. He's blonde, wild-eyed, maybe four or five.
His mom calls, "Where are you going?"
Boy: "Over there. To see all the pretty plants."
Mom: "Ok. Just be careful."
Boy: "Why?"
Mom: "It's damp. You'll get wet."
Boy: "Oh."
He runs in.
I found powerful this episode of OnBeing with David Whyte. Maria Popova helpfully points to some good parts of the conversation here.
One part that Popova doesn't touch on is Whyte's thoughts on the power of questions. Whyte reflects:
The ability to ask beautiful questions, often in very unbeautiful moments, is one of the great disciplines of a human life. And a beautiful question starts to shape your identity as much by asking it as it does by having it answered. And you don’t have to do anything about it, you just have to keep asking, and before you know it, you will find yourself actually shaping a different life, meeting different people, finding conversations that are leading you in those directions that you wouldn’t even have seen before.
I love this idea. Asking better questions is an underrated path towards transformation of both ourselves and others.
Relatedly, Jedidiah Jenkins writes about how another way we can shape others: highlighting what's best in them. Jenkins:
Saying what someone 'is’ is like witchcraft. For this reason, I tell people what is lovely, so that it becomes more of them.
Another way to put it: we are what others pay attention to. There's beauty in this idea of becoming through call and response, though we shouldn't forget James Baldwin's powerful admonition: "You've got to tell the world how to treat you. If the world tells you how you are going to be treated, you are in trouble."
Whyte's poem "Sweet Darkness," which he reads during the episode, offers a little help in the difficult process of choosing how to engage with the world. Its closing lines:
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you
Anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you. What an incredible way of sifting through yes's and no's in life.
Finally, Freddie de Boer on reading:
My recommendation to anyone, but particularly to anyone who wants to restart their habit of regular reading of book-length work, is a project book.
...
A project book is one that you want to take a long time with, often one that necessitates taking a long time with. And though so many of your instincts are going to militate against it, you should stretch out into that time. Get comfortable. Think of your project book as a long-term sublease, a place that you know you won’t live in forever but one that you also know has to come to feel like home. You want to take months, reading little chunks at a time. It might offend your bookworm nature, but I find it’s useful to make a regular appointment– for this hour, twice a week, I will read this book and ancillary materials about it. Think of it like appointment television, if that suits you. Learn to enjoy the feeling of not being in complete control over what you mentally consume all the time, a feeling that has become rarer and rarer.
I've been thinking a lot about reading and its importance to the both the mind and soul. I'm actively rebuilding my identity as a reader, which directly feeds my identity as a writer. A project book is a fantastic way of training that skill. I have a few ideas for one (perhaps Plato's Republic or DFW's Infinite Jest), though I think I will take one up this summer.
Background to this experiment in link-sharing here.
"Out of curiosity..."
To begin a line of questioning this way implies that we a springing out of a place: curiosity.
What could that space – curiosity – mean?
I think it means that we are engaging in a purer, more ennobling form of questioning. Questions that come out of curiosity are the types of questions we ask when we don't have an agenda. They are the questions we ask when we are thirsty for knowledge, embarking on a journey from one space (curiosity) to another (learning).
Our questions can have other positive orientations besides curiosity, like love, or helpfulness.
How, then, can we encourage the better springs of inquiry?
Much of it has to do with pausing. Before we ask a question, we can examine its origin. Is it coming out of curiosity or spite? Kindness or sabotage? We can choose from what mental space our questions flow from.
In doing so, we also dictate the form and beauty of the answer. Those nourished by questions asked out of curiosity will more likely choose the generous response. Downstream, a beautiful response might lead to more beautiful questions.
The next time you ask a question, ask it from the best place you know inside yourself.
Photo credit: Tim Marshall
Seth Godin, though always on point, had a blog post that piqued my interest recently. The premise:
Consider for a moment a party that chose instead to run its primary on Facebook.
I think voting is so interesting -- and so important. This summer, I'll be working at the Brennan Center for Justice with their Democracy Program. I'm excited to dive into the fray of issues relating to voting and elections.
I recently listened to Tim Ferris's podcast interview with Josh Waitzkin (the basis for the book and movie Searching for Bobby Fischer). Waitzkin is an extraordinary mind devoted to how presence can open the moment to both joy and true mastery. I enjoyed the most recent interview so much that I listened to it twice. Josh's approach to parenting is beautiful and reminds me a lot of what my childhood was like. The episode is chock-full with lots of goodies. For more goodness, check out Tim Ferriss's original interview with Josh as well.
Also from Tim Ferriss, I've been thinking a lot about a blog post he wrote recently on "deloading your life":
My Tuesday experience reinforced, for me, the importance of creating large uninterrupted blocks of time (a la maker’s schedule versus manager’s schedule), in which your mind can wander, ponder, and find the signal amidst the noise. If you’re lucky, it might even create a signal, or connect two signals (core ideas) that have never shaken hands before.
My week at Green Gulch was definitely a deloading phase.
Relatedly, Nicholas Bates touches on the importance of the "slow life":
The slow of life is vital. Sometimes in the search for efficiency and convenience we just leave the fast; that's OK for a quick buzz but ultimately it's a little unsatisfying and just leaves us seeking the next and bigger bit of speed. Which surely means it's all over too quickly.
Really living the slow life is the subject of the YouTube channel Primitive Technologies. I heartily recommend his first video where he makes a hut and his most recent where he creates a bow. Watching these videos is absolutely mesmerizing.
To close this collection, I love a passage by Erich Fromm that Maria Popova highlights in this post:
To have faith means to dare, to think the unthinkable, yet to act within the limits of the realistically possible; it is the paradoxical hope to expect the Messiah every day, yet not to lose heart when he has not come at the appointed hour. This hope is not passive and it is not patient; on the contrary, it is impatient and active, looking for every possibility of action within the realm of real possibilities.
Even as a nonbeliever, I identify with the conception of faith as active hope. It's a powerful idea.
Muir Woods. Photo credit.
Over spring break, I spent a week on Green Gulch Farm, a zen center in the Marin Headlands north of San Francisco.
I stayed there as a guest student and followed the schedule of the center. The routine of the day encouraged me to deepen my practice of mindfulness in a way that I had been unable to do so before. I've searched for the words to describe the state that being at Green Gulch put me in and the closest I have is the idea of an extended deep breath. You know how before a trying moment, you steel yourself with a generous breath and create a small clearing in your mind for the chaos to come? Or, taking a step further, how a quiet, effortless morning invigorates you for the challenges of the upcoming day? One step more and you have what it was like for me at Green Gulch: a week-long deep breath.
Within the quiet of that deep breath, I was surprised at how little there was for my mind to chase. I had just finished up a quarter at law school, meaning I was in-between one of the four seasons of responsibility as a law student (three quarters and a summer job every year). I was empty. I mean this in a completely positive sense: I was able to receive every moment with care and joy. I rested gratefully in this refreshing emptiness knowing that I was to return to a life of action soon.
In the middle of the week, the schedule is interrupted by a completely free day. I used the time to walk to Muir Woods and back. I say this with no exaggeration: Muir Woods is one of my favorite places on earth. A walk through these woods brings out the best of nature's colors: vibrant greens and rich browns. Trees mean so much to me. They represent powerful metaphors of wisdom, effortlessness, growth, and community.
As I inhaled the rich air -- offerings of these great redwoods -- I couldn't shake a phrase: trees sitting zazen. Zazen is the word used to describe Zen meditation, the foundation of Zen Buddhist practice. The redwoods in Muir Woods were sitting zazen as I gently greeted them that day, nobly pondering the quiet. They had sitting zazen been for a long time and they would continue sitting in silence until they returned to the ground from their great heights. There's a particular part of Muir Woods that I cherish called Cathedral Grove, a designated refuge of quiet from disruptive human noise so that certain species can thrive. In the Grove, I sensed the redwoods deep in the practice of sitting zazen.
This idea of trees sitting zazen reminds me of a passage from The Crossroads of Should and Must:
Have you ever been to northern California and stood at the base of a redwood tree? If you have, you know first hand its majesty, its size, the trunk that you and even two or three friends cannot wrap your arms around. These trees reach unfathomable heights, strong and beautiful, lifting skyward. But what you cannot see when you stand at the foot of this tree is what is happening underneath. While a redwood tree can grow 360 feet tall, the roots are only, on average, about ten feet deep. This is because they spread their roots outward, searching for other redwood trees. Their roots intertwine under the ground, and they hold each other up. A redwood tree cannot stand on it’s own, and neither can we.
Meditation is often a solitary endeavor. Though I've meditated around other people before, the week at Green Gulch was the first time I had spent a lot of time practicing regularly with others. It is a community of individual seekers, a seeming paradox: together, apart; apart, together. Like the redwoods, we can only reach our greatest heights when our roots are interwoven.
I want to reach into that feeling of trees sitting zazen, that deep peace in our collective becoming. From that quiet space, I can do the work of life with wisdom and compassion.
Photo credit: Hugo Kerr
Who are my spiritual ancestors?
I've been thinking about this question a lot recently. My self-identification as an atheist says very little about my spirituality. As I have said before, my lack of belief says something about me, but atheism isn't a philosophy of life.
The devout have a rich tapestry of thinkers and teachers to pull from. This deep and direct spiritual ancestry offers a history of thought and an evolving debate of meaning to explore. From this spiritual lineage, believers can learn to avoid the mistakes of the past and build a brighter future. That the faithful have figures to look doesn't mean that they are closed to the thoughts of others, it just means that their traditions have done some of the work of sorting out what it means to live.
As a nonbeliever, however, I used to feel adrift at sea. I can find fellow travelers throughout history, though their lack of belief was often obscured. Even when it is in the open, the spiritual side of it might not be. I felt that I didn't have anyone to point to and really say, "She is part of my tribe; she speaks for me."
I am no longer adrift. I realized that while we cannot choose our actual ancestors, we have the absolute freedom to choose our spiritual ones. The whole landscape of thinkers, doers, and dreamers are available to me.
Who have I chosen?
Whoever speaks to me. Whoever has something to say about the great questions of life. Seneca, the Buddha, and yes, even Jesus. J.K. Rowling and Pablo Neruda. Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. There are no barriers to join my fellowship. Those with something to offer are always welcome.
I am not adrift at sea. I am in the crow's nest, using every tool available. My spiritual ancestors each have something to say about navigation and I take their counsel seriously. I don't know where I am sailing to, though it has already been a beautiful journey so far and will surely continue to amaze and surprise me in the many moments ahead.
"He spoke in broken English, but we finally got around to understanding what he was trying to say."
I'm sure you've said something like that before. We use the word "broken" to describe someone's capacity for language. I think this is so interesting.
Implicit in this description is this idea: When we present our broken words to the world, we are giving the chance to others to repair us, to fix us, to heal us. We are presenting vulnerability in the hopes that another will show kindness and understanding. When we speak in broken words, two people have to transcend the limitations of a particular language by way of gestures, tone, and lots of patience. It can be frustrating but it is so human in its beauty. When we don't make that extra effort to understand, we leave the individual with their fractured language broken.
There's a Japanese art called kintsugi that takes broken pottery and repairs it using gold. The art is driven by a philosophy that breakage and repair are essential to the story of an object and that we shouldn't just hide this vulnerable past.
The same goes for people. We shouldn't hide our brokenness, we should repair each other with gold. Maybe when we are truly embracing the Golden Rule, we are practicing the art of kintsugi with people.
To be broken implies the possibility of repair. We all have the chance to engage in the beauty of reconstruction. Will you try?
I don't want more. I want enough.
Enough is the wealth of experience over things.
Enough is the stuff in your pack that doesn't weigh you down but gives you freedom, both physical and mental.
Enough is the set of commitments that stretch you just far enough to be uncomfortable but not so far to break you down.
Enough is downtime, margin, and space.
Enough is understanding what you do and do not know.
Enough is that careful meal where you savor every bite, sip the wine slowly, and let the evening deepen like someone settling into the groove of a hammock.
Enough is the moment of reading before bed where the words become hazy and forgetable and you tumble softly into sleep.
Enough is the amount of rest so that in the morning you smoothly greet the day, stepping carefully from dreaming to wakefulness.
Enough is the facial dance of a newborn finding his place in the world.
Enough is the breath, an ever-present tool of awareness.
Enough is the gentle insight that I am sufficient.
Enough is enough.
Photo credit: Reza Shayestehpour
In the last year, I've wrestled with my sense of direction. I came to law school with a roughly-hewed mission with the intent of sorting it all out upon arrival.
Turns out, the sorting is pretty hard. Many of my classmates have their futures neatly sequenced, their energies bent towards well-defined means and well-defined ends like law review, clerkships, jobs at law firms, and so on. I admire their laser-like focus. To see people living their mission is to be a rare witness to another's becoming.
My process, on the other hand, has been more nebulous. I am a decision-maker in a hazy fog. Etymologically, the word decision traces to the idea of cutting off. Right now, I stand before a vast decision tree and a sharpened saw, but I haven't made many cuts. In order for the tree to grow properly, I have to prune its branches so that it can reach further towards the sun. So far in law school, I've approached the tree and left it with a number of tentative, half-sawed branches of no's. But I've come up empty with yes's, the branches that I want to use to climb upwards.
Throughout this process, I've thought a lot about the way in which one should stand before the tree. First, I don't think that I should hide my indecision. Under the surface, many if not all of us are battling with self-doubt, so I do myself no favors pretending. I'd rather invite people in than suffer alone in my confusion.
Second, I think the process of cutting off branches, choosing one to begin the ascent, and climbing upwards requires playfulness. This playfulness demands two inextricably linked movements of wondering and wandering. To wonder is to enter a mental space with lightness and imagination. To wander is to indiscriminately explore one's surroundings, to search for lost, and to make the road by walking. Wondering and wandering might ostensibly be partitioned to their respective mental and physical planes; in truth, they bleed into one another. When we wander, we feed our wonder. As we wonder, we remove the mental blocks in the way of effortlessly wandering. We need to be playful as we approach the tree. Our capacity to wonder and wander fuel this play.
Third, standing before the tree can cripple you with uncertainty if you never get moving. Here, some of my favorite words from Seneca that I've revisted recently are apt:
The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune's control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.
Only when we live immediately in the face of uncertainty do we even live at all. While I shouldn't pretend that I have everything figured out, I also shouldn't wallow in uncertainty. After all, the point isn't to stand before the tree but to feel the breeze at the top.
I don't have the answers. I don't think I ever will. What I do know is this: even as I make decisions, cut off branches, and begin my climb, other branches will grow, and I will have to backtrack in order to climb higher still. All I can hope is that I have joy in the process and have others with me climbing, laughing, loving, and growing.
Photo credit: Luke Chesser
During the Enlightenment, the greatest minds were tweeting. Instead of utilizing the medium of the internet their network for spreading ideas were "penny universities." For just a penny — the price of a cup of coffee — diverse groups of people gathered in English coffeehouses to discuss news and debate the latest ideas in philosophy, science, and politics. The takeaways from these gatherings in the coffeehouses — dubbed “penny universities” — spread to others in the network through individuals called "runners." All of us today rest on the shoulders of those who sat in these penny universities, pushing the frontiers of ideas.
Fast forward to today and one might observe that the penny university model has ostensibly been replicated. In the digital town square of the internet, anyone — and everyone — can gather and engage in a wide-ranging conversation. Gone is the requirement of a physical space or the entry fee of the price of a cup of coffee. With the internet, we all have access to the world at our fingertips. Conversations pass through the varied modern penny universities of social media by way of the modern-day “runners”: shares, retweets, and links. Tapping into the potential of these modern-day runners means the chance that an idea can spread like wildfire and connect with a massive audience.
With that said, this picture is far too rosy. Yes, access has never been better and collaboration can be effortless. However, today's digital town square is woefully missing something. Those first penny universities were rooted in both a community of place and a community of purpose: the students were serious about contributing to the vibrant network of knowledge by way of gatherings over coffee in physical spaces. Only after intimate and fervent debate did the runners circulate ideas.
With widened access we've sacrificed an enviable signal to noise ratio. Often, people unwittingly choose to add noise. Our conversations in the hallways of the modern penny university can't just be about what's trending by virtue that it is trending. What is important may prove to be viral, but what is viral isn't always important. Technology isn't the problem; how we use it is.
We are all runners now in a massive network of penny universities When we pass something on, we are signaling its importance. Each of us has a small share of the responsibility to make our conversations mean something and to push the envelope yet again. A revitalized network committed to the project of the old English coffeehouses could demonstrate the impact of reasoned and intentional discussion. We could be on the precipice of another Enlightenment. Today, walk through the gates of our modern penny universities mindfully and take your role in the great debate of ideas seriously.
