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This is dedicated to the moment when meeting someone new and interesting, in the midst of the initial small talk, when you realize you have no fucking idea what to say. Maybe you just asked where they’re from, and the response was some place like LA which is really so devoid of character that there’s actually not a single interesting question you could follow up with. Shit.
I imagine this is how phlebotomists drawing blood must feel. Introductions over, you’re left staring at the patient, needle in hand. It seems rude, too forward, to just stick it in at this point. (there’s a joke in there somewhere…) No, you’ve got to say something. But the universe of potential conversations is vastly limited, due to two factors:
- Situational humor is out; your counterpart is likely freaking out about sharp objects
- You are probably socially maladjusted, as you spend all day sticking people with said sharp objects
I think I ended up discussing weather while staring intensely out the window last time this happened. Point is, there’s the need to say something when you’ve got nothing. Sometimes you just don’t have a witty joke or a smooth exit as an option.
Logic would dictate that blanking out like this is but a momentary discomfort, which will be quickly resolved by a quick change of topic. Then again, logic is always that asshole in the corner, telling you “I told you so” after the fact. Nope, as you stare into each other’s eyes with silently expectant expressions, logic is waiting for whatever makes you say stupid things to come up with something stupid to say. So it goes.
“So how do you guys know each other?”, I blurt out. Not sure who exactly I’m referring to with “you guys”, since I’m only talking to one person. Dumbass! Conversation ensues nonetheless; crisis averted. My face unclenches from an unconsciously forced smile.
I used to be a small-talk hater. I hated talking about hometowns and majors and favorite movies. People were superficial, and meeting them required driving around a suburban cul-de-sac hell of generic questions. “It doesn’t mean anything”, I would moan.
It turns out, that’s the point. Meeting someone new is fraught with oh-fuck-what-to-say moments, and as it happens you’re free to throw things at the wall when this happens and see what sticks. Meaningful relationships are like summer vacation, you need to go to school the other 70% of the year for it to have any value.
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One of the main tasks of this course is to start you on the path of creating in some detail your vision of your future. If I fail in this I fail in the whole course. You will probably object that if you try to get a vision now it is likely to be wrong - and my reply is from observation I have seen the accuracy of the vision matters less than you might suppose, getting anywhere is better than drifting, there are potentially many paths to greatness for you, and just which path you go on, so long as it takes you to greatness, is none of my business. You must, as in the case of forging your personal style, find your vision of your future career, and then follow it as best you can.
– The Art of Doing Science and Engineering (Richard W. Hamming) -
Listen to Entire Born and Raised Album for Free
click here to go to the iTunes store and stream the record now. Pre-order if you dig it.
I listened to the record last Wednesday on my flight to Los Angeles. Gave it one more go round before it went out into the world… one last little listen as being just mine. It’s brought me so much joy and company and peace, and I hope it will do the same for you.
JM
oh em gee.
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Mindfulness
I’ve always viewed meditation as this sort of new-age tomfoolery. Sit down and go “ommmm”. Contort your legs. What’s the point?
Well, the point is that’s missing the point. Those are ways to explain the external “how” to meditate. Imagine learning to throw a ball that way - “cock your arm 45 degrees, rotate torso…” Words are insufficient, too abstract, too imprecise to explain even the simplest physical actions. You can’t learn to throw from words.
The way most people actually throw a ball, of course, is by doing it. And somehow over the course of thousands of repetitions, they develop muscle memory. It’s not that the motion is unconscious; surely the brain is conscious and in fact working overtime to coordinate these precise movements. But try throwing a ball while thinking about all the individual motions that have to be coordinated. It’s impossible. All of a sudden a familiar motion becomes unnatural, like hearing your own voice on a recording. It’s like the part of you mind handling that action has gone away and now your big slow conscious mind is trying to keep up.
Here I’d like to inject and say that it’s not unscientific to say that we have many minds, many brains, even. Neurology has cordoned our brains off to well-defined sections - there’s the prefrontal cortex, which handles all of what we commonly associate with “thinking”. There’s the amygdala, which produces our instantaneous (and wordless) reactions to fear, pain, and other sensations. And we have a motor cortex, whose fine ball-throwing ability is ruined when you think too hard.
Now let’s get back to meditation. It’s not about the breathing or posture, although these things produce useful side effects. You can perform those correctly in a pantomime of the real thing, but miss out on their value. Again, learning to throw from words.
Meditation is all about the concept of “mindfulness”. You’ll come across many handwavy definitions of just what mindfulness is, but for me, it’s acknowledging that I have brains beyond my prefrontal cortex, that their outputs are independent of what I’m consciously thinking.
For example, if I feel the rush of anxiety building before a presentation, I can react in my old clueless way. This involves a whole lot of trying to convince myself that my fears are unfounded, that my anxiety is “false” and that I shouldn’t be feeling it. This might work, if my amygdala could understand logic. But it can’t. Truth is, Señor Amygdala is going to generate feelings of anxiety and unease regardless of my cajoling, because it’s a fundamentally separate entity from my conscious mind. No point trying to hold an elaborate philosophical debate with my amygdala - like my motor cortex learning to throw, it doesn’t understand words.
No, I/amygdala have to learn by doing. And initially this will involve trying to perform through the anxiety without trying to quell it. It’s hard to put into words the mindset that allows for this. The common metaphor is of emoting without passing judgment; this is a common description of how to meditate, too. In other words, coping with stage fright in a mindful way is really like trying to meditate in front of a crowd. You’re trying to bring all your minds into harmony, something impossible with prefrontal-cortex-thoughts trampling all over the other minds.
Consider this: there are parts of the brain that we simply can’t control via direct thinking. I can’t tell my heart to beat faster. But my prefrontal cortex, ever devious, can think about boobs and attempt to influence that indirectly. Evidently arousal is one of the links between those brain regions. What else could I control with this strategy? Consciousness accomplishes nothing in isolation, but it has the power to recruit and direct.
The pen is mightier than the sword, if you know what to write.
Two books have been the inspiration for all these thoughts.
The first is Turning the Mind Into an Ally. This book is mostly focused on the thinking and reasoning behind Buddhist meditation, and reading it really helped me get over my perception of meditation as bullshit. It does go a bit off the deep end in terms of Buddhist philosophizing, but feel free to ignore that (I did.)
And the other is Nerve, which goes into how people in high fear/stress situations cope. The main thesis is that optimal coping happens when people work through fears and anxieties, rather than against them. I couldn’t help but draw parallels to all the mindfulness talk in the meditation book.
