Chalk this post up to rumination ahead of a holiday, when the broad expectation is that you’re spending some cherished time with loved ones. Fast forward, and I talk about how expectation IS the source of so much of our unnecessary suffering.
I believe we all have our own ‘natural’ levels of happiness, which, through uncomfortable levels of reflection and experience, we can perhaps alter slightly. But we know many examples of those who fall in all quadrants of the 2 x 2 of happiness and success (however we define it).
I have been recently noticing a dichotomy of my life, in which:
I am fairly content with my relationships + work, and not too perturbed by the things I “haven’t yet done", and
I feel a malaise that seems unattributable to any input or output (uh oh)
Self-aggrandizing hypotheses, such as “I’m pursuing excellence, and it’s ever-elusive”, don’t seem to work anymore either.
So what explains this persistent feeling of latent dissatisfaction?
I think it’s the sense that I have an identity, that I am “about” something, that I have a past and a future, and can be measured, appreciated, or judged. Said more simply, I think the malaise is from not being in the present. If we are really present, we lose the sense of self. We become a calm combination of thoughts and actions, that seem to happen naturally. At other times, we may think about how ‘driven’ we are, but when we’re present, that engine is barely perceptible. We don’t actively summon our will-power or put in effort. Instincts take over, we think clearly, act decisively, and the usual noise in our mind goes away. The sound of presence is silence.
Constantly coming back to, “How am I doing” or “How could I have done better” is counterproductive beyond a pretty low point, even if we’ve learned that habit to rapidly ‘improve’ ourselves. To take a tennis analogy, brooding over an error in the last point may cost us further points, even if the intention is to learn from our just-committed error. The better move is to get out of our own way, keep it light, drop expectations of either good play or good results, and trust that our instincts will help us play our best. The analysis can happen later.
I spend too much time thinking about myself — what I’m about, how I’m doing, etc. — the absolute antonym of humility. I’m not going to actively resolve to think about myself less, because that will also get me into a loop of thinking, “Am I overthinking?”. All I’ll walk away with is is a hypothesis that perhaps my overthinking is knocking me out of the current moment, and let my instincts take over from there. No hope, no expectation, no goal… just light awareness.
To close this out, let me share 2 things that resonated deeply with me: