Puzzled.
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Hi Friends,
I do puzzles occasionally these days. Is do the verb for puzzling? I started a new one over the weekend: rows of birds against a thinly striped monochrome grey background. If you’re a puzzler, you know that grey background is a bitch. I’m still in the fun-with-the-birds stage, though. Also, a lot of birds are seriously scary-looking.
Working on puzzles seems to suit my personality. I find it relaxing and rewarding. Maybe playing with puzzles is a better way to say it. Meditating with puzzles? Sitting with a puzzle? That feels right, because it’s one of the rare things I can sit with without getting distracted. An hour goes by in a minute.
The only thing I don’t like about puzzling is its effect on my posture. My vanity is concerned enough about cell phone neck without inviting puzzle neck into the picture.
Any other puzzlers out there? Link me to your favorites.
What I notice about my mind is that it is constantly assessing what I’m doing as bad or good, worthwhile or a waste of time, beneficial toward my evolution or detracting from it. Even with puzzles, my mind appreciates knowing there are cognitive and mental health benefits that come with doing them: improved memory, enhanced fine motor skills, reduced stress. I don’t sit with puzzles for those reasons, but I like having them ready when my mind tells me puzzling is a waste of time. Along with: Who cares, I’m enjoying myself.
I appreciate that I give consideration to the choices I’m making and how they affect my life. It is abundantly clear to me, for example, that when I spend too much time on Threads, as I’m wont to do lately, I tend to feel more stressed, angry, and generally disgusted. It makes sense, then, to spend less time on Threads.
But we often don’t do what makes the most sense. I certainly don’t.
It’s also clear to me that when I judge myself for spending too much time on Threads, I create even more anger and disgust in my life, only this time aimed at myself, which, as we well know, is much less fun than aiming it at others.
What is this compulsion to spend time doing only meaningful things? Or deciding so often that how I’m spending time isn’t meaningful?
I’m much more interested these days in bringing acceptance to the choice of, say, watching TV for six hours straight than I am in watching far less TV while still judging myself for it. To my mind, which is wholly unenlightened but has very clear ideas about enlightenment, no amount of TV is good. The same goes for news, social media, sugar, alcohol, and the list never ends.
If I’m not functioning in a continuous state of altruism, creativity, political awareness and activism, healthy eating, etc., then there’s something wrong with me. This is not how I actually feel, of course, but it is the bullshit my mind keeps trying to sell me. And it’s a highly effective salesman.
Even as I write this, my mind tells me that sharing anything not directly related to the dire political situation in our country has no value. I don’t believe that, but even entertaining the thought takes away from the joy and relief of sharing what’s actually on my mind.
There is no right way to human. And yet I continually judge myself against what I imagine to be one. I bet you do too. We all do. And then, because we don’t want to sit with the discomfort of that self-judgment, we diffuse it by judging each other too.
We become deeply suspicious of rest. Of pleasure. Of distraction. Of anything that doesn’t appear productive or enlightened or useful. Which, as it happens, is a lot.
We struggle to simply enjoy ourselves without needing to justify the enjoyment. Even joy has to become medicinal now. It’s good for the nervous system, and for neuroplasticity, and for longevity. Joy is healing! It’s becoming harder to just like things anymore. Just because we like them. Wait, where’s the supporting research?
I understand this impulse. I live it. I want my choices to support my wellbeing. I want to grow. I want to evolve. Blah blah blah blah blah. But somewhere along the way, many of us started treating ourselves like self-improvement projects instead of human beings. Forgetting that we are in fact enough, just as we are. I think a lot of exhaustion comes from constantly trying to earn the right to exist, and to feel worthy. To earn rest. To earn pleasure. To earn attention.
Self-acceptance doesn’t demand any of this. It says, I see you, you’re worthy, it’s all human. Chill baby, chill.
We hold ourselves to these impossible standards, and then we start holding everyone else to them too.
You’re watching too much TV.
You’re numbing out too often.
You eat too much.
You’re online too much.
You’re not doing enough with your life.
Blah blah blah blah blah.
So much of our judgment of others is just self-rejection looking for another place to land.
I watch a good amount of TV these days. And I judge anyone who watches a good amount of TV. Like, what the hell are we doing with our lives?
That judgment comes because I’m not fully okay with my own TV-viewing habits. I haven’t accepted them as totally fine. And they are totally fine.
I don’t think acceptance means not being aware of whether choices are more or less helpful and fulfilling. I think acceptance is an invitation to end the shame we carry about the choices we’re making. To understand that everything we do here is human, and should we decide to make changes, as much as possible do it from a place of deep grace rather than condemnation. Acceptance encourages us to end the relentless wars we have with ourselves. It reminds us that we no longer need to believe we have to constantly justify our existence.
Maybe this is why I like puzzles so much these days. For an hour or two, my mind gets lost in a project that has nothing to do with judging me.
So much love to you all,
xoxo…Scott
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