but at least i had wind in my sails.
…and now, the wisdom of chaos and three-year-old heart-logic
to set me free.
*****
at sushi two weeks ago, i interrupted casual conversation to
confess my secret to my parents.
“so i’m having second thoughts about this whole PhD thing.”
i watched my mom swallow that one, quick to offer guidance.
“but you’ve worked so hard on it already,” she said. “i think you should do
it.”
annoyed, i realized i wasn’t seeking her advice. but she’s a
mom and moms can’t help doing mom sorta things, so i forgave her. and went on
to list all the reasons justifying my cold feet, not lowest on the list the
realization that i was beginning to think it was a waste of time and that my
energy could be better contributed elsewhere.
a week later, awash in mixed feelings, my committee approved my dissertation proposal and i passed my
comprehensive exam, the long-awaited green light somewhere near a third of the
way through the endless doctoral tunnel.
‘congratulations!’ they said. and ‘aren’t you excited? all
your hard work paying off.’
i sort-of smiled, thanking them for their support.
numb in obligation, i felt resigned to duty; disimpassioned as every achievement inched me closer to a seeming point-of-no-return. the
lizard-pirate walking the plank, open-mouthed crocodiles awaiting my every
purpose-driven move, ready to eat me alive.
because what if your chosen purpose doesn’t really seem to
have a purpose anymore?
what if a dream-come-true feels more like dread instead?
*****
head
and heart suffered irreconcilable differences; divorce no easy solution.
whimsical
heart said sweetly: ‘i want’ … ‘i love’ … ‘i live for…’, pulling me gently,
begging me to pay attention.
but
rational head kept winning with its gutturally ingrained mantras: ‘i should’ …
‘i’m supposed to’ … ‘it makes more sense if i…’
chest
felt tight as i inhaled, siding with logic over love, sidelined again.
******
“1…. 2…. ffreee…. 4!”
proudly, my not-so-baby-anymore counted the sides of a pentagon-shaped block. i
observed the scene in wintry Connecticut from my screen in summery Costa Rica.
“and what about this one?” patiently, his mom pointed to the
fifth side he had overlooked. at this point in the conversation, he was wearing no pants.
“one!” he said, pitter-pattering little legs in excitement.
“okay, so four plus one, how many is that?” lovingly, my
sister awaited her son’s calculated response.
pausing for just a moment, he threw his arms in the air, exuberant
in mathematical solution:
“twentyyyy!” he
yelled, all the confidence in the world a shrieking trill of delight. that
feeling you get in algebra class when x = 2 and y = 3, and you can’t help but gloat
in the satisfaction of tidy completion; the joy in knowing you’re right.
we all laughed as i watched his cute little buns shimmy into
the kitchen, a thousand miles away.
how wonderful, i
thought, to live in a world where 4-plus-1 can equal 20. to be three and naked
in your living room, before they’ve had a chance to tell you that 4 + 1 = 5,
always and forever no matter what day of the week. when your world is so full
of possibility that the solutions are infinite. where today 4 + 1 equals 20,
and tomorrow 4 + 1 might equal ‘banana’ or ‘helicopter’ or any other piece of
magic you can conjure in the depths of your enthusiastically untainted soul.
where you are the creator of your own particular universe of endless
possibility. when you know you’re right, just because you’re you.
he came back into view belly first, the collar of his shirt
inside out and stuck just above his forehead.
“look at you!” i said. “you look like a nun! Gavin, the
naked nun man!”
“waaaaaahhaahhaaa!” he giggled loudly as he pulled his shirt
all the way off now, tossing it to the side. free as the day he was born.
with a little help from mom, he squirmed his naked mini-body
into pastel purple butterfly wings. he flew around the room like it was his
first instant emerging from the cocoon. he climbed on the coffee table fluttering
his wings, bouncing onto the couch and soaring down low to kiss his little
sister crawling on the floor.
i admired his unique flight pattern, entirely unpredictable.
intricately his, and his alone.
now that is a human being
who knows who he is and what he wants, i thought. so overwhelmingly
comfortable in his own bare skin, he flies with the wind in his wings. no
second thoughts. he was the most authentic creature i’d ever seen.
the magician mathematician naked-nun butterfly man.
god was i jealous.
*****
in attempt to address my existential angst of late, i had
been surfing, and writing, and taking care to surround myself with only those
whose presence brought me joy and offered support in this tedious time of
transition. as a practice i had grown familiar with over the years, i tuned in
to listen to my body, and to my higher self, and to my heart intelligence as my
trusty inner compass. i listened hard.
their impossible silence was slow in insult, deep in
injury. plastic picnic cutlery making a meal out of my flesh, desperately worn
in indecision.
the stuck, idle stillness grew unbearable. there was so much
to do. deadlines loomed with a sense of urgency, begging me to pay attention. i
couldn’t be less motivated to do what i was supposed to.
hours turned into days into weeks in my office. i was bored
as hell, and my back was hurting from all the sitting. all the to-do list not-doing
.
still, the plight of the chameleon weighed heavy on my mind, my soul.
******
post-exam,
i went on surfari to celebrate, and re-evaluate. i sought guidance from the experts. in Charles Eisenstein’s new
book, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts
Know is Possible, he writes of non-doing as the only antidote to overcoming
the uselessly constant sense of urgency propelling ineffective, often
counterproductive action, particularly when we haven’t found clarity on what
the cause of the problem is or what to do about it:
‘there is a time to act, and a time to wait, to
listen, to observe. then understanding and clarity can grow. from
understanding, action arises that is purposeful, firm, and powerful.’
i
had arrived at that place of not knowing what to do. and i had somehow gotten
so good at denying my own sense of self, albeit in true chameleon fashion, by
adapting with such ease to my surroundings that i could no longer trust habit
or judgment to make the right decisions for me. so i sought to embrace the
inherent intelligence of the “rhythm of the phases of action and stillness” in
order to re-discover the gift of my own volition i had buried at the corner of ‘should’
and ‘supposed to’. my prescription was more non-doing, but this time with a
purpose other than avoiding my oppressive to-do list. in essence, i was
attempting the impossible: betting on heart, the underdog, to prevail over head
in the battle for uncontested reign over the kingdom of my own, innately impassioned
free will.
as
i got deeper into the mind-fuck of it all, i realized there was a lot of social
conditioning there that made so many of these internal tensions more complex
than i had ever imagined. but i’d have to sort through them if i was going to
get down to the bareness of my naked chameleon skin, the fancy-free deep in me.
my
tasks were two-fold: 1) reversing
social conditioning into linear rationality, and 2) overcoming my own personal
story of scarcity, both at the core of my discontent.
so
first, i had to somehow divest my thought patterns of the stifling
conditioning of linear rational logic that informed my every decision, with its
message that there are only certain appropriate solutions to our specific
challenges, and that any aberration is simply incorrect and therefore
impossible.
4
+ 1 = 5 (correct).
4
+1 = banana (incorrect).
--i
should finish my PhD because it is the natural progression of my linear personal
path to individual self-actualization, and thus my greatest potential contribution
to society (correct).
--i
should do something totally radical that has nothing to do with linear logic or
academia but embraces my unique gifts because it makes my heart sing with joy
and my soul shake with the passion of a thousand desperate lovers conjoining in
wild, orgasmic embrace (incorrect, and a little pervy).
with
the shoulds on the table in direct confrontation with the social dictates of rational
linearity, listening to my heart meant disavowing one of the biggies in life’s
cardinal rules of engagement, of existence as we know it.
it felt lonely out there.
******
nauseous
and small-feeling, the lizard-pirate bobbled in his sailboat, deep at sea; alone,
thunderous skies raging.
at
last, he sought solace in a strange companion.
chaos.
his spot of sunshine on
the otherwise grim horizon.
******
chaos
theory, to be more specific, offered a way out of the storm of unilinearity, a
colorful space between right and wrong where a plethora of unpredictable
realities existed in limitless, beautiful multiplicity. the infinite complexity
of it all imbued the sky of nonlinearity with a magical, rainbow-like quality
where disorder and turbulence and incongruity were meaningful and vital to the
creation of a new order, making possible the most important advances otherwise
ignored or feared for their inconsistency with the normalcy of linear-rational
logic. chaos made it okay to be in an ever-changing process of becoming,
exposing the fantasy of deterministic predictability and celebrating the
messiness of creativity as both completely normal and unfathomably beautiful,
so much so that you could hardly wish for anything better.
in fact, as a
science, chaos theory flips our understanding of normal completely on its head
by proving chaos as both stable and certain, whereby solvable, orderly, linear
systems are then the aberrations from the norm. James Gleick, author of Chaos: The Amazing Science of the
Unpredictable, explains how periods of predictability considered ‘normal’
through the lens of linearity give way to chaos not as random occurrence but
rather as consistently unpredictable fluctuations that never settle down, with
only windows of seeming stability we misinterpret as enduring, however fleeting
in their predictable return to chaos.
embracing
the nonlinearity of nature in his soul, the lizard-pirate nearly flipped off the
starboard side, crying tears of joy as he looked toward the ever-expanding
light before him: the infinite rainbow of exquisite possibility.
it
was a powerful realization, the inner knowing that chaos is both normal and intrinsically
life-giving. that the longer we try to abide by the shoulds of our social
conditioning into linearity, the longer we deny the beauty in diversity that exists
uniquely within us all – the chaos in our souls that when we allow ourselves to
pay attention, gives birth to unfathomably beautiful creations – that the longer
we resist that inner knowing, the longer we suffer in the angst of our otherwise
beautifully unpredictable existence. it’s not the chaos we should hide from. it’s
the resistance to that chaos, the resistance to allowing that chaos to thrive,
that brings anguish, tumult in our souls. our awareness and welcoming of that
chaos sets us free.
so
thanks to the chaos in non-doing, instead of heart-fighting-head in a battle for
the acknowledgement of self, situated on the seas of life, the whole thing
shifted into something much more accessible. it stopped being a war against
linear logic and became a proactive practice of letting, of allowing heart
desires to be heard and acknowledged rather than bopping them on the head without
so much as a peep. when linearity itself no longer reigned supreme and
unquestioned, i found peace in the chaos of sitting in my own skin, opening to
the wild beauty within.
and
in a way, we might also consider the lizard-pirate of chaos as the embodiment of what Gleick
calls “a nomad by choice, a pioneer by necessity”. he chooses to live a life
considered ‘other’, yet in his nomad wanderings he, as a necessary part of
charting his own ‘abnormal’ path, is forced to blaze new trails, opening all of
our eyes to previously unconsidered possibilities once rejected as outside the
rational norms of linear existence. bless such nomad chameleons, for without
them, there would be no radical change, no beautiful diversity. and we'd all have to live forever in a depressing world where 4 + 1 will always equal 5 and not 20, and where it most certainly will never equal banana.
and
how terribly boring a reality is that?
******
so
now after single-handedly undermining my conditioning into linearity, i was on
to superhero task number two: overcoming my own story of scarcity—the inner voice of urgency and
self-judgment that says ‘i’m not enough, i don’t do enough, i’m not good
enough.’
again,
non-doing was my only hope for resolution.
so
i decided to take advantage of my post-exam vacay, confronting my scarcity
conditioning and compulsion to act out of urgency head-on. i lazed at the beach
and laughed with friends and was entirely unproductive for a week. i surfed for
hours and drank wine and ate bleeding-rare steak for dinner and salty-sweet
dark chocolate for dessert. i glowed in the good fun of good life gluttony we’re taught to
disavow in exchange for humility, austerity, dedication to duty in the service
of others who can’t afford to live as frivolously as we. that’s the scarcity
mindset i had internalized in my attempts to live a meaningful life, based on a
subconscious belief that if not everyone could live a privileged life, no one
should – especially me if i wanted to be the change i wished to see. in a week
of play, i felt that mindset beginning to unravel, not least, i’m sure, because
it made absolutely no sense: withholding my own simple pleasures in the
misguided hope that it could somehow contribute to the joy and vital wellbeing
of others? pretty fucking stupid when you think about it.
still,
i felt guilty admitting i felt better after my week of non-doing in the pursuit
of joy for the sake of clarity and direction. i felt embarrassed admitting i
felt more like me than i’d felt in a while. my chest had begun loosening into
lightness again. i felt creative and inspired by new projects i wanted to put
energy into. i felt scared, in a good way. i felt strong enough to abandon old
‘shoulds’ and patterns of logic that no longer imbued my life with joy and
meaning. my heart felt happy that i was listening again.
i
watched my chameleon colors blend beautifully into sunkissed surroundings as i
surfed into sunset, smiling at the serendipity in my circumstance, changed only
by a change in vantage point, ever so subtle; reality itself transformed by a
shift in perspective alone – the subjectivity in relativity.
i
didn’t have to decide yet whether i’d abandon my sense of duty to
purpose-driven obligation in exchange for following the dreams my heart felt
free to imagine. it wasn’t quite time for all that just yet. it was still time
for non-doing and just be-ing. yet i found solace in imagining the
possibilities of the what-if’s.
*****
i
thought about the chameleon again. and this time it brought me peace. the kind
of peace you find in realizing that you’re still you no matter which of your
colors are on display - today, tomorrow or yesterday. being a chameleon needn’t
be a denial of self, but a soul-felt integration of feeling, knowing, being, and discovering
that embraces the union between self and society, both in an ever-changing
process of becoming: chaotic flow.
acknowledging his situated reality, the chameleon
chooses from his vast repertoire of own-skin colors to ever-so-subtly blend
into the environment around him; he is at home in comfortable surroundings, on the
road in the freshness of unfamiliarity, or in the turbulent transitions of the
in-betweens, because at the end of the day, he knows his colors are still his and his
alone.
your
colors change and adapt to your surroundings in a seemingly unconscious display
of ego-lessness, yet they are always a reflection of you, however brilliant in
possibility you happen to be in any magical instant in the infinite universe of
you in the here and the now.
because
maybe, when the chameleon is all by himself, he’s not so worried about what
color he should be. maybe he’s embracing the non-doing, sitting comfortably in
the bare-skinned stillness of transition, patiently waiting in his lizard-size
pirate ship for that perfect moment to catch the wind in his sails and flutter
his brand new butterfly wings in a world where 4 + 1 = banana, awash in the magnificent
glory of the uniquely chaotic, vibrantly diverse colors he feels proud to call his
own - here and there, today and always.
…in other words:
surfer-writer-academic nomad-nerd Costa Rica-gringameleon.
surfer-writer-academic nomad-nerd Costa Rica-gringameleon.
No comments:
Post a Comment