Show me the wisdom nuggets!

Hello you pop tart.

I feel a little lazy about the state of my literary engagement of late, but after a lot of long-form reading this winter/ spring, the pendulum has swung the other way for me this summer. I still have a few books on the go (including Invisible Women, Murder on the Rockport Limited and Manhattan Beach), but when it comes to reflecting on what it means to be human, instead of digging deep I have been floating shallow, indulging in some of those quick bumper-sticker-type quotations that help me feel inspired and reflect.  The great thing about these wisdom nuggets is that you can get a hit of "ah-ha" in an easy-to-remember format so you can continue to think about the insight throughout the day/ weeks. But on the other hand, as I have been reflecting on some of these nuggets-- while delicious-- they are not a complete meal, and if considered alone can sometimes cause indigestion. Take for example the lovely quote below that I have been chewing on lately:

 

My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations. — MICHAEL J FOX

As I have been seeking more stillness and groundedness, this quote really resonated with recent efforts to live well in the day-to-day world. Take a second to read it again and think about it.

I will wait.

Accepting what is in front of us, living in the present, abandoning judgement and letting things/ people/ ourselves just "be"-- it is a liberating approach to life.  Like getting mad at the weather or traffic, you can want things to be a particular way, but the reality is that some things are the way they are, and no amount of wishing they were otherwise will change them. To spend emotional energy and effort expecting something different... well, this is the definition of insanity (which incidentally is not a quote from Einstein but from a mystery novelist named Rita Mae Brown).

However, while I find Mr. Fox's mantra to be a helpful balm for navigating the minutia of daily life, when I poke my head out of the day-to-day and look within/without (ie: within my self/out at the world), there is an inertia in this piece of advice that I find deeply troubling.

While I am seeking to accept the present and find stillness in myself, I also feel compelled to expect more of myself and of the world around me. Admittedly, this expectation sometimes comes from a place of dissatisfaction or judgement (#Trump), but increasingly these expectations of 'better' come from a place of love and wanting more authenticity, creativity, truth, justice and equity for myself and the world around me.

And so down the theoretical physics rabbit hole we go again, dear platypus readers... but please come with me! #hippityhoppity

The tension in this quote between acceptance and expectation reminds me of the awkwardness we encounter in theoretical physics: between Newtonian physics (ie: law of gravity, etc...) versus quantum physics and the theory of relativity.  These different theories are all applicable to our (current) understanding of the universe, and provide huge insight within their appropriate scope and scale (ie: quantum physics at the micro, gravity at the meso and relativity at the macro for the most part). However, when you try to apply the law of gravity, for example, to explain what is happening at the quantum level, the theory no longer makes any sense.

I think a similar observation about micro, meso and macro levels of applicability can be made with wisdom and advice on "being a human". Or put another way, I think that, like gravity, a piece of wisdom can be true and relevant and helpful to some ways of being human, and problematic to others.

There is a ton of advice out there that can help reframe our patterns, give needed perspective, and help a person find more balance, equanimity, stillness and presence. But a lot of this advice can be very individualistic and self/ego-focused without a connection to our broader potential as fully-realized human beings. The ability to gracefully accept the things we cannot change is definitely important to being present, but to what end? To live a quiet, calm, comfortable and static life? Maybe.

But maybe not. In my view, the wisdom of this day-to-day meso-level acceptance of the world around us needs to be contextualized and connected to our place in the micro and macro levels too.  In physics, if we stopped our investigations with the law of gravity, we would be missing out on enormous insight into the world around us and our place in it.

Put another way, the wisdom of meso-level acceptance is true and helpful in that space, but the ultimate purpose needs to be connected to the other ways of being-- so perhaps the purpose of acceptance in the day-to-day is to conserve and reallocate our precious time and energy to the ambitious transformational work we can be doing at the micro and macro levels (ie: transforming ourselves and transforming the world). 

As usual, this is not a particularly new insight-- we are basically talking around the ubiquitous Serenity Prayer in some ways. But the Serenity Prayer offers no advice on how to tell the difference between the things we can and cannot change. We have to just hope we will figure it out (probably through divine intervention...).  I don't know about you, but given the state of the world, that approach feels waaaaaaaaay too laissez-faire. I think we can/should/must do better.

So to summarize: I love that dabbling in theoretical physics is not only a mind-blowing way to understand and experience the universe and our place in it--- but I also love that the contradictions and awkward concessions within our current understanding of the nature of the universe also provide a helpful example of how we can (have to?) hold on to multiple, competing truths at once-- but that we can reconcile the practicalities of this awkwardness by keeping our eye on the prize (understanding the universe to the best of our ability) and applying these truths within different levels of experience.

Or translated into our earthly example: we can get helpful insight about how to live well from contradictory nuggets of wisdom, and we can manage the indigestion and reconcile the contradictions we encounter by seeking a broader purpose and connecting nuggets across multiple ways of being (ie: one's consciousness (micro), one's day-to-day existence (meso), and one's interactions and influence in the broader world (macro)).

Whew! This was a bit of an intense rabbit hole... If you did join me to the end of this romp, please feel free to drop me a line-- I would love to hear your thoughts (even if those thoughts are "you made absolutely no sense and now you ruined my Sunday because my head hurts and I am allergic to rabbits and I am now craving nuggets".)

But wait! Is all this talk of micro-meso-macro feeling a bit too layered on a sunny Sunday morning?  Then please enjoy this step back into the meso with 10 simple steps to enjoying every day. Or perhaps you have fully accepted the present, and you are looking out at the world and wanting to do something with all of that energy you have conserved. If so, I love this simple but powerful advice on how to take action in the face of injustice.   

Still too much realness?  Then let's get back to a place of stillness... check out this video of a bird going nowhere fast

From one multiple-ways-of-being person to another, I am glad that we can hold all the beautiful contradictions of life in our hands together. I hope you enjoyed this dispatch, and have a acceptance-and-expectation-filled week!

Until next Sunday,
The Earnest Platypus