An Unfriendly Brain
A friend says she could not sleep last night. “My brain,” she reports, “is not my friend.”
We've all been there, needing a kinder mind, one on board with the program of better being.
After hearing about my freinds ruminations about what to do next, I tell her: “The problem is not that you don’t know, the problem is that you have too many answers.”
In a time of limited options—grow the food, hunt the beast, live close to where you were born—you don't stay up at night worrying about if you should go to grad school, join your friend’s start-up, volunteer for a year, travel to a new land or go home and live in the basement until the world feels safe again. Today, even a short list of options comes with endless possibilities, each of which might be the thing to do or, and this is where the worry starts, might be a mistake.
Will that Master’s program be disappointing? Must I live in Manhattan to measure up to my image of myself? Can I stay with my partner if they feel differently about children than I do? Will I paint or play music or volunteer in retirement?
None of these are minor issues, but few things are all good or all bad. Sure, we want to get our choices right, but we would be better off to put more energy into what we do after choosing than into the choice itself. Make whatever you decide as good as it can be by how you approach it, by how you live into and through it. This is to say that as in most things, right and wrong matter less than attitude and temperament, doubting yourself less useful than developing your capacity to live with a lightness of being.
The DNA of choice has become so hardwired it is hard to see that we are always knowing, rather than always not knowing. We get stuck in the cereal aisle, caught between Cheerios and Corn Flakes. We get lost in clicks and scrolls. But no choice in these situations matters as much as moving on.
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Today my forty-year-old Uber driver—Mandla—told me about his grandfather. Born on a farm, illiterate his whole life, his grandfather lived until he was ninety-seven and would, until he was ninety-four or so, walk three hours to see his grandchildren. He would spend the day and then walk three hours back home in the afternoon. Mandla recalled being ten and riding on his grandfather’s shoulders. “He would put me down and I would walk with him but since I could not keep up, he would pick me up again. And that was when he was still in his 80’s.”