Continuation
Yesterday's entry was written at almost 4 in the morning, so I'd like to expand on it and make it a little more coherent. Some of the following comes from my own observations. A lot of it is inspired or covered by Pirsig in "Zen" and Milan Kundera in "Immortality." Don't be surprised if these authors keep coming up; they have quite a bit to say.
In any case, yesterday I wrote about how our society gets preoccupied with results and destinations rather than processes and journeys. So many people exist in a "to-from" mindset. The problem with this is twofold: one, you effectively trap yourself in blinders because you're so set on reaching the horizon that you don't notice the scenery around you; and two, once you reach the horizon, you don't stop but find yourself reaching for the next one. The two dovetail so much that in reality as soon as you have one, you get the other.
The first problem results directly from detachment from your surroundings. In effect, as you deliberately choose what is important to you, you exclude everything else from your sight. You force an outcome. You think you are the perfect judge of what is important around you. You don't see your immediate surroundings as important of themselves, but as an obstacle, a distraction, from your reaching that distant goal. It's the effect you get driving a car. The compartment cuts you off from your surroundings- you don't hear the noises outside, you can't feel the wind, and the windshield becomes disturbingly like a TV screen. You focus on reaching that turn ahead, on passing that car in front of you, and all the while beautiful things fly by without your even noticing. Everything becomes slightly less real.
I'll include a quote from Kundera here because it sums up the blinder problem so poetically. "A highway differs from a road not only because it is solely intended for vehicles, but also because it is merely a line that connects one point with another. A highway has no meaning in itself; its meaning derives entirely from the two points that it connects. A road is a tribute to space. Every stretch of road has a meaning in itself and invites us to stop. A highway is the triumphant devaluation of space, which thanks to it has been reduced to a mere obstacle to human development and a waste of time. Before roads and paths disappeared from the landscape, they had disappeared from the human soul: man stopped wanting to walk, to walk on his own feet and enjoy it. What's more, he no longer saw his own life as a road, but as a highway: a line that led from one point to another, from the rank of captain to the rank of general, from the role of wife to the role of widow. Time became a mere obstacle to life, an obstacle that had to be overcome by ever greater speed."
That last part beautifully sets up the "to-from" problem. When you set a particular goal and become obsessed with reaching it, success becomes unfulfilling. Because after all, there is always someone with more. Life becomes a drive to reach the next-highest or the farthest-reaching status, and each successive advance makes the previous ones worth less and less. And then when one attains the 'pinnacle of success' there is a constant battle to maintain it, whether against the clamoring of other people or the ravages of time. Goals become an addiction, and just like an addiction, more and more is needed to ellicit that euphoric feeling of getting it. Until at last one day there is no further goal to be had, or a failure in its place, and the impact of the fall is hard indeed.
Yet so many people in our society are perpetually stuck in this linear, narrow "to-from" mindset. Rather than enjoying and contemplating the natural progression of our lives, we fight it. We frantically rush along, refusing to see anything in our peripheral vision for fear it might shake us. We insist on being able to conquer the world, whether through ideology or action, instead of letting it teach us.
To change this is surprisingly simple, though it requires restraint of will and mind. All you have to do is make your goals tentative, and suddenly everything shifts. If you keep your options open to better opportunities, suddenly they present themselves where you hadn't seen them before. If you don't attain the goal, you are in a better position to think about the other things you learned along the way and put them to use. This isn't to say you should lively entirely in the moment; this can be just as bad a vice being stuck in a calendar planner (I'll address that in a separate post). But a proper balance between present and future, between immediacy and intent, can make us all a lot better off.
In any case, yesterday I wrote about how our society gets preoccupied with results and destinations rather than processes and journeys. So many people exist in a "to-from" mindset. The problem with this is twofold: one, you effectively trap yourself in blinders because you're so set on reaching the horizon that you don't notice the scenery around you; and two, once you reach the horizon, you don't stop but find yourself reaching for the next one. The two dovetail so much that in reality as soon as you have one, you get the other.
The first problem results directly from detachment from your surroundings. In effect, as you deliberately choose what is important to you, you exclude everything else from your sight. You force an outcome. You think you are the perfect judge of what is important around you. You don't see your immediate surroundings as important of themselves, but as an obstacle, a distraction, from your reaching that distant goal. It's the effect you get driving a car. The compartment cuts you off from your surroundings- you don't hear the noises outside, you can't feel the wind, and the windshield becomes disturbingly like a TV screen. You focus on reaching that turn ahead, on passing that car in front of you, and all the while beautiful things fly by without your even noticing. Everything becomes slightly less real.
I'll include a quote from Kundera here because it sums up the blinder problem so poetically. "A highway differs from a road not only because it is solely intended for vehicles, but also because it is merely a line that connects one point with another. A highway has no meaning in itself; its meaning derives entirely from the two points that it connects. A road is a tribute to space. Every stretch of road has a meaning in itself and invites us to stop. A highway is the triumphant devaluation of space, which thanks to it has been reduced to a mere obstacle to human development and a waste of time. Before roads and paths disappeared from the landscape, they had disappeared from the human soul: man stopped wanting to walk, to walk on his own feet and enjoy it. What's more, he no longer saw his own life as a road, but as a highway: a line that led from one point to another, from the rank of captain to the rank of general, from the role of wife to the role of widow. Time became a mere obstacle to life, an obstacle that had to be overcome by ever greater speed."
That last part beautifully sets up the "to-from" problem. When you set a particular goal and become obsessed with reaching it, success becomes unfulfilling. Because after all, there is always someone with more. Life becomes a drive to reach the next-highest or the farthest-reaching status, and each successive advance makes the previous ones worth less and less. And then when one attains the 'pinnacle of success' there is a constant battle to maintain it, whether against the clamoring of other people or the ravages of time. Goals become an addiction, and just like an addiction, more and more is needed to ellicit that euphoric feeling of getting it. Until at last one day there is no further goal to be had, or a failure in its place, and the impact of the fall is hard indeed.
Yet so many people in our society are perpetually stuck in this linear, narrow "to-from" mindset. Rather than enjoying and contemplating the natural progression of our lives, we fight it. We frantically rush along, refusing to see anything in our peripheral vision for fear it might shake us. We insist on being able to conquer the world, whether through ideology or action, instead of letting it teach us.
To change this is surprisingly simple, though it requires restraint of will and mind. All you have to do is make your goals tentative, and suddenly everything shifts. If you keep your options open to better opportunities, suddenly they present themselves where you hadn't seen them before. If you don't attain the goal, you are in a better position to think about the other things you learned along the way and put them to use. This isn't to say you should lively entirely in the moment; this can be just as bad a vice being stuck in a calendar planner (I'll address that in a separate post). But a proper balance between present and future, between immediacy and intent, can make us all a lot better off.