So we live in this world with an evolutionary disposition to narrow focus, but we also live, objectively, in a world where we can focus on an limitless number of things, most of which need to be ignored to do anything.
And this applies not just perceptually but in terms of chosen actions. Most of us can choose from a very, very wide array of options. We can live here, we can live there. We can eat this, we can eat that. We can do this for money, or that for money. We can fall in love, or always hover at the edge. We can care, we can not care.
To be intelligent, you have to always see all your options. To get anything done, you have to narrow your options.
To take a mundane, but concrete and real, example, I get Men’s Health every month. They always have lots of workout ideas, and food ideas. If I changed up my workout routine every time I saw something new, I couldn’t make progress in anything. But at the same time, it is useful to know what is out there, so that if something REALLY better comes along, like Contrast training, I will know about it.
And I feel this is one of life’s tricks: knowing what you CAN do, but teaching yourself to be content with whatever choice you make. It is always contingent. It is always a guess.
And there will always be an INFINITY of things we can’t and don’t do. You might be able to fall in love with a redhead in Paris at a particular restaurant. But you won’t fall in love, then, with another redhead in Barcelona, at least in quite the same way. Some people make a habit of falling in love, but they then lose the experience of being in love for a long time. You can bang a 1,000 women, but lose the feeling of sustained tenderness and emotional openness with one. And if you stay with one, you never know what else might have been, if she was TRULY the best possible answer for you. Who did you miss?
It is maddening, in a way. No matter what you do, some other path is foreclosed. I can recall talking about this before, because it is a daily struggle for me, and I suspect many, in our affluent world.
Logically, emotionally, the task is separating emotionally from all that might have been. You do not need to ignore it. That takes energy, and requires cutting off perception. No, just don’t feed it, and DO feel your sense of satisfaction and accomplishment with whatever you do choose. Everything we do is imperfect, but what we CAN do is bring perfect contentment to it. This is the task of life.
If you cultivate the capacity for pleasure, for fullness, for inner peace, then it fills whatever decisions you make.
This is the thing: so much of our current YOLO culture views experiences as one-off’s, that you either have or don’t. You either hit all your “bucket list” items or you don’t, and are diminished proportionately as you fail.
This is absurd. If you cultivate inner harmony, every lottery ticket is a winner. I wonder sometimes if I will end my life in a jail cell somewhere, as a political prisoner. What sort of life would that be? How do I make that great? The same way.
Being present to your blessings is a skill like making free throws, or running fast on a track. This is the ENORMOUS value of technologies like Kum Nye, and spiritual philosophies like Buddhism. This is one choice that is easy. It is, if you will, a metachoice, that both makes you wiser in the concrete decisions you do make, and better able to enjoy the results, however they turn out.
This is not quite as clear as it was in my head, but I don’t always think in words. I have these little forms with feeling and color. I think this is close, though.
Ponder this.
And ponder, too, the political and economic benefits of inner peace. We call dial the consumer culture way back, if we all learn to be content and happy with much less. We are in a phase of insanity. But it need not last, and there is no need to replace it with a period of much deeper, demented and psychotic insanity that lasts a very long time.