THE BRAIN GARDEN

June 19th, 2018

A mature redwood is a huge, robust and magnificent creature to behold.  But if you replanted it in a dessert, it would surely die.  And the seed to create such a gargantuan tree would do no better in the middle of that desert.  Such majestic creatures only appear after the terrain has gone through many different stages of growth.

Give a desert a little water, consistently, and grasses will appear.  Flowers.  Some shrubs. 

If nurtured further, small trees start to pop up.   Then the fast-growing evergreens.

Then finally the slower deciduous trees.

But the process takes time.  Growing takes time. 

And some things cannot even begin to grow until they have the support of other mature growths. 

There is no fast-track to a deep majestic forest.  Those things take time.

This blueprint of growth upon growth is a good metaphor for the brain and the way it changes.

There is no fast-track to wisdom, health and clear creativity.  These things take time.

While ‘drive’ can be a great thing.  It can kill if applied to something that needs to grow a little more to support it.  Like the amount of sun in a desert.  All those forest creatures need the sun.  But too much of just that one thing.  And you get death.  Or water.  Too much and it will drown the young saplings, or wash them away all together.  In the right balance though, something can be nurtured.  Until you get to the point of grand rain forests that create their own weather. 

It can be very exciting to suddenly feel dedicated, motivated and charged up to change yourself and your life for the better.  But such excitement can be like putting up billboards of expectation in your mind. 

And expectation is the sole parent of disappointment. 

Be kind and careful.  If you feel as though your mind has been like a barren desert that you have slowly been dying in.  Do not expect to turn around and find a forest.  In the heat and torture of such places, we can see mirages of what we want that desert to be.  That excitement can be like a great wash of water over the barren land.  And from it a short superbloom can flower.  And that can be a start, a single-first step on the long road to a deep forest.  Without care though, the fever dream worsens and the mirage is replaced with an even worse nightmare. 

Most of all, cultivate patience.  When moments of charge and dedication and motivation visit.  Treat it like you would a gas pedal when you notice your empty fuel-tank light click on.  Savor and make it last, till you get to the next moment – maybe a little accomplishment – that feels like a pit stop, a tiny celebration, even if you’re just recharging the battery a little.  Just enough to get to the next point on your path.

These moments add up.  In ways we do not see nor understand.  Like bland grasses, then shrubs.  All the while we are looking up to see trees, but see only sky, unknowing of what grows beneath our view. 

In the same way that a meditation practice takes a few months of dedication before you see results. 

Or muscles that are growing with a new workout routine, but remain unseen as the pounds surrounding shed so slowly. 

But surely.   With a steady practice and patience.

The mind is a garden.  Cultivate it.  Particularly that one little tree that will shield the others from too much sun, and hold water in the ground with its roots during dry times – the one that will help all the rest:

Patience.

ROOTS OR ANCHORS

June 18th, 2018

To put down roots.  This is a pretty common phrase.  To ‘settle down’, have a home, start a family.  All that.

I contest the roots part.  Especially today when nearly everyone can get on a plane or two and hop around.  Just a hundred and some years ago, travel was a big endeavor.  Now it can happen on a whim. 

It’s perhaps useful to remember that our ambulating species was a restless, wandering, nomadic migrating people much much longer than we have been sitting wheat-eaters.  The adoption of the word ‘root’ in light of the agricultural revolution is perhaps even more fitting.

Though more has happened since.  And the hunt is clearly still on our minds. 

The anchor is a better metaphor.  The quaint idea of growing up and living in the same town for a whole life is quickly becoming a nostalgic ‘once upon a time.’

We move.  And while the wanderers might be said to drift, we all have an anchor we can drop.  A movable root.  And isn’t this preferable, if not also more accurate?

A storm comes, we can set our anchor against it.  Or.   Slip cables and run the winds, all the while carrying with us the chance, the tool to sit and stick when the place and time are right.  For how long?  It’s pompous to say. 

The weatherman is far better at his job than we are at predicting the future.  But that doesn’t mean he’s good at his job.

THE ETYMOLOGY OF FEAR

June 17th, 2018

This episode references episode 57 entitled Compass.  If you’d like to fully understand the reference, please listen to that episode first.

Words are like people, in that they have parents and grandparents and great grandparents. . . and so on and so forth.

An easy example is ‘blog’.  It originally came from web-log. 

Apparently two syllables was too many and we just had to shorten it to the truly unfortunate and sebaceous sounding blog.

The parents of the word fear are predictable: things like ‘taunt’ and ‘danger’, stuff like that.

But.

If you go far enough back.

All the way back to the Proto-Indo-european root . . . ?

The word ‘fear’ is simply a lengthening of the verbal root ‘per-‘ 

What does the proto-indo-european verbal root ‘per’ mean? 

‘per-‘ means:

to try, to risk.

Fear means try?

Risk makes sense.  We fear losing what we risk.

When we ‘try’ something, we risk failing.

One last tangent: what does ‘ex-‘ mean?

‘Ex’ means ‘out of’.

Knowing these roots, how can we interpret the word ‘Experiment’ ?

Ex – Per – iment.

Out of fear.

Experience.

Out of fear.

Or rather:

from trying.

The only way to face fear is to experiment, to face the possibility of trying, and to get something out of trying. 

Knowing the meanings of these pieces, we can see an expert might be interpreted as someone who has risked and tried to a huge extent in their field.  They have pulled knowledge from the experience of trying new things.  An expert has literally pulled expertise out of fear.

In this way, fear can be a very useful COMPASS.

BEHAVIORAL STOCKHOLM SYNDROME

June 16th, 2018

This episode references episode 57 entitled Compass.  If you’d like to fully understand the reference, please listen to that episode first.

In 1973 four people were taken hostage during a bank robbery in Stockholm Sweden.  Due to some strange avenue of human nature, these hostages developed feelings of trust and adoration for their captors and refused to testify against them in court. 

The hostages grew fond of their captors.

There is a fashionable and sexy trend to ‘own a problem’ by wearing it like a badge.

In order to solve a problem, it must first be identified, yes.  But to end with this identification is to stay focused on the problem and risk over-identifying with the problem. This is not owning a problem and solving it, this is the Stockholm syndrome grafted onto a set of behaviors.  This is confusing a problem with a sense of identity and growing to love the problem because we hope to love ourselves and fail to differentiate between the two.

If humans are capable of developing positive feelings towards others who have taken them captive by force. . .

is it really much of a stretch to think we’re capable of developing positive feelings for bad ideas that hold us captive?

Is it possible that we are capable of achieving this self-destructive acrobatic merely because it’s easier?  Identifying with a problem and loving it, wearing that problem as an identity calls for no further action. 

As in every case, we must use our COMPASS to determine whether we are acting productively.

Does it evoke fear to identify a problem and accept it, and even love it?  How does it feel to honestly face a problem and begin the uncertain process of attempting to solve it with actions that may fail? 

THE SQUEEZE

June 15th, 2018

Pushing into new territory is fraught with uncertainty.  We venture into new territory on a guess, hopefully with curiosity, maybe determination.

The longer uncertainty remains as the reigning emotion, the harder it is to push forward.

The farther we push forward, the closer we get to a solution. 

Our path towards a goal is squeezed ever tighter between these two facts: Between rising doubt and a nearing solution.

The experience of this squeeze is an emotion: a fear.

If we can relax, accept the fear, and thoughtfully move forward, no goal is out of reach.