Optimal Potentialities

If you follow me on Twitter (and why should you), you know that I recently finished reading Alan Watts’ book The Wisdom Of Insecurity.  My main takeaway from the book is people should not let the past or the future dictate their lives because the past is unchangeable and the future is unknowable.

To me that does not mean you should ignore the lessons the past can teach you or that you should not have goals for your life.  It means you should not allow yourself to live in the past or the future to avoid the unpleasantness of the present.  You should embrace the present in all its good and bad to live a more content life.  I use content instead of happy because contentment is a more stable state of being instead of happiness or sadness both of which are fleeting emotions.

I have also gotten from Watts and other readings of Zen teachings that you should only worry about the things you can control.  You cannot control outcomes; you can only control your actions.

In grant writing you have to create SMART outcomes.  Those are outcomes which are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound.  Here is a SMART goal people make all the time:  Lose XX pounds in X weeks.  Then they shape their behavior to meet this future goal.

The correct way to create a grant funded program is figure out the change in behavior you want to elicit (the goal), how you plan to elicit that change (the outputs/the program you’re creating), and then what specific measures will prove that change (the outcomes).

People too often mistake outcomes for the goals.  Outcomes are the results of achieving your goals and should naturally occur over the course of the program, but you cannot control the outcomes.

Zen Buddhism teaches us, you cannot control whether you lose the weight.  That is the outcome.  You can only control your actions of eating healthier and exercising (what should be your goals).  Concentrating solely on the outcome of losing the specific weight in a specific time leads many people to A)feel like a failure if they don’t hit this specific number in this specific amount of time or B)distort their behavior in an unhealthy way to hit this specific number in this specific amount of time.

This is why I have started to think of outcomes as the optimal potentiality.  If you concentrate on living day to day and moment to moment, the potential outcome will be very close to your optimal outcome.  If you eat better every day and exercise every day you will probably get very close to the weight you set as your outcome.  Then again you may not, but you will be healthier, and by not distorting your life to attain this future, you are probably more content with your life.

Every day, I do certain things.  Not because I have a specific goal in mind.  I do have optimal potentialities, but no specific goals.  I read and I write every day because those things give me joy and I would like to get better at writing and learn more about beer.  Now, would I like to do these things and have them be my main source of income?  Yes.  That is the optimal potentiality.  However, I cannot control that outcome.  All I can do is read and write every day and keep my eye out for opportunities that may appear.  Then again, maybe they won’t.

It’s like finding a new job.  One will not fall into your lap, however, if you look in the right places every day and you prepare yourself every day eventually you will find a new job that you like.

That is what I get from Watts.  Not the literal idea of not worrying about the future, but the understanding that we can only control our actions in the present.  Be mindful and present in every moment of your life, and you will be more content.  Do not ignore the future, but understand you cannot control it and that it will sort itself out without your meddling.

The Present over The Past and The Future

The present.  It would seem obvious that we all live in the present.  Without the aid of time travel it is impossible for us to live in the past or the future.  However, many people try.

The past provides a warm comfortable blanket.  It is known.  The comfort the past provides assuages the discomfort of the present where things are changing to things we don’t want and frankly scare us.  People are able to pick the things from the past that they want to not only remember but relive.

People look back at the past and at history as the good old days because they choose to remember only the good things from the past.  Those things that make them feel safe and comfortable.  They run from the present because the bad things, the things they fear, the things that cause pain cannot be avoided in the present.  They can avoid those things in the past by choosing the past to remember selectively.

Where the past provides warm comfort, the future provides bright hope.  Because the future is unknown and it obviously has not occurred, it can be whatever it is we want it to be.  You can be anything or anyone in the future.

We bathe in the light of the hope of the future because our present is too hard and too full of pain.  People hope for a better day, a better time, a point when all the pain is gone and the end result shows the reason for all the suffering that came before.   It shows the reasons for the present pain.

Looking to the past or the future are not bad things in and of themselves.  As long as one learns from history and takes comfort in hope in order to experience and enjoy the present, they are not bad.  Our problems come when we let the past and the future take precedence over the now.

I have been reading Alan Watts recently and that is a great deal of what he wrote about.  He believed that one of our greatest modern problems was the fear of pain and how that keeps us from living in the present.  People retreat into the known past or flee towards the unknown future to avoid pain and find happiness.  Watts wrote that in order to find true happiness one must stay present even in the face of great pain and fear.  To almost embrace the pain and fear as part of yourself and move through them, only then can you find true happiness.

The present is what the artist and the critic both strive for in their work.  The artist struggles to create something that will speak to the present moment the work is being enjoyed in whether it be today, tomorrow, or a hundred years from now.  He is trying to construct something that has resonance as long as it exists.  Hamlet is not important simply because Shakespeare wrote it.  Hamlet is important because the core messages and issues it deals with still resonate with people.  It is timeless.

Critics also seek the timeless.  Critics try to do two things.  First, they try to capture that initial moment of joy or disgust in their writing like a fly being caught in amber.  They are trying to capture that thing that makes the work important to their time.  Second, they must then pivot and try express why that thing that makes it important in their time also makes a work timeless.

I found Watts’ books and writings at a point when my this year’s New Year’s resolution was simple:  Be more present.  I found his work and the works of others thanks to the website brainpickings.org which has quickly become one of my favorite sites and certainly my most welcome tweets during the day.  If you like smart, literate, and interesting you should really check it out.

Stream of Consciousness Philosophizing

I cannot say yesterday was a good day or a bad day.  It was a day.  A day much like 99% of the days that fill all our lives.  Nothing of any great import happened.  Those are the days where we get up, eat breakfast, shower, go to work, and attempt to find some happiness or at least contentment with the day’s happenings.  Then we come home and try to find some separation from and meaning from all that did or more likely did not happen during the day.  Some numb themselves with more work, others with alcohol/drugs, others with mindless or high minded television, still others with the banality of family life.  Then the day finally ends and it is off to sleep and to the hopes and dreams that tomorrow will be better or at least interesting.  Then that day finally comes when something interesting does happen.  However, it is not what you thought it would be.  You get mugged, your wife has a car wreck, your son tells you about the man who tried to touch him, or a group of terrorists crash planes into skyscrapers.  You discover it is not interesting things that you want to happen.  You want something to give your life a point.  Not a meaning, just a point.  You search for what the point of you existence is in everything you do: work life, home life, family, television, stimulants.  However, you never look in the one place where you can actually find the point to your life:  Within yourself.  Some are scared to look there.  Others have never been told to look there.  But there is the only place it truly lays.  Waiting.  Dormant. 

I am amazed at the links people will go to in order to no think about the point of their existence.  The number of people who have no self-awareness and only peer outward hoping that someone or something will tell them who they truly are and what their purpose here on Earth is amazes me.  Sometimes, I do envy them though.  Sometimes I wish I did not look inside some much.  But, then I think which is worse.  A life of constant searching for, I won’t call it truth, but for something that makes this time above ground worth it or a life of intentional obtuseness up until that final moment.  The search is so fun.  The search is interesting and illuminating.  The search makes everything that you experience more interesting and more important.  The search teaches you to be present and to be mindful of where you and what you are doing.  The search will probably not make you money or famous.  The search will make you content and happy because you will know why you are here and you will work towards that every day.  It will not seem like work because it is a part of who you are and will be as comfortable as breathing.  That is the true state of grace for which we all search.