Zen Moments

“Not-knowing is not easy, it’s not comfortable…”

“And what do you do?”

Back when I was 21, I was unemployed. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and I hated that question.

“I’m unemployed” was the truth, but I would cringe each time I gave that answer. In those days maybe there was more of a stigma to not having a job.

“Oh, why’s that then?” would be the response, and I would have to explain that I didn’t know what I wanted to do, or cover it over somehow. So I would avoid going to parties where I’d meet new people who would invariably ask me that question.

As an experiment, I tried pretending: “I’m a classical guitar maker” (a lie). “Oh how wonderful – how on earth did you get into that?” “Oh, I’ve been doing that for some time” (more lies).

I hated lying. Once you start lying you have to keep up the pretence. The person you just told tells someone else, and it gets around. And they ask you questions. You have to remember what lies you’ve told to whom, and you have to make sure that the people you’ve lied to don’t get to speak to any of your friends who know what you actually do. That you’re not, in fact, a guitar maker at all. You’re just out of work.

No, lying didn’t work. And telling the truth didn’t work either.

I felt so pressured from within and without to have a proper, respectable answer to that question. Why was it so important? It seemed like what you did defined your identity. What about me as a person? If I don’t do anything impressive, does that make me less valuable as a human being?

It seems so.

The question bothered me until I found an answer.

It came to me in the shower, while absent-mindedly washing my hair, when I wasn’t trying to solve anything.

It went something like this:

In anyone’s life, there are going to be times when everything seems to be going well, and when you have a sense of purpose, when you are clear about where you’re going in life.

But in the same life, there are also bound to be times when it’s not clear, times when you do not know. For some people these might be brief interludes. For others they might last longer, until things change.

But it’s impossible to have that kind of uninterrupted certainty for a whole lifetime.

So in anyone’s life, there are going to be times of not-knowing. And that has to be OK.

That not-knowing will last until things change, until you discover what you want to do.

And you can’t force that, you can’t make that certainty happen. Maybe it’ll only become clear when you leave where you’re living, or you meet somebody you haven’t met yet, who opens a door for you.

But now, at the moment, you don’t know what you want to do, and that’s OK…

This realisation was a tremendous relief. I stopped laying the trip on myself that I should know what I wanted to do, and was able more easily to accept life, just as it was at the time.

And in due course life did change, things opened up and the way ahead became clear…

But this was a valuable lesson: It’s alright not to know…

Not-knowing is not easy, it’s not comfortable, and it can be a place of great anxiety.

But if that’s how it is, that’s what is true.

And it’s OK…

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Written for Zen Moments by Alan Lewis

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The Wisdom of Insecurity
By Alan W. Watts

“An exploration of man’s quest for psychological security and spiritual certainty in religion and philosophy.”

“This book has changed my life. For anyone that has experienced depression and anxiety, this book explains the evolutionary reason for these emotions. Ultimately the books criticizes man for misusing his anxiety. We have become too anxious over stimuli that is all too trivial. The human animal has developed anxiety for his survival, but he now experiences anxiety that detrimentally affects his survival.”Amazon Reviews

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Focusing
By Eugene T. Gendlin

“Focusing is a new technique of self therapy that teaches you to identify and change the way your personal problems concretely exist in your body. Focusing consists of steps of felt change. Unlike methods that stress “getting in touch with your feelings,” there is a built-in test: each focusing step, when done correctly, is marked by a physical relief, a profound release of tension. Focusing guides you to the deepest level of awareness within your body. It is on this level, unfamiliar to most people, that unresolved problems actually exist, and only on this level can they change.” Amazon Book Reviews

“… the book is completely practical. It teaches you how to get in touch with your body/mind–the part of you that feels and knows without using logic, morality, guilt, or blame. Once you get in touch with whatever your body/mind is experiencing in the present, you focus on that “felt sense.” Keeping your conscious awareness tuned to that feeling causes a movement in the energy, and ultimately a shift occurs,which you can physically feel as a release of a blockage or a point of tension. This technique works very well for those problems and issues that you thought you had worked through, but keep returning over and over again. The best part is, you can do this work without a therapist. After a while, you will find that your body (or rather, body/mind) becomes your best teacher on all matters of the heart and soul.” Amazon Book Reviews

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“It is my intention to work into each of my lectures … one lie”

One of my favorite professors in college was a self-confessed liar.

I guess that statement requires a bit of explanation.

The topic of Corporate Finance/Capital Markets is, even within the world of the Dismal Science, (Economics) an exceptionally dry and boring subject matter, encumbered by complex mathematic models and obscure economic theory.

What made Dr. K memorable was a gimmick he employed that began with his introduction at the beginning of his first class:

“Now I know some of you have already heard of me, but for the benefit of those who are unfamiliar, let me explain how I teach. Between today until the class right before finals, it is my intention to work into each of my lectures … one lie. Your job, as students, among other things, is to try and catch me in the Lie of the Day.”

And thus began our ten-week course.

This was an insidiously brilliant technique to focus our attention – by offering an open invitation for students to challenge his statements, he transmitted lessons that lasted far beyond the immediate subject matter and taught us to constantly check new statements and claims with what we already accept as fact.

Early in the quarter, the Lie of the Day was usually obvious – immediately triggering a forest of raised hands to challenge the falsehood. Dr. K would smile, draw a line through that section of the board, and utter his trademark phrase “Very good! In fact, the opposite is true. Moving on … ”

As the quarter progressed, the Lie of the Day became more subtle, and many ended up slipping past a majority of the students unnoticed until a particularly alert person stopped the lecture to flag the disinformation.

Every once in a while, a lecture would end with nobody catching the lie which created its own unique classroom experience – in any other college lecture, end of the class hour prompts a swift rush of feet and zipping up of bookbags as students make a beeline for the door.

On the days when nobody caught the lie, we all sat in silence, looking at each other as Dr. K, looking quite pleased with himself, said with a sly grin: “Ah ha! Each of you has one falsehood in your lecture notes. Discuss amongst yourselves what it might be, and I will tell you next Monday. That is all.”

Those lectures forced us to puzzle things out, work out various angles in study groups so we could approach him with our theories the following week.

Brilliant … but what made Dr. K’s technique most insidiously evil and genius was, during the most technically difficult lecture of the entire quarter, there was no lie. At the end of the lecture in which he was not called on any lie, he offered the same challenge to work through the notes; on the following Monday, he fielded our theories for what the falsehood might be (and shooting them down “no, in fact that is true – look at “) for almost ten minutes before he finally revealed: “Do you remember the first lecture – how I said that ‘every lecture has a lie?’”

Exhausted from having our best theories shot down, we nodded.

“Well – THAT was a lie. My previous lecture was completely on the level. But I am glad you reviewed your notes rigorously this weekend – a lot of it will be on the final. Moving on … ” Which prompted an arousing melange of exasperated groans and laughter from the classroom.

And while my knowledge of the Economics of Capital Markets has faded in time, the lessons that stayed with me were his real legacy:

• “Experts” can be wrong, and say things that sound right – so build a habit of evaluating new information and check it against things you already accept as fact.
• If you see something wrong, take the initiative to flag it as misinformation.
• A sense of playfulness is the best defense against taking yourself too seriously.

I’ve had many instructors before and since, but few that I remember with as much fondness – and why my favorite professor was a chronic liar.

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By Kai Peter Chang, author of The 16 Essential People of Your Life
First published on overcomingbias.com and LiveJournal.
Reproduced on Zen Moments with the author’s kind permission

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A Recommended read from Zen Moments Bookstore:
Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ – 10th Anniversary Edition.

By Daniel Goleman

“Everyone knows that high IQ is no guarantee of success, happiness, or virtue, but until Emotional Intelligence, we could only guess why. Daniel Goleman’s brilliant report from the frontiers of psychology and neuroscience offers startling new insight into our “two minds”—the rational and the emotional—and how they together shape our destiny. Through vivid examples, Goleman delineates the five crucial skills of emotional intelligence, and shows how they determine our success in relationships, work, and even our physical well-being. What emerges is an entirely new way to talk about being smart. The best news is that “emotional literacy” is not fixed early in life. Every parent, every teacher, every business leader, and everyone interested in a more civil society, has a stake in this compelling vision of human possibility.” – Amazon book review

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