Responding to the present

One responds to their environment all the time, knowingly or unknowingly. A pothole in the road makes a biker steer away from it, untimely rains make everyone huddle under cover and a raging pandemic makes the populace hole up in apartments. There is nothing special about it. But there is always a second layer of response to the events unfolding around us. A layer of idiosyncracies, where one does things that are not necessarily needed to be done in that particular way. A layer that showcases more clearly the person’s (or a group’s) identity and way of thinking. When tired, one can sit on the couch or on the ground, exercise could mean swimming for one and cycling for another and on being hungry one can cook food or order a swiggy.

We often take our responses for granted almost to the point of assuming that we donot have a choice. We take our identities for granted and keep making default repeat choices without questioning if it is still the right response to the happenings around us. If they are achieving the best they can for our goals. Our conditioning overshadows our connect with the present. What if we asked time and again to ourselves. Is our response to a certain event around us, the best we can do to address it?

Get to vs Have to

A major shift in thinking about work is the shift from a ‘have to’ to ‘get to’. I learnt this from a productivity class I took recently.

A ‘have to’ task feels just by definition much more responsible and a ‘get to’ task feels more playful. We all start many endeavors in our lives that we enjoy doing. But when we make our dreams, our profession, we unfortunately move from our playful ‘get to‘ zone to a more responsible but dry ‘have to’ mode.

Eg: I get to draw 5 pages of comics today vs I have to draw 5 pages of comics

I get to travel and meet people vs I have to travel and meet people

I get to finish the story I’m writing vs I have to finish the story I’m writing

I get to try out a new recipe today vs I have to try out a new recipe today

Everything changes about the process intrinsically. To someone else, from the outset, you might still seem to be doing the thing that you have to. Just more enthusiastically.

Memory

The weight of memory keeps her from finding joy - Neil Gaiman (Fragile Things)

its next to impossible to not be weighed under memory. It is the source of what we can expect from life, our fears, our anxieties and our hopes. All deeply rooted in the past and not much to do with actuality. While life plays songs with the randomness of a radio, our minds think in planned playlists based on past knowledge. We see what we are looking for and only allow novel experiences to flow through the seams of our expectations.