#6 Rebellious acts of slowness
Supposed-to-be-led inertia, a warped sense of time, and harmony with strangers
Believe in me, believe in me not
As readers we say, “Here - take my time. Give me something in return. Make me laugh. Make me feel something. Make me smarter. Give me a meaningful question.” Reading is an exchange, and you’re paying with your time. I’m always hoping I can make it worth a reader’s time while trying to convey, to its full depth and breadth, everything I’m trying to say.
Thanks for being here. It’s been a while since I’ve sent out an issue, but there’s something about big life changes that will absolutely stop you from creating things. And then there’s always the pile of guilt that grows from not having written.
It also ironically didn’t help that there are so many more of you here since I sent out the previous issue. I wonder why it’s both exciting and unnerving when someone believes in you. Either way, if you’re reading this, thank you for being here.
I’ve spent a large part of the last 6 months mostly restless with a gnawing sense of ‘I should be happy’. Just over a month ago, I was on a beautiful beach on an island, all by myself. One would imagine I’d be feeling calm, at peace, and basically be marvelling at life itself. It’s what I had intended, anyway. Instead, all I felt in that moment was anxiety. Anxiety about whether I had it all planned out; whether I was doing my absolute best to make the most of life, and also, by extension, my time on the island.
Why was I, while staring into a ridiculously beautiful sunset, not instead taking in the moment like I was supposed to?
‘Supposed’, an interesting word.
We think we can time our lives; that moments ought to arrive as planned, on time, like an old man in a suit, with a pocket watch. “You have arrived. You’re supposed to feel joy now,” he’d say, and our brains would switch, almost instantly.
I wish it were that easy to snap out of the state of pursuit; to let go of the need to perfectly plan out our moments. Because while being in pursuit of the arrival is great, it also means acknowledging you haven’t arrived yet. That a thing is true also means the opposite isn’t. That I’m anxious to feel, be, and do more also means I haven’t felt, been, and done enough, right?
Maybe not.
The other side of adulthood
We spend a lot of time in pursuit: happier, richer, smarter, better. Our entire lives, a pursuit of the next best version of ourselves.
I turned 25 three days after the surge of anxious thoughts at that beach. Maybe it was a quarter-life crisis. Maybe it was the state of overwhelm I was feeling from the ocean of new expectations I had suddenly pinned upon myself. After a satisfying session of cathartic bawling, I asked myself why. What was it that made me feel like I was on a timeline. Like I had to rush. To do, be, and seem more. And I realised it was just this: the supposed-to-be’s I had let myself fall for.
I realised I was engaged in an endless cycle of ‘supposed-to-be’-led inertia, followed by an under-thought charge into action. We’ve been told that because our time is limited, we ought to always be in pursuit of optimising our lives. To not only be more, but also seem more than we have or will ever manage to be.
The rebellion
‘Supposed-to-be’-led inertia doesn’t allow us to fully experience life. It is the very antidote to satisfaction. It sells us a compulsive need to achieve. More. Better. Faster. Now. And in the midst of this anxious pursuit, we forget to take in sunsets. We take pictures instead, for later.
We think that time works like this:
t-1 = inertia; t = action;
t+1 = arrival = time for joy
The inertia of now rushes us into action, and we think we’re supposed to be happy later, in t+1, when we have arrived. But in reality we’ve already been set into another cycle of inertia and action before we’ve had the chance to acknowledge the arrival of the last one.
We never feel like we can stop & smell the flowers because we’re always sold new flowers to be running towards, and fast. We’re in a loop we don’t acknowledge, and end up living our lives, instead, in retrospect. In pictures and videos.
Ever wondered why some pictures make us feel more deeply than the actual moment did? It’s not because we overstate our feelings in retrospect. It’s because had we paid attention, that moment was probably worth savouring.
Here’s a thought:
Maybe if we evaluated the inertia when it was pitched to us, and weighed every ‘supposed to be’, to finally keep only the ones we agreed with, we wouldn’t feel so rushed. Maybe instead of “I’m supposed to be happy,” we’d be better off telling ourselves “I’m supposed to be.”
It takes a little bit of rebellion, though, to resist the calculation of the opportunity cost of a moment - a cost we inevitably end up paying when we choose to just be. It’s the kind of rebellion I’m beginning to adopt.
If stopping to take in a moment is justified only once we’ve experienced all there is to experience, what if we treated each moment like an experience in and of itself?
“This is a moment I need to be here for, and if I miss out, the opportunity cost will be far greater than if I experienced multiple, not-so-deep moments.” A conscious (rebellious) act of choosing few deeper moments than many not-so-deep ones.
Slowness, savouring, depth, and being, all rebellious acts.
Quick science lesson
[Huge shoutout to Dr. Andrew Huberman’s brilliant content about the brain and its chemicals. I’ve been hooked.]
What drives us? Our drive to pursue more comes from dopamine. People tend to think dopamine is the happy chemical that’s secreted when we achieve a thing (or, when we arrive). When in reality, dopamine is released when we’re in-pursuit. This explains why we love rushing to the next thing; why we want to plan everything out so we can see, do, and feel everything; why we want to rush toward the next hill of flowers. It’s the dopamine release from reaching for more. But what happens when we’re constantly in-pursuit? We crash. So does dopamine.
How you feel after a day of going from one hill of flowers to the next versus how you feel after a day of being at the top of one hill, and admiring its flowers, is the difference between dopamine and serotonin.
Serotonin is the ‘here & now’ chemical. The thing that makes the present moment feel satisfying. Dopamine and serotonin are both equally important for life to feel fulfilling.
You see? The pursuit = dopamine; the arrival = serotonin.
If we treated our moments like we had arrived, our brains would be forced to rest. To secrete the satisfaction chemical. To be.
After all, what is a life well lived? Is it the moments we spent in-pursuit? Or is it the moments we believed we had arrived?
Moments being held out
As I’m writing this issue, there’s a song that my playlist has landed on, and I’m transported back to my first night on the island, right after the surge of anxiety I had just experienced at the beach.
After 3 flights and roughly 15 hours of travel, all I wanted to do was sleep for 15 hours straight. But I was told that Thursdays were the local Fridays, and I had to go along to check out the local bar. “One drink”, I told myself.
Three drinks later, I heard it. The beat picking up. It couldn’t be! Was it?
I saw people gather up in a line and tap their feet with some amount of drunkenness and gusto, while visibly warming up to each other (what is it about dancing and harmony that connects humans?).
There’s a warm, unexpected feeling (I previously wrote about kama muta: the momentary surge of emotion we feel when love ignites) when a good moment is being held out to you and you look around to see if it’s real, if everyone else is feeling it too. It was, and they were. I didn’t know the moves, I just knew I wanted to be part of that weirdly synchronous bunch of strangers, and I jumped in.
There are things you never really see happening to you. Things that feel right out of a movie scene. Like dancing in perfect harmony with strangers, to your favourite song in a tiny local bar on an island far away from home.
Lesson: always say yes when a moment is being held out to you. Especially when the moment involves dancing. Especially if it involves your favourite song. (Also, maybe keep a list of weird things you kinda want but think are improbable. The world is a surprising place.)
The big stuff is just fluff
While it’s hard to switch into emotions you think you ought to be feeling, it’s less hard to allow yourself to say yes to moments. Savouring starts out as an occasional act, where you think you can only savour big moments. But once you begin, savouring becomes second nature, if you let it. You begin to notice the smaller delights in seemingly mundane things. A great cup of coffee, brewed to perfection. Slow. A tiny meal you spent a large amount of time preparing. Slow. A knowing glance you shot at your best friend when they introduced you to the person they love. Slow. Savoured. Moments being held out.
Slowness, savouring, and just being are acts of rebellion. ‘Supposed’, is an interesting word that runs our lives if we let it. We don’t have to.
A life well-lived is a collection of the smaller moments. The big stuff is just fluff without the smaller, real stuff underneath. A wedding is just a party if the two people aren’t smiling ridiculously at each other from all the love they feel. A buffet is just food if you aren’t savouring your favourite dish. A promotion is just money if you don’t thoroughly enjoy (at least some part of) your job.
A birthday is just 365 more days you spent on this planet if you didn’t say yes to joy just because you thought you had to wait to be more to deserve it.
Just regular smart,
Yashmi
P.S. Would you be interested in recommendations? I collect some amazing articles, podcasts, poems, quotes and book excerpts in the process of writing Not Super Smart which never make it to the final piece, and would be thrilled to share them with you if you’re interested. Let me know by replying!
Wonderful post Yashmi. Also, please do share anything you'd like. Your curations would definitely be as beautiful as your posts.
This is such a lovely curation of utterly original thoughts. Please keem em' coming.
Would love any recommendations that you make.
Keep writing :)