In a Zoom meeting on Monday, a friend and mentor said: “paddle harder.”
We’ve been doing these meetings for a while (since before they were cool). Strange flex aside, they’ve taken on a new meaning and importance for me.
They are a vehicle for connection, my lifeline to a world beyond the walls of our home. I dropped something off at the post office this week. This is, somehow, now newsworthy material, perhaps because it was the first time I’d been anywhere aside from home or on a walk in weeks.
But more likely because it crystallized knowledge that dawned on me during that meeting. I took a lot of things for granted…
Like the microinteractions with people at the grocery store or the barista at the coffee shop.
I was so busy hustling and bustling around that I missed these moments. Quarantine has forced - or invited - me to slow down. After all, where am I rushing to? I have nowhere to go and nothing to do.
Except write this letter to you fine folks.
But back to what my friend said…
Paddle harder.
Little vulnerability here: I spent the last few months working as an independent contractor, pouring my heart and soul into work I found meaningful. This was all well and good until well, by now you know the story. I wasn’t “fired” but I lost almost every hour of work.
And when suddenly I found myself with spare time on my hands, I remembered:
It’s not only about paddling harder, but it’s also about paddling smarter. You can paddle as hard as you want but if you’re not positioned properly, you’re not going to catch the wave.
For me, it’s become about testing a theory I’ve long believed:
Do what you are meant to be doing, as Nature has intended you to do, and you will find yourself supported.
I’ve worried for so long about fitting into a neat, tiny box so as to make a contribution and to make sure I had a paycheck.
Now that it’s become laughably obvious that wasn’t a sure thing, I figure I may as well spend my time doing the thing that I enjoy and the thing that I feel called to do.
Teach, except in a different way that capitalizes on existing and evolving platforms.
Like this one.
I hope you enjoy.
Thing I’m Inspired By:
Buckminster Fuller’s page on WikiQuotes
This page is just full of gem after gem after gem. I love his perspective on solving the world’s problems. When you read through it, one thing becomes immediately obvious: he cared for people. Deeply. And wanted to do everything he could to help them.
Here is one of my favorite quotes (of which there are many):
We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.
Another Quote I’m Pondering:
To dare is to risk losing one’s footing. To not dare is to risk losing oneself. - Soren Kierkegaard
Quarantine has essentially forced me to look at my life. I was left with space and time to reflect. I used that time to look and into the habits, routines, actions and values that my life had become. It was a dropkick from the Universe. I thought, yet again (funny how that mistake keeps happening) that I had things figured out - “THIS is the path!” - only to be cosmically nudged in a different direction. It’s almost as if the Universe was saying, “your footing is uncertain regardless of how elaborate an illusion you are able to construct.” If that’s the case, I may as well come home to myself.
As discussed, that, for me, means writing. And I’m writing again, much more than I had been for the past few months, as evidence by me successfully sending this newsletter two weeks in a row.
It feels like I’m rediscovering myself.
A Song I’m Jamming To:
Or perhaps, more accurately, finding comfort in.
My girlfriend…wait, okay. Her name is Rachel. I’m referring to her henceforth (a hilarious word to use) as Rachel. Rachel introduced me to Jon Bellion a few months after we started dating. She asked me if I had heard of Jon Bellion and I replied, “yeah, you mean the All Time Low dude, right?” Turns out, he was much more than that.
And I’ve listened to him daily since.
His music has a depth and vulnerability to it that few mainstream pop artists have which is perhaps why he hasn’t fully broken through (also in part because he doesn’t want to - which he openly admits).
This song is in keeping with one of the apparent themes of my week: the illusory nature of control. The moment you think “I’ve got it” is likely the moment *just* before you realize you haven’t got anything at all. Conversely, the moment you embrace your total and utter lack of control is the moment you come closest to approaching it.
The word “God” is a loaded term that inspires a strong emotional reaction in just about everyone. We all come to the term and the concept it represents with attachments and baggage.
Let’s, for a moment, forget that it’s in the title. Let us scrub the lens clean, to see the concept of what the word represents through a fresh and clear perspective free from our conceptual baggage. One of the refrains of the song is “your whole life is in the hand of God,” which, for our friend Jon, is a way of embracing the utter unpredictability of this game we call life. The cosmic rug can and will be pulled out from under your feet at any moment, without notice. That is the agreement we have made. It is a central rule to our playing of the game. It is that sneaky clause at the end of a contract: “Subject to change without notice.”
The song continues: “When you’re lost in the Universe, don’t lose faith.”
The faith here, for me, is that it will work out. Whatever that means. That some good will come of a challenging experience. Even if that faith is in my own ability to create meaning from or find the good in this experience. It is also the faith I have in one another, the belief in humanity and human potential, the belief that we, and will, rise above any challenge presented to us, however much it may stretch us.
Book I’m Reading:
Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella Meadows
This book is like a revelation. I found myself silently exclaiming, “EVERYTHING is a system!”
Which begs the question, can you silently exclaim? Or would the word “silently” imply that you’re not exclaiming?
I digress.
Embracing systematic thinking is a part of the maturation and evolution of my own thinking processes and models for understanding the world. It’s an attempt at embracing and more deeply understanding the complexity and intersections of the systems we occupy. My goal with this learning is to construct a more holistic view of the world and problems ailing humanity.
It is, in part, inspired by a trip I made to a local food bank here in San Diego. Jim Floros, the San Diego Food Bank CEO, said something that will stick with me for years: “Most people try to solve food insecurity by throwing more food at.”
Which seems like a good enough solution.
Food insecurity = limited access to food
So more food = less food insecurity
But he said, “that doesn’t address the root issue.” Like how a lack of diapers might lead to food insecurity.
Suppose, he said, you’re a single mom using government-subsidized daycare. You work three jobs and barely make ends meet. You need your kids to be watched throughout the day and you need it for free. This subsidized daycare is a godsend. You show up and they say, “Miss, you have diapers for your three children, correct?” Diapers, you think, I needed those? Yes, they say, we cannot accept your kids without diapers.
Well, you can’t afford them. Not until your next paycheck.
So your kids can’t go to daycare. You have no family around to watch them. You can’t leave them at home alone. So you have to stay at home to watch them. You do this three days in a row and are fired from your job.
Suddenly, you don’t have money for your groceries and your food insecure, back on government-subsidized food programs and relying on assistance from the food bank.
All, or at least in large part, because of diapers.
So what was the solution Jim and the food bank came up with? Give out diapers. It’s one of the food bank’s biggest services.
It’s this sort of thinking I aim to use when thinking about solutions to problems and how I aim to think through things when constructing my own beliefs.
My notes, plus some reflections on insights I’ve had, will be ready next week, should you be interested. Systems thinking has tons (perhaps limitless) implications for our operation in and view of the world.
Perhaps this is the sort of enthusiasm the author warned of in her book? C’est la vie.
A Thing I Want:
Especially now.
Cravings for in-home exercise gear is an apparent side effect of quarantine.
And also this:
For the first time in show history, SNL was done with an entirely remote cast. This skit of a Zoom call feels particularly apropos.
Oh! And this:
Banksy is working from home, too.
Until next time.
Make it a great week,
KB