The Tyranny of Outcome - Part III
How pursuit and achievement disappoints
In the part II of this series, we learned that despite our childhood beginnings in the default state of playful process, we usually end up shifting toward outcome and striving. We gradually become a part of “the machine,” pursuing these desirable, increasingly elusive outcomes, at the best of times reflecting on the question… desirable to whom?
Pushing that question mostly aside, we revel in the positive reinforcement from the world about our achievements, and we use this to construct an identity of sorts, which we trot out at parties when we’re asked “so what do you do?”
But the niggling questions remain: are our successes primary to our essential selves, or are they pursued largely in service of the avatars we conjure and present to ourselves and to the world in order to feel like "we are enough"?
In other words, do they deliver a lasting feeling of presence and joy in our lives?
No they do not.
It's noteworthy that outward achievement and success is often correlated with dissatisfaction and unhappiness, because successful outcomes require lengthy effort, but by themselves don't make us whole; they don't connect us to our source energy. Somewhere along the line, we become the embodiment of Jim Carrey's ironic self-caricature of a man believing that he'll finally be able to "stop this terrible search" by realizing his dream of becoming "three-time golden globe winner, Jim Carrey."
I am two-time Golden Globe winner Jim Carrey.
You know, when I go to sleep at night, I'm not just a guy going to sleep. I'm two-time Golden Globe winner Jim Carrey, going to get some well-needed shut-eye.
And when I dream, I don't just dream any old dream. No sir! I dream about being three-time Golden Globe winning actor Jim Carrey. Because, then I would be enough. It would finally be true. And I could stop this terrible search… for what I know ultimately won't fulfil me.
But these are important, these awards. I don't want you to think that just because if you blew up our solar system alone, you wouldn't be able to find us or any of human history with the naked eye… but from our perspective, this is huge!
― Jim Carrey
Carrey has also said that he thinks "everybody should get all of the money they want and get all of the fame they want and do everything they ever wanted so they can see that attaining things they want is not the answer." This is probably one of those lessons that can't be taught ― it has to be hard-won by trying it for yourself, which I'm confident we'll all do to one extent or another before understanding it.
Do we necessarily have to lose our playfulness as we work? Perhaps not fully, but you'd better be both conscious about the issue, and intentional about avoiding it.
At work, we set forth goals (overarchingly, someone else's goals). In order to optimize results, trade-offs are made. Constraints must be respected, costs reduced, and revenues expanded. Plans and timelines are set in place so that competitors can be outpaced. Career ladders are mounted. Shareholders are owed a fiduciary duty.
We cannot reasonably expect to simply "follow our curiosity" in this environment. Our participation is laden with the sticky goo of external expectations.
Some try to marry work and play, counseling us to "follow our passion" when choosing a vocation, meaning that we should attempt to get paid for an activity that achieves both our employer's desired outcome and that we also find personally exciting and meaningful. I'd say "nice work if you can get it," but I wouldn't grip that notion too tightly. Everybody serves somebody, and at work, the person you're serving is generally calling the shots.
And this is assuming you have any inkling of what "your passion" even is, or that it stays the same from day to day. Over my 30-year career, I've don't think I've ever exactly found it, and with the way people talk about passion, you'd think I'd have been the first to know if I had.
With play, we skip all of the pursuit and race straight to the peak of the mountain. We play only to immerse ourselves in our curiosity, explore our environment and ourselves, and share our experiences with the people we're playing with. No child ever asks themselves "who am I?" or "what should I be doing with my life?" while playing Smash-up Derby ― the answer is right in front of them.
Play is to process as work is to outcome.
The battle of present and future
"But Jeremy," you protest, "'play' is all well and good, but I have to eat and obtain clothing and shelter. At some point you have to buckle down and get serious about taking care of yourself and your family. You have to participate in the world."
There's certainly truth in that, but I find the totality of this shift toward goals and "have-to's" pretty disturbing.
We need to think about the future as a practical matter. But I'm pretty sure many of us spend way too much of our time with a "future" focus, losing the present moment in the process. As Eckhart Tolle teaches:
Now you begin to lose the present moment internally, when, the place you want to get to, whatever that may be, whether it's tomorrow or in 5 years time, or even 5 minutes from now, you lose the present moment, and your state of mind becomes somewhat, or very, dysfunctional, when whatever goal you have or destination you have in the future occupies more of your attention than the present moment. If you don't enjoy the journey, which is always now, the step you're taking at this moment, if there's a lack of enjoyment, then you have lost the present moment, and the place you want to get to has assumed an importance that becomes dysfunctional.
"I won't be happy until I have a private jet. It doesn't have to be big… just a little one. I cannot be fully myself unless I have a car that's better than most people's cars."
And so you strive toward that and in the meantime, you're not happy. Because you're striving toward a place that promises some form of fulfilment, whether you call it "happiness," or "having arrived," or the weird expression in the English language "making it." Making what?
― Eckhart Tolle
More than servicing our basic needs, we unconsciously brew an increasingly rarified and complex soup of thoughts and expectations for ourselves.
On YouTube we can clearly see the battle for mindshare playing out between two opposing armies: one side fights for the future, and the other fights for the present.
For a laugh, do two opposing searches: "Stay Focused on Your Goals" and "Just Let Go." It's clear that "Stay Focused" people are dominated by the young and industrious, and the "Just Let Go" people are usually older, perhaps wiser, and definitely have a lot more facial hair. They also often arrive to YouTube with a confessional about their experience with depression, the mother of their reinvention.
I guess my emerging affection for the "Just Let Go" people means I must be getting old. It almost certainly means I want to enjoy myself more in the present.
Play is to the present as work is to the future.
The mirage of expectations
“free from desire, you realize the mystery
caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.”― Lao Tzu
Disciples of Eckhart Tolle, like Jim Carrey, have rediscovered what all kids know early on ― that nothing needs to be achieved; that no one needs to be impressed; that there is no need to go in search of meaning and purpose. Setting off on this journey is the very genesis of personal suffering. In dreaming of better future outcomes, we implicitly define our current state as "not good enough." We forget that all the beauty of existence is already right in front of us, as opposed to at the mythical end of the rainbow.
Indeed, we ourselves are already an integral part of that beauty. If we open our awareness to the natural order, acting as witness rather than lawyer, jury, or judge, then meaning, purpose, and joyful, playful living will flow naturally.
In an interview with Bob Marley, Gil Nobel laments the "lean times" associated with Marley's modest lifestyle growing up in the hills of the Jamaican countryside, but Bob retorts with laughter at the relative complexities of life in the city. Self-reliance in the country, while difficult, wasn't such a big deal.
At some point in his life, Marley moved to the slums of Trenchtown, Jamaica. In the interview, Nobel redirected him again to the difficulties of life there, asking him how he survived, to which Bob again responds that the perceived living conditions in Trenchtown to which Nobel was reacting were really not that bad, and that most of the problems he had stemmed from people's perception of Trenchtown as opposed to the conditions themselves.
Nobel: So, for a long time, things were kinda lean…
Marley: Well, yes, ting was kinda lean, but it leave to what is yu expectation in yu how-do, you know? To me, it was lean, but I coulda stan' it, because comin from the country, where you learn to do things like… yu don't learn to depend on family on all of dat, you know? You go out, and you plant yu own corn. And you watch the corn grow, and the corn grow… you pick yu own corn, yu know what I mean?
Nobel: Yes.
Marley: All a dem fruits pan dem tree; you can get them, you know? So..
Nobel: It's a little different though, in town. You gotta do different things to eat, eh?
Marley: yeah. (laughing) Well, when you inna city, it's a whole different ballgame, yu know?
Nobel: Right.
Marley: People have to go to work, catch a bus… inna de country all you do… yu go fi de donkey, yu ride the donkey to the farm an' you cool, you know? Inna de city people hustle catch the bus, go to work, get off of work, come back home, yu know? See, well is a different ting up deh.
Nobel: I know a little about Jamaica and I understand in Kingston, Trenchtown is a rough part of town. How did you survive?
Marley: Well, while living in Trenchtown, you know, as a young man, survivin' was easy. The only ting yu haffe really look out fuh was the police, you know, cause the police coulda just get you, frame you, you go to prison, because you come from Trenchtown. You know? From dem say "Whe yu from?" you say "Trenchtown" and yu gone. You know what ah mean? You get ship out.
In both questions and responses, we're given a glimpse into how our framing of life can affect our experience of it. Nobel's expectations create a frame that suggests that something needs to be changed, whereas Marley's experience of his own life was that things became much more complicated when he left behind the relative simplicity of country life.
Side effects
The ordinary man is always doing things, yet many more are left to be done."
The Master does nothing, yet he leaves nothing undone.
― Lao Tzu
In another interview, Marley states with aplomb that "we couldn't afford records, so we listened to the music on the radio." Even with this constraint, which would be difficult to even imagine today, the man became one of the most celebrated musicians in the world.
In contrast, we can now consume any song ever composed at any time for almost zero cost. We have ready access to millions of online tutorials and teachers. Many of us don't live in slums, and the lucky of us have access to musical instruments in school. Yet by themselves, these things don't usually produce musical greatness.
It's important to notice that Marley's monstrous achievements were a side effect of playing music (or perhaps more aptly, "playing with music"), his goals for which were much more primal ― to "be a revolutionary," which to a Rastafarian simply means "to free one's own mind; to cast off all those who would try to control it." Achievement was not a part of his ethos ― it was a side effect.
"Achieving a goal" is regularly a side effect of playful living. And when we take our ego out of the equation, it probably doesn't even feel like achievement anymore ― it just feels like the outcome of playing.
Time for a gut check
I want to spend more time in the present moment, because I remember distinctly what that childhood joy felt like. Maybe this is a function of age and nostalgia. The good news is that it's really easy to check your balance at any time in your life. Just answer Tolle's earlier question: "am I enjoying myself?"
If you wake up in the morning expecting that the day will be a good one because you get to experience it, like a kid at Christmas, then you're probably doing pretty well. If you're filled with dread, and would prefer to hide from what it is you're about to do, then a change is probably in order.
Another good clarifying question is "By doing activity X, am I trying to save time or spend time?"
North Americans take "time saving" to an extreme, even relative to our fellow Westerns nations, almost eschewing the presence one might achieve by spending time more intentionally. Somewhere along the line, we just got ourselves in a big damned hurry, trading our visions of dancing sugarplums for the American Dream.
The French would scoff at our coffees-to-go in paper cups; preferring instead to take a proper demi-tasse tableside at a café, perhaps lingering somewhat with a friend, like… a civilized person. To us, the point is the coffee (outcome). To them, the point is the time spent enjoying it (process). So are you enjoying that coffee, or are you just drinking it?
A third gut-check question helps us understand whether or not to pursue a goal. Goals aren't necessarily bad on balance, but before committing to a goal, ask yourself, "is this goal mostly a framework for playful living, or is it more something that it will make me anxious and miserable unless I achieve it?" Reorient your mind to playful process in the present moment.
A lifestyle company
In 2001, two friends and I co-founded a software consulting company called "Jonah Group." My main personal intention was to create what I told my partners was a "lifestyle company" in which I enjoyed the people with whom I worked. I was at relative liberty to dream about this because I was single with no kids, but my partners were both married, and one had two kids. They needed to work, and earn. And when I described to them what I meant by "lifestyle company," which involved an airy brick and beam space with leather couches where we could work, but also hang out, eat, drink, laugh, and discuss what we were all doing together, they looked at me like I was from another planet.
What I didn't realize at the time was that businesses are primarily commercial entities with a great many expenses, including those couches, which have to be more than offset by revenues, and that the choice to start one would forever lock us into that frame. Being an operator requires your full attention.
What I did implicitly understand, though I didn't recognize this at the time, was that my overarching motivation was simply to enjoy myself. I was trying to "play" with others by creating a company. I'm proud of my 31-year old self for knowing the importance of that, even though I've totally forgotten it many times thereafter.
Back to the garden
Jim Carrey puts it very poetically: "There is a soul, and it includes everything, and when you wake up in the morning, and you feel like 'I'm the universe' then you don't have to reach for the stars. You can just let life happen. And walk through the doors!"
We need to rebalance toward a life of presence over planning. Of curiosity over responsibility. Of being over doing. Of play over work.
How do we, the golden dust of stars, return to the garden?
Then can I walk beside you?
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel to be a cog in something turning
Well maybe it is just the time of year
Or maybe it's the time of man
I don't know who I am but you know life is for learning.
We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden
The next part in this series will take a look at the history of the workweek, the advent of automation, and the imminent crisis of meaning.
Background music for voiceover, from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/needmospace/afternoon-nap
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