So I make it really simple. I’d say art is: “That which you have no choice but to do, because your soul demands it”.
Yes, it’s a fairly flawed definition. But it illustrates something that most people don’t get about artists or entrepreneurs. We do it, because if we don’t, life feels empty. The downside being, it doesn’t exactly come with an easy life.
I’ve found it very difficult to distinguish, “I started this thing therefore I must finish this thing, and I must do it well,” from, “I must finish this thing, and I must do it well.” Notice the missing, “I started this thing therefore…” I have a lot of ideas, several of which I often believe are totally not utter crap. So I start on them.
But once I’ve begun, it gets very hard to tell why I am continuing. What exactly indicates when my soul demands I should continue?
I think about whatever thing I’m currently working on all the time. So I can’t simply use, “does it hold my attention?” It sure feels like I absolutely must continue this thing! Meanwhile, I’ve a long list of things that consumed my attention and energy at one point, but which today are lost from sight in the rearview mirror.
Lately I’ve been experimenting with taking holidays by trying to set something down. This requires immense effort in the beginning; I usally have to cold-turkey-quit to get away from my passion project du jour. Sometimes, day by day, the urge to pick it back up fades and I feel like maybe that project should be left in the rear view mirror. I suppose that my soul doesn’t actually demand it because I hope that my soul wouldn’t just give up after a few days.
Freedom is the capacity to pause in the face of stimuli from many directions at once and, in this pause, to throw one’s weight toward this response rather than that one.
The pause is especially important for the freedom of being, what I have called essential freedom. For it is in the pause that we experience the context out of which freedom comes. In the pause we wonder, reflect, sense awe, and conceive of eternity. The pause is when we open ourselves for the moment to the concepts of both freedom and destiny.
…and my favorite season is here! I love the cool evenings, and how the knowledge that Daylight Savings is about to kick in makes me pay extra attention to my time outdoors in the evening. One thing I love doing is walking while listening to podcasts where I often find inspiring gems.
I had a great mentor of mine, early on in my carrer, say, you should have a running list of three people — you can but you don’t need to share it with them or the world — that you’re always watching: Someone senior to you that you want to emulate; A peer who you think is better at the job than you, and you respect; And someone subordinate who is doing the job that you did a year or two or three years ago better than you did it. If you just have those three individuals that you’re constantly measuring yourself off of, and who you’re constantly learning from, you’re going to be exponentially better.
Aside: DST should be abolished. It no longer saves us energy (it’s original purpose), but it does cause a statistically significant rise in traffic accidents:
We think we’re working 70 or 80 hours a week, but we’re not. We think we’re not getting enough sleep, but often we are. We misjudge our own time use constantly, and it can lead us to misidentify problems and remain stuck and frustrated.
Andrew Suseno joins Craig to describe how Moving Rasa transforms trauma into collective healing and empowerment through movement, redefining personal boundaries and identity in profound ways.
Andrew Suseno describes the transformative work of Moving Rasa, a continuation from his earlier focus on Parcon Resilience. Andrew and Craig begin with an introduction to two upcoming retreats designed for Asian American Pacific Islanders and BIPOC communities, emphasizing rest, recuperation, and abolition. These retreats aim to support community organizers by reconnecting them with their bodies and helping restore their life rhythms. The events serve as a platform for individuals from marginalized communities to engage in healing practices, fostering a sense of empowerment and collective well-being.
Rasa means taste in Indonesian, and it also means discernment of feeling with the heart. It isn’t just about what our relationship to food is, but it’s what our relationship to anything is— whether it’s a picture on the wall, a book that we read, a friend, a value that we might have. And just like we might have a sensory understanding of what something tastes like, we have a sensory understanding of our rasa for anything. And that sensory understanding can be moved into and explored and improvised with and moved with others.
~ Andrew Suseno, 5:25
Andrew elucidates the concept of “Rasa,” explaining its multifaceted meanings that encompass taste, discernment of feeling with the heart, and essence in various languages, including Indonesian and Sanskrit. This concept underpins the ethos of Moving Rasa, encouraging participants to explore and connect with their essence through movement improvisation.
The conversation further explores the transformative potential of acknowledging and moving through trauma in community settings. Through the lens of Moving Rasa, Andrew shares insights into creating spaces where individuals can engage in self-discovery and collective healing. The dialogue highlights the importance of patience, love, and community in navigating personal and collective liberation journeys, offering a nuanced perspective on time, self-love, and the construction of communal identities.
What if we started with ourselves? What if we forgave ourselves for punishing ourselves? What does that open up in our relationships with others, with ourselves, with objects, with ideas? What movements are possible there? …both literally—physically—movements, but also what movements are possible in the world? …what you can create?
~ Andrew Suseno, 31:01
Takeaways
The concept of Rasa — a multifaceted term signifying taste, discernment of feeling, and essence, guiding participants towards connecting with their cultural and personal essence.
Community healing and empowerment — Moving Rasa retreats aimed at Asian American Pacific Islanders and BIPOC, focusing on creating spaces for individuals to restore rhythms and engage with their bodies in a healing manner.
Creating brave spaces — as a method to support trauma recovery and collective healing.
The importance of collective identity — a way of sharing burdens and expanding the definition of identities within community spaces, fostering self-determination and expansive identity construction.
Abolition as a personal and collective journey — introduced as a theme for contemplation and practice, encouraging self-forgiveness and the cessation of self-punishment to unlock new possibilities in relationships and movements.
The role of patience, love, and community — as foundational elements in the practice, with a call to reevaluate our relationship with time, cultivate self-love through community support, and actively engage in co-creating a shared future.
https://movingrasa.com/ — Moving Rasa is an improvisational movement form and contemplative practice that may be practiced anywhere. Movers connect their inner world to their outer movement AND how it is organized in relation to others, objects, and the environment. In particular, movers are supported to connect to their Rasa.
Gotong-royong — An Indonesian philosophy mentioned as influencing the Moving Rasa process, emphasizing collective burden-sharing and expansive, self-determined identity construction.
I recently had a conversation with someone while recording an episode of Podtalk. They mentioned the importance of naming our audience in the early moments of a podcast episode. An example they gave is: “Do you feel like a square peg trying to fit in a round hole? This podcast is for you.” (If you’re curious about this idea in the context of podcasting see, Naming our audiences.)
This idea was a quake moment for me. Because in order to name my audience—to literally say it, briefly, in a way that someone identifies with… Well, first I have to know who my audience is. I’m well aware one should know “who’s it for?” (If I just want to fiddle in my workshop, whatever-it-is can certainly just be, “it’s for me.”) It’s easy to know “who it’s for?” and to be able to talk about that when asked. It is vastly harder to name the audience, succinctly, in way a that connects with people.
Connection is precious. We can, and must, find ways to be so clear, and so vivid, that people literally feel a reaction when we name our audience. It’d be better if you heard me say this, but what happens when you read…
Are you the curious sort who leans in to find joy in learning and self-awareness? Terrific. You’re in the right place. Know anyone else who should be here too?
I value writing because it forces me to winnow my thinking. (And I hear you snarking: If this is the winnowed thinking…) I appreciate that writing begs me to review and rethink. I appreciate that writing slows me down and that hand writing is glacial in pace.
Likewise, they say, handwriting is going the way of the dodo. I don’t think that’s precisely true—it sounds like one of those lazy assumptions about technology, that it exists to flatten, to eliminate anything that brings a tactile, objective permanence. It may be, rather, that the objective has changed. Now we handwrite because we want to, not because we have to.
It feels odd to me that “handwriting” is mostly just a noun. Maybe I’m lost in pedantry here, but I’m intrigued by the interplay and overlap of the following simple sentences and fragments, and their multiple meanings. I write. My writing. My handwriting. My hand writing.
“I wonder what would happen if I created a daily podcast, and did nothing else— if I didn’t tell anyone, didn’t share on social media, nothing. Just publish the thing every day.” So I went and made it happen, over 1,300 times. The answer to “what if?” is: I would receive a cornucopia of benefits simply from doing the work, even if no one heard a single one of them. I received: practice speaking extemporaneously, lessons in dramatic reading, countless tiny lessons of microphone technique, countless nuanced insights of physiology, and much much more.
Unfortunately, over the years, I became fixated on the least-important part of my original question: Daily.
I think this dynamic, to one degree or another, impacts anyone who has been fortunate enough to experience some success in their field. Doing important work matters and sometimes this requires sacrifices. But there’s also a deep part of our humanity that responds to these successes — and the positive feedback they generate — by pushing us to seek this high at ever-increasing frequencies.
It’s become clear that maintaining the pace is a problem, and so I’ve changed the pace. And in a blink, I feel I’m again focused on that still-overflowing cornucopia of benefits.
Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest. If you’re going to while away the years, it’s far better to live them with clear goals and fully alive than in a fog, and I believe running helps you do that. Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: That’s the essence of running, and a metaphor for life—and for me, for writing as well. I believe many runners would agree.
I’ve a strong drive to seek attention. I’ve a desire to be seen as clever. Being clever isn’t the problem; The desire is the problem. Being clever is, sometimes, just the right ingredient to help someone solve a problem. But more often than not, being clever is not helpful.
It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that my work is really about attentional design.
Becoming aware of attention. Shaping and directing it. Shifting its quality and inner experience. Leveraging it to produce work of real value.
Magic happens when I’m able to cleave the attention-seeking from the useful clever. When I’m able to remove stressors (stressors which invariably are of my own creation) then I’m free to frolic and create. Exhaustion can be a limit. Day-dreaming can be a limit if in excess. But ruminating is a certain road to ruin, every time. I regularly need to aim my attention inward: What specifically am I ruminating about? …and how, surgically, can I cut that out?
I often discover I’m really enjoying myself when I am simply submerged in experiencing. Novelty will of course afford this opportunity (but it’s dangerous to chase novelty.) Unfortunately, if I find something mundane which I discover I’m enjoying I shift to wondering if I can make my enjoyment be productive.
If you’re trying to get through your work as quickly as you can, then maybe you should see if you can find a different line of work. And if you’re trying to get through your leisure-time reading and watching and listening as quickly as you can, then you definitely do not understand the meaning of leisure and should do a thorough rethink.
I sometimes grasp leisure. Far too often I feel compelled to turn leisure into work. I once used “festina lenta” as my touch phrase for a year, and now that’s sounding like a perfect example of my turning my leisure into work.
Could you contribute a testimonial for 7 for Sunday? I’m always on the lookout for some, “This is better than sliced bread! ~ Craig C.” testimonials. If you’re open to being quoted, please hit reply and send me a testimonial. (They end up getting posted on the front of my site where the main signup is for 7 for Sunday.)
And please consider sharing 7 for Sunday with others. Forwarding the email you received works, but you can also just point people to https://constantine.name/7-for-sunday/.
Thanks for reading! I appreciate your time and attention, and I don’t take it for granted. :)
The article also has a tidy explanation of irony. Irony (humor, sarcasm and many other linguistic forms) work so well because they are very powerful. A few words said and heard in person can transfer large ideas. The article goes all the way to mentioning our “power to attribute mental states to others.” A subtle and, frankly, amazing power of projection. My mental state, plus your mental state, plus my saying some words, should have gotten you to this other mental state. Heady stuff.
If I wrote, “That was fun.” you’re pretty sure those three words were only part of what the speaker was trying to convey. By default, we have to go with the literal interpretation, but feel we’ve been gypped. We feel the urge to skip back a few lines looking for hints to reveal the rest of the meaning meant to be conveyed. We are accustomed to having to write much more to get the same job done. I have to write: Then, with a wry smile, “That was fun.”
Which is all very interesting. But today, the question I have is: Wait. How did I ever get good at this insanely complex process without ever having anyone explicitly tell me anything about it?
I first discovered sarcasm as a freshman in college, which I realize makes me a bit of a late bloomer as far as teenagers go. There were certain classmates who seemed to always come across as clever and funny no matter the topic. Over time I noticed there was a simple formula to their contributions and it was pretty easy to mimic.
One could say (anyone who knows me surely would) that I can be a tad sarcastic. I used to be sarcastic, not just to a fault, but well into the realm of, s’rsly bro’, stahp. Of course I got various amounts of pushback over many years against my being so sarcastic. I received a ton of positive reinforcement in the form of attention, too. Still, no one ever made the point clearly: The sarcasm I was deploying didn’t add anything.
Reading Bosworth’s short piece made wonder: The point he makes is so clear, and yet I never heard it put as such. So how did I move away from being entirely sarcastic (“snarky” to put a fine point on it)? Well, I didn’t move away from it. Over time, with increasing regularity I moved towards engaging creatively with others; Writing, building things with technology, moving in parkour spaces, etc. The more creative I was, the more fun I had while experiencing the virtuous cycle of positive reinforcement from others. I still delight in sarcasm’s occasional use. But now I find [hope? *grins nervously*] that when I use sarcasm it brings some insight.
That morning, my mind spun as I tried in vain to re-create the various perceptions and emotions that had been written into Google’s servers and were now abandoned to the ether. I felt a sudden sense of mourning that I still have not gotten over. And yet, to my surprise, I felt something else alongside it: a conflicting sense of relief and even levity. I would never have voluntarily deleted all of those emails, but I also can’t deny, not entirely, that there is something cathartic about sloughing off those thousands of accumulated disappointments and rebukes, those passionate and pathetic fights and dramas, even those insights and stirrings—all of those complicated yet ephemeral layers of former selves that no longer contain me. I began to accept that I would need to imagine my way back into those previous mental states if they were truly worth revisiting—and that if I could not, then the loss was necessarily manageable. I closed my laptop, wandered outside into the specific corner of France that my former selves’ cumulative choices had led me to inhabit, and was overtaken by a sense of hope.
Disclosure: I quoted the entire last paragraph. Yes, that takes the zing out of the article—but I fear few of you, dear readers, will click through for something… this again, Craig?! …related to my opinions about email.
If you have folders (and sub-folders, and sub-sub-folders) of email, or especially if your Inbox is not empty: You are doing it wrong. Don’t save the email. Instead figure out why you feel the urge to save the email. Then fix that urge.
The real underlying problem is that systems thinking is not something everyone is accustomed to. And lest you fear that Wikipedia article, it’s really very helpful. Does this sound like something worth understanding?
Systems thinking is a way of making sense of the complexity of the world by looking at it in terms of wholes and relationships rather than by splitting it down into its parts. It has been used as a way of exploring and developing effective action in complex contexts.
You’re saving that email because it has a photo attached. Saving this other email because it has the order confirmation for that thing you just ordered—should be fine, but every once in a while you need that email when the thing doesn’t show up, or you need to return it, or you can’t log into their online system. Saving this other email because it has the details for that thing we’re going to. And this email has a link to something your friend said to read. That email is a newsletter you really want to maybe read later some day maybe. And so on. I’m not saying it’s easy to imagine systems for all of that stuff— but it is possible. Pick one of those emails, and have an honest think about why you’re saving it.
Every time I left the house, my dad would always say, “Remember who you are.” Now that I am a father, this is a very profound thing to me. At the time I was like, “Dad, what the hell? You’re so weird. Like Im gonna forget who I am? What are you saying?” Now, I’m like, “Gosh, that guy was kind of smart.”
The more you say, the more likely you are to blow past opportunities, ignore feedback, and cause yourself suffering. The inexperienced and fearful talk to reassure themselves. The ability to listen, to deliberately keep out of a conversation and subsist without its validity is rare. Silence is a way to build strength and self-sufficiency.
Look for the causes of the evil from which you suffer in yourself. Sometimes this evil is the direct consequence of your activity; Sometimes it happens after a lengthy period of transformation of an evil which you committed long ago. But the source is always in you, and salvation from it lies in changes in your actions, your way of life.
This simplicity was disorienting in a way. Many times a day I would finish whatever activity I was doing, and realize there was nothing to do but consciously choose another activity and then do that. This is how I made my first bombshell discovery: I take out my phone every time I finish doing basically anything, knowing there will be new emails or mentions or some other dopaminergic prize to collect. I have been inserting an open-ended period of pointless dithering after every intentional task.
It is still uncommon for me to be without my phone. I have to admit that sometimes I carry it simply because I have a flat pince-nez stuck to the back of my phone. Recently it’s dawned on me that I have another, identical pair in a tiny flat case not stuck to my phone and I sometimes just carry those and not my phone. Regardless, you’ll never see me whip out my phone—unless we have a question, what’s the weather, where’s the nearest…, and so on. It’s a tool I sometimes use, like shoes.
Yet while the application and discussion of burnout has greatly expanded, what burnout is, exactly, and what causes it has remained stubbornly difficult to pin down. There is no clinical definition of burnout, no universally agreed upon yardstick for what constitutes it, no official diagnostic checklist as to its symptoms.
McKay draws our attention to a feature of burnout that spans all the various types of people, epochs, living situations, employment and work where we see burnout: Sameness. Monotony. Repetition without variety. This is clearly a feature of what causes me to burnout. I don’t think it’s sufficient to cause me to burnout, but it’s definitely necessary.
If I can change this feature, for whatever-it-is that I’m approaching burnout with, I can avert the catastrophe. When burnout approaches, I’ve tried planning, thinking that wrangling with the process to reduce the cognitive load might help. I’ve thought that better planning—break this huge long thing into manageable steps—would give me space and energy to recharge. But this never works. The long slog which I can clearly see, after I do a bunch of planning, simply makes the onset of burnout accelerate.
Instead, if I figure out how to bring novelty into the mix, that seems to always work. (I say “seems” because, although I cannot think of case where it did not work, I’m a pragmatist.) Often this works if I simply find the aspect of whatever-it-is which represents the biggest amount of work, and delete that. Whatever-it-is was going to slump to non-existence anyway, when I burnout, so I may as well cut to the chase. I find that having stripped away something that I thought was essential, whatever-it-was turns out to contain a little nugget of, “huhn, that’s interesting.”