ok, let’s go!

there was that twitter poll i did. everyone said they imagine themselves moving in the world

https://twitter.com/shaisc/status/1311982249215225856

that’s what i expected. that’s how i’d always operated (but thought i’d check!)

but a funny thing happens

it makes us think we have control over getting to our destination

we often think we have control over getting to all kinds of destinations we’re trying to get to

but so much is out of our control. virtually everything. all we can do is set an intention (and then do our best). thinking we have control over the outcome is the source of untold dissatisfaction.

let’s say i go downstairs and as soon as i get down i realise i left my phone upstairs

i tut to myself, and i feel annoyed, because that wasn’t ‘supposed to happen’, and i race back upstairs, willing my body to move as fast as possible, wanting the whole diversion to be done as quickly as possible so i can get back to what i’m actually ‘meant to be doing’

the whole time i’m resisting the present moment. building up resentment and dissatisfaction to ‘what is’.

wishing my life away

or when i’m on a run. sometimes running feels unpleasant. it’s easy to be striving to be at the end of the run, counting down the remaining minutes or kilometres. wishing i’m somewhere else than here or now.

that’s bad - i want to be able to sit with that kind of discomfort, not resist it.

to train myself out of this, i often shift my perspective to one where my location doesn’t move at all - rather i’m a fixed point and the world can (and, incidentally, does) move around me whenever i move my legs. think: being on a treadmill and wearing a very realistic VR headset.

suddenly there’s no resistance. by adding a layer of indirection between my intention or input that i can control (move my legs) and the outcome (i’m at the end of the run), i automatically realise that wishing for right now to involve me being anywhere other than where i am right now is futile. there’s no longer a mismatch between how i’m wanting now to be and how now is. and suddenly there’s no resistance. it’s a liberating feeling. the world will take as long as it takes to get here. that’s ok. it’s not me. it’s just doing its thing. and in the meantime i’m right here where i should be.

this isn’t fake, by the way. it’s just a different frame of reference. e.g. we’ve known for a long time that the earth moves around the sun. that doesn’t make it wrong to talk about the sun rising and setting. from our perspective that’s exactly what’s happening. this is the same thing.