The world is a disaster spinning out of control.
The world is awesomely beautiful.
Both of these things are (and always have been) true, depending on your perspective. I’ve come to appreciate this throughout my life. Bad things will always be out there, luring me in to pay attention. Worrying about stuff I could not control used to be one of my favorite past times, and is still a habit that I find difficult to kick. But at the same time, good things are all around me as well, if I choose open my eyes to them. They both exist simultaneously, forever intertwined into one beautiful mess.
The problem I have as a human is I am not wired to see the melding of good and bad as just, “what is.” My dog has no problem seeing “what is.” But I, as a member of the dominant species on this planet have been wired to sense “good” and “bad” separately, and then to pay extra close attention to the “bad.”
It makes sense why I am wired this way. We’ve all heard the story of one of our ancient ancestors who happily skipped along a path, picking up and collecting every item that looked like a stick. She’s wired differently from our other ancient ancestor, who inspected every stick first to make sure it was not a deadly snake, before grabbing it. One survived to pass on their (justifiably, at the time) anxious genes, while the other didn’t. Fast forward thousands of years and it’s no wonder why I overweight the bad stuff around me.
While this innate wiring may have been helpful in the past, it seems to have outlived its usefulness for me. Worrying about all the things that could go terribly, horribly wrong in my life has just resulted in spiraling anxiety. Not the helpful kind of anxiety (e.g., maybe don’t pick up that stick), but the dangerous anxiety (e.g., is my kid safe to go to school today with so many school shootings?).
The good news is that if you have a lot of this dangerous anxiety, there is literally a book for this, which I highly recommend called, Things Might Go Terribly, Horribly Wrong. I would like to nominate this book for the “greatest book title ever” award. I mean, just picking it up came with this very calming feeling of acceptance that shit is going to go down in my life that will cause me a lot of pain. So what? I’m human. This is part of the deal. Now… how do I thrive in life despite this fundamental truth?
This brings me to the title of this post, which is that awareness is all that we can really control. If I really study my life, it doesn’t take me long to see that it has been once accident after another. An accidental birth born out of the accidental meeting of two strangers raised in an environment of accidental privilege which led to one accidental opportunity after the next. The branches of this decision tree are infinite. So, if “I” am the sum total of millions upon millions of accidents, what do I really control?
This is where I think I am different from my dog. It’s harder for me to be aware of the present moment than it is for her, but I have the ability to control my awareness, while (I suspect) she does not. So, I can build awareness of awareness (I will not use the “M” word here because it makes me cringe). This is powerful, because I’ve learned that through the process of directing my awareness, I can actually start shaping my world from the ground up.
Let me give you an example. I have become aware over the years that I love to run. More specifically, I have this deep and profound love for moving my body from one place to another in a running motion. There is something about this that makes me feel connected to my ancestors from thousands of years ago. Take off the fancy Garmin running watch and high-tech shoes and I feel like I could be one of my ancestors, hunting down an antelope over multiple days so I can feed my tribe.
Luckily for me, the primal joy I feel while running pretty quickly got my awareness’s attention, leading me to learn all sort of things about proper running form, strength training, and mobility and flexibility exercises. For years I learned through books and podcasts, but mostly by trial and error. And then out of the blue, I found out that my kids’ school was looking for a coach for its middle school cross country team. I immediately raised my hand and took the position. My goal in this role was to just share my passion for movement with children. When I feel connected to my body (especially through running) I feel more grounded in my life. So, I figured if I could give children a glimpse of this, maybe it could help them as they move forward into what could be a more difficult and uncertain world.
It turns out that this experience has been one of the best of my life. Our cross country team has turned into a family of sorts. Parents who didn’t know each other are connecting and sharing experiences together. Kids are laughing and playing in nature the way they were meant to (not behind a screen). And now I can see this positive energy spreading through our small school. This one activity, running, has created something far more impactful - community.
Note that this all started with awareness. I had ample opportunity to listen to disturbing economic or political podcasts while I run to “do something productive” rather than cultivate the (initially boring and painful) joy of becoming better connected to my body. Also, rather than sharing this joy, I could have kept it to myself as my secret weapon to win races. But I have been down that selfish path other times in life and luckily had the awareness to know it felt dissatisfying. It turns out that really the most “selfish” thing I could do was to share my love for running with others… because when I point my awareness at how I feel when I share, I notice I overflow with joy. Why wouldn’t I want to feel that way? So I keep using my awareness to (selfishly) find these opportunities in life.
The point of sharing this example is not to say I have this all figured out. For every one example I have of using my awareness for “good” I have five where I used it for “bad” throughout my life. The point is to communicate how powerful control of awareness is. Through it, I really do believe we all have the power to shape our world for better or worse. But we first have to take control of our awareness from the many distractions that are actively trying to coopt our attention. Then we need to train our “awareness muscle” the same you would train your biceps at the gym. Rep after rep we can build our awareness to a point where we can readily observe it in real time. And then you are free to use it as a lever to chart the path of your life. You still won’t have control over what happens (or how it happens), but you will be increasing the odds that when you get to the end of this road, you are satisfied with how you spent your time on this earth.