Dancing Geek

It’s been a while since I’ve felt able to put anything in words.  In been a while since I’ve felt able to do a lot of things.

The fact that spending a week crashing with a student friend of a friend that I met once, and her friends, in Brighton and then spending all day out on the streets trying to squash, jam, bend, balance, run and carry a group of 21 people into unusual places was so damn easy to do is a lesson in itself.  This burbling ramble back into blogging however, is about something different.

What this post is actually about

I’ve spent the last 18 months trying to work out what I want to do.  Trying to follow the advice of ‘Follow you heart’ and ‘Do what you love’. Such aphorisms will never tell the whole story (another favourite of mine is ‘Let go’, because tritely spouting metaphor without any explanation is always helpful).  Still, the idea of tuning into what you want, and then doing it sounds quite simple.

Ok, it is simple. What it isn’t, is easy.

Semantics ahoy!

I’ve always been a bit pedantic about the definitions of words – I had an hour long argument with a friend in sixth form once (schooling at age 16-18, if you don’t know what 6th form is) all about whether or not the Universe contained Heaven (the fact I’m an atheist and don’t believe in Heaven was irrelevant, I can be pedantic and hypothetical all at once). He said no, I said yes. We argued and argued and argued and then suddenly, click. Basically, our answers were entirely dependent on our definitions of the word Universe. Mine was ‘anything and everything’, his was the subtly different ‘anything and everything physical’. At that point the whole argument became moot and we just agreed that we had different definitions of the word.  So yeah, I’m pedantic about saying what you mean and meaning what you say – and yes this is going to come together into some kind of point but I’ve no time to plan and edit because I might not feel like writing after dinner and I’ve been given my 5 minute warning before I have to go be sociable.

The semantics of ‘Follow your heart’

The general gist of these aphorisms is to know what you want to do, and to go and do them.  The semantics comes in on such innocent looking words as ‘know’, ‘want’, & ‘do’.

Knowing

To know something can mean several things, it can mean to decide or agree or understand, but note how these are all words to do with the brain, and thinking.  And the whole point here is to be in touch with your heart and feelings.  Better not-so-much-synonyms-as-just-other-words-to-help-explain-it-better might be recognise, notice, accept.

Wanting

As for wanting something – this is where the majority of nay-sayers jump on board with their own personal definitions of the word and scream all over anything you’re trying to communicate because you may have just pushed a hot button of theirs, oh deary me, do you think, no surely not.  Again, it’s a lot to do with understanding the words as being about the heart and not the head.  The head tells you what it thinks you should want, or ought to want, to keep you safe, part of the group, and anything else you might worry about.  The head tells you to want status, power and cash.  The heart wants joy, meaning, love, peace, contentment, exploration, adventure, and all those lovely things.

There’s another thing about ‘want’ however. The Moaners can be quick to argue about wanting things that are impossible (such as to grow wings and fly like in dreams) or restricted (like being a pilot when you have to wear glasses). Again, it can be seen as head vs heart.  Often the head has decided exactly how something has to happen for it to be correct.  The heart however is interested less in having wings or a job as a Navy pilot and more things like experiencing flight, heights, the wind rushing past you, freedom to manoeuvre in the air.  Once you can identify what it is about the experience that you want, you can find other equally good ways of fulfilling your heart’s desire even if your head is arguing the whole time that you’re not doing it the right way!

Doing

Then there’s ‘do’. And this one is the one that I have finally realised (like just today, just before I figured I would write about it here, this is fresh off the press, hot news kiddos).  To do something does not necessarily mean to do something constructive.  Shocker, I know. I’ve just totally changed your whole world view haven’t I? You’re reassessing everything after that paradigm shifting beauty.

Thus my tricky little title is lying (the old bait and switch).  It’s not Doing what I want vs Being miserable, but doing what I want means being miserable (sometimes).  Yup, the moping, lying about everywhere, not bothering to leave the house, sulking, being maudlin, avoiding the world, and all that stuff is exactly what I needed to do.

Now don’t get me wrong. It’s depression, it’s a medical condition, and I’m seeking treatment. It’s not happy, I don’t want it to continue, and my head sure as hell doesn’t want anything to do with it thank you very much (it’s sucking my status, power and cash right down the drain). But my heart is pretty damn clear that right now it needs a huge great big dolloping dose of feeling crappy and sulky and miserable and whiney and petulant.

Sure, I could help myself feel better (superficially) by doing exercise, going out, still taking care of myself.  Sure, I could be applying for easy work, running my own projects & looking for more projects to join, and even making more of an effort to stay in touch with friends and family. And yes, I’ve been told to do all these things.  And sorry, but no.  Because this is what I need. I need to feel shitty, I need to feel morose, I need to be depressed, and I need to learn from it all.

Some kind of ending type thing

One gentle reminder – this is just me and where I am now. I may change (correction, I will change) and it may bear no relevance or resemblance to anyone else’s experiences of depression or similar situations.  And that’s ok.

The point that I’m slowly allowing to eek out of my brain with all this is: I’ve been ‘Doing what I love’ all this time.  No the aphorism doesn’t fit the reality, but then they very rarely do (heck, aphorisms all seem to come in opposing pairs anyway: one man’s meat is sauce for the gander and all that malarkey).  Rather, I’ve been allowing my heart to direct my actions, and my mind has been serving my heart rather than the other way around.  Maybe my mind could do with learning better ways to express pain, sorrow & anger (and that’s all part of my current plan) than depression, withdrawal & boredom, but at least my heart is leading the way for once.

So yeah, I’m going to feel shitty for a while yet (and frustrated at how slow these processes are), but I will hopefully remember from time to time that all this is a step forward, movement in the direction that I want to be going, and though it hurts like hell at times, and leaves me numb, deflated and wrung out at others, it’s my choice, I choose it, I want it, and I’m ok.

Sidenote

I hate the misuse of aphorisms. They’re basically only useful as reminders for things you already understand, but they’re bandied about as learning aids (particularly in places like twitter and religion).  Doing what you love doesn’t mean always loving what you’re doing. Following your heart doesn’t always mean being blindly led by your emotions. And aphorisms are useful as simplistic reminders, but never tell the whole story and can lead you into a false sense of certainty.

I wound up thinking about time yesterday (or rather this morning, but then with timezones and everything all those labels are arbitrary anyway).

So as I went to bed I made the intention that when I got up I would do nothing until I had done nothing.  That is, I would refrain from doing tasks and busywork until I had spent some time being still, whether in full meditation or journaling or whatever.

When I got up I managed to somehow remember this, grabbed a glass of orange juice to warm up the body functions, and found a quiet place to just be for a while.  I started by bouncing on my fitball, because it’s an excellent way to wake up the bodymind at any time of day, and after a few minutes of that (it is absolutely glorious to allow yourself that amount of time) I put on some calming music (3 hours worth roughly – I was giving myself plenty of time here) sat down, got comfy, made sure I’d be warm, and closed my eyes.

The noise that came up first of all needed to be dealt with, so I used my favourite technique of writing out the key phrases that needed to be acknowledged (stuff like worries about paying in USD via paypal to someone in the UK, an idea for my 12seconds video of the day, what I should do about a situation that’s been bugging me).

The bit I now get about meditation

A lot of what I had picked up about meditation (you know, the same way you learn about things like the stock market, the country of Iraq, and the idea that pig and pork are different words because of the Norman conquest – i.e. by hearsay) involved the idea that one aimed for a blank mind, letting go of thoughts that came through.  However, in my personal opinion, a much better approach is to bring awareness to the thoughts that are going through your mind.

A blank mind is like the uber-advanced level, but for anyone without years of experience and/or training then bringing your awareness to the thoughts you think will get you to a calm and quiet place eventually.  Which is where the writing it out part helps.

So whilst I had an intention to think about my relationship with time, I would only consciously think about this when there were no other thoughts whizzing through my brain.  During the beginning (I’m not sure how long) I would suddenly realise that I had gone off on a tangent and just try and bring my awareness to the thoughts I was having.  Noticing them, and seeing if they had anything interesting or helpful to tell me.  If they did, I would note this down and then go back to sitting.

The act of breaking away to note down the helpful part may actually be helping me reset to a calm state again, though I don’t know for sure, but usually this process means that that particular thought has moved on, and even seeing if it wants to come back will not result in the tangent getting picked up again – it has played out.  Rinse and repeat and quite quickly (there were only 6 off topic distractions) I’m free to explore the topic I want to meditate on without fighting myself over it.

Exploring what time is

As I thought about how I relate to time I had a few realisations, some of them personal, some of them perhaps useful to you.  So I’ll share them here for you to see if any are helpful:

• If I’m up late I can simply bring awareness to the situation.  Is it something I need right now, or is it just falling into a habit?
• I am often in denial about time passing.  I often resist its flow forwards.  I often seek to control it.
• I curl up time in on itself, into a dense tangled knot that stays in a small transparent sphere.
• I think I do this to avoid having to choose.
• I may have to mourn time I have lost in order to untangle this knot and accept reality as it is.
• By keeping time tangled up in a dense knot I can believe that my time (the time in the sphere) is infinite.
• Infinite time means that there is no urgency and so no motivation to go towards my fear.
• Infinite time is the same as no time at all, in that whatever discrete actions we take can be seen as happening all at the same time (given the appropriate scale). <–This one is a toughy to get your head around.
• If there is no sense of one thing happening before another then there is not value in paying attention to priorities.  E.g. in infinite time it will all happen at some point.
• Finite time fixes the scale at which we operate, giving a sense of urgency and a value to the order of actions.
• If I embrace my finite time (i.e. accept reality) I must embrace the fact that I will die.
• To not be distracted by my death I would need to make peace with it.
• In the meantime, which may last my whole life, I can give myself permission to be distracted and bring awareness to it whenever I remember.
• I may panic about not having enough time when I acknowledge what I want to achieve and the priority order of actions.
• I can sooth this panic by reminding myself that something is better than nothing; unfinished is better than not started; incomplete, cut short or put away is better than ignored.

Which leads me to my next question

If I decide to be mindful of time, using my thoughts above to help me remain so, then what do I want to do with my time?

Oh yes, we’re back to ‘what do you want?’ folks.

My stock answer (thanks to Charlie’s awesome comment) is: To flourish or to self actualise (pick whichever one doesn’t make you gag).

[Aside: It strikes me that I'm giving a lot of blog love to Charlie at the moment - I hope no one else feels left out - I love you all!]

Another way of phrasing it (because some words make people go ‘ack!’ and because a different word can offer a powerfully different perspective) is to fulfil my potential.

However, it may very well be impossible to fulfil all of my potential in a finite amount of time.  The same goes for anyone else, but this blog is about me.

Which some people never forget, but others of us do.  (It’s the oddest thing I’ve started to notice.  If we could remember all the stuff we knew we’d live in a utopia. Which makes me think that if we could exist outside of time, and therefore live all times at once, and so not be able to forget something that we knew at one point in our lives, then we’d basically be like perfect, boring beings.  Which can be a way of rationalising the motives behind the belief that we are spritual beings that put a part of ourselves into mortal bodies in order to travel through time in a linear fashion – almost like a test: how much can we remember? But I digress completely, if somewhat interestingly.)

This question starts to get circular here, is what I was trying to say.  What do I want? I want to flourish? What do I want to flourish at? Well, what do I want? Repeat ad nauseum.

The answer to what I want is not to be found in my thinking.  It is to be found in my heart (metaphorically speaking).

On a related note, but optional for skim readers, is the idea that I might want to serve others.  Which I do.  However, I’m starting to understand/believe (depending on your point of view) that I am not able to know ahead of time what value others will derive from what I do.  Therefore I am not able to wisely choose based on my perceived value of my actions.  I am left again looking at the question ‘What do I want to do?’ to be my guide.

So what now?

Oh hurrah, we’re nearly at the end of the post when this one shows up.

Two things:

• Mindfulness of time
• Mindfulness of heart

With regards the first I’m going to start recording how I spend my time and see if that doesn’t a) make an automatic difference because I instantly pay more attention and b) show up any patterns that are helping or getting in the way.

The second involves things like meditation, journaling and talking about what I love.  In the end it’s pretty much just mindfulness full stop.

P.S. It was 8 hours between me almost finishing this post and writing the last few sentences. Hmmm, there’s a few too many hours of blog reading and twitter in there.

I haven’t listened to my heart properly in a long time.  There’s a lot in the way at the moment.  Shame, hurt, anger.  So when Joely suggested talking to it about my passions I realised that I hadn’t talked to it about anything, ever.  This needed to change, and so a conversation with my heart happened.

It turns out that my heart is pretty damn pissed off and hurting that it’s been ignored and squashed and pushed out of the way for so long.  It can be done occasionally in emergencies (such as helping another grieve), but even then I’m not sure it’s the best idea.  Better would surely be to acknowledge the feelings, let them have their space, and give them attention, just not let them control everything.  This requires knowing how to do the latter, and is my new intention.  To practice feeling emotions without being controlled by them.  Being informed, listening to their message, but not being overwhelmed or battered.

I can imagine times where I may not have a choice about that.  Where overwhelm may be inevitable.  That frightens me something crazy.