Hello there!
Welcome to the 40th edition of 'The Lighthouse'!
I'd love to thank you for all the love you've shown for the previous edition! I've received some rave reviews and received some flak for posting about trust and kindness. Like I said last week, it was one of the posts which I hold dear.
Forty weeks is a long time for me to keep this up. Another 12 weeks and it will be a year of running the 'Lighthouse'. Work takes up most of my time, but still sending this out every weekend is very satisfying. The most significant advantage of writing in public has been that ideas that I think are decent go under critical review - they give me more ideas. Also, writing has helped me realize what I knew; I didn't know much about. It is a humbling experience. I'm coming up with a draft of what writing has taught me. I'm excited to share this with you guys in the coming weeks!
Alright, let's dig in!
Reflections
Photo by Erik Eastman on Unsplash
"And when you look directly at an insane man all you see is a reflection of your own knowledge that he's insane, which is not to see him at all". - Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
From a young age - the age from which you can cognise or remember - you paint pictures of people who surround you. You lend to them shapes, shades, and colours on the canvas you are born with. Giving them an actual appearance, one begins to see them as they are. Somewhere along the way, your view morphs into giving them patterns and colours as you want to see them. As a consequence, we lose seeing them in their actual, vibrant colour. We lose seeing them as they are.
What is happening here?
You are seeing another person as a reflection of your own stories about them. Eventually, people become the stories you tell about them - to you and to others.
Now, switch.
Imagine if you undergo the same. Other people paint a picture of you as they want and have given you a framework that you must fit in? Does that approach make sense to you? Or, does it sound like a load of gibberish? You wouldn't want someone to fit you in their profile. Right? What you would instead want is that they fit you in your profile.
Let's take this one step ahead.
What if your reflection of yourself was also a story you've made up? What if you lost sight of your true self when you were growing up and lent power to the external world to condition you? To fit into society, you discarded the empty canvas you were born with and cut a piece from the one that society offered. Then, with whatever colours were available, you painted a picture that others could make sense of. In essence, you have become - not a reflection of your original, but what you want society to see you as.
Life, for me, is split into two parts.
There was a time in my life when I was following the path described above. I have begun to realise that this path is rife with suffering. Why? Because "expectation" is the asphalt that paves this path. Reality and expectations rarely converge; there is more divergence. This divergence is the birthplace of suffering.
The part after the split is where I try to live life now.
Not as I want to see it, but as it happens. When I choose this option, there are no expectations - from anyone or even from myself. In this state, things happen, without reason. When you begin to see things for what they are, you begin to see life in all its brilliance and magnanimity. This leap from the old path to the new is one of the best I have taken in my life. It isn't a leap of faith, but a leap of truth.
Imagine a scenario if you were to bump into an empty car while driving - you wouldn't be mad at it. But, what if there was a person in it? The whole game changes.
Here’s some interesting stuff I came across this week:
Jootsing: The Key to Creativity by Farnam Street Blog: “If you want people to be creative, you can’t complain or punish them when they question a system that is “typically so entrenched that it is as invisible as the air you breathe,” as Dennett says. You need to permit a lot of exploration, including ideas that don’t work out. Not everything outside of a system proves worth pursuing. And often the rules that are most beneficial to break are those that seem the most load-bearing, as if meddling with them will cause the whole system to collapse. It might—or it might make it much better.”
The Big Rocks and the Jar - A Lesson In Making Priorities: “The point is that unless you first place the big rocks into the jar, you are never going to get them in. The big rocks are the important things in your life …your family, your friends, your personal growth. If you fill your life with small things, as demonstrated by the gravel, the sand, and the water…you will never have the time for the important things.”
Why Athletes Choke by Guardian Long Reads: “What Poulter described is called a “clutch state”. Clutch states occur when athletes under pressure are able to summon up whatever is necessary to succeed, to perform well, and perhaps change the outcome of the game. Flow states are when a harmonious state exists between intense focus and absorption in the event, to the exclusion of irrelevant emotions and thoughts, creating a sense that everything is coming together or clicking into place. Athletes with high mental toughness are more likely to experience flow and clutch states than those less mentally tough.”
Here’s a thought I’m ruminating on:
Till next weekend,
Take Care.
Cheers,
Prashanth
If you would love to discuss anything I’ve written about and shared, please reach out to me by replying to this email or sending a direct message on Twitter 🐦 @iam__prashanth. The tribe there is over 2000 members and continues to grow.
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