Riding in a Bubble

It was cooler today, in the 60’s, as compared to 90 yesterday, as I went for my bike ride. The temperature dropped sharply late evening and the bike trail was swamped with bugs at few places, especially near the swamp. I swallowed a few bugs on the way back, which must have given me an extra oomph to buzz off cuz I made good time. But this post is not about bugs. It is about birds and sounds. And being aware of those sounds. About awareness itself.

On the trail, seeing a fellow rider with his iPod on made me reflect on why I don’t carry my iPod with me when I go biking. It is because, I told myself, I want to be aware of my surroundings when I am riding. Listening to iPod would cut me off from the woods that I am riding in, and thus disconnected from the woods but connected to my iPod would be as good as I am on the stationary cycle in the gym, which I don’t quite enjoy. The whole purpose of biking outdoors would be lost.

But then, I continued talking with myself, here I am biking in the woods but still not connected with the woods. Still lost in the world I carried with me in my head when I left house. It was as if I left the house in a bubble and was traveling in the bubble. Why wasn’t I listening to the birds around? And just as I thought this, my mind focused on the sounds around and the bubble burst. I heard a bird. Then another. Then another in the distance. Then another sound which I didn’t know where it came from but it was definitely a bird. And suddenly there were these bird sounds all around. So many of them. Some loud. Some not so loud. Some seemed near, others far.

It was as if the birds had suddenly started chirping all together, in sync, then one after another, then again together. They were conducting a symphony in the woods and I would have passed through totally unaware of it. Just as I have been passing through in my bubble over the last few days.

I listened to the sounds around for a few moments till my attention got diverted to the biker in front who I wanted to pass. It was one of those cases where he was riding at a speed just slower than mine, not slow enough for me to easily pass, and fast enough for me that demanded an extra push on my pedals to leave him at a respectful distance. With my attention completely on this passing exercise, the sounds of birds were history. Having passed the biker, something else caught my attention and then something else and so on and on. I reached home. The birds too went to their respective homes and slept.

I am reminding myself to listen to them tomorrow morning first thing when I awake. We will see how that goes.

Soundtrack

Armed with my iPod and a book, I went to the gym. I also had my brother for company. While at the gym, my brother put on the TV that I eyeballed every now and then, watching the news on CNN and then later the movie The Bourne Identity on TNT.

On the treadmill and the stationary bike, I burned more energy today than I had over the last couple of workouts. So I should have returned home a happy person, right? But I wasn’t. Not exactly. Came back with this thought that is growing only heavier with time.

I have been thinking, why did I ‘need’ my iPod, or a book, or TV at the gym? Was I seeking to multitask to be more productive? Or was it because I did not enjoy the gym and wanted to distract myself from the banalities of the workout?

I can rule out the first option; I wasn’t seeking to multitask. The truth be told, one of the reasons I went to the gym was to get a ‘break’ from the reading + writing I had been doing earlier in the day. And yet I carried a book with me to the gym. Do I enjoy reading? Yes, I do. But my idea of a break from reading is not exactly another reading, even if a non-academic one.

Moreoever, while at the gym, I read the book only part of the time I was on the bike. So if I really loved reading, why did I not read all that time? So what was I doing the time when I was not reading? Watching the TV.

Was I watching something important or something interesting on the TV? No. Not really. If I had planned to catch up with the day’s news or to catch up on the market performance, I would have put on those particular channels. But I did not choose the channels, even though there was no one else at the gym other than my brother.

I realized that the book, music and TV were only distractions from the activity I was engaged in: running and cycling. Was it because I thought these activities didn’t require my attention and that my attention would be better served by being elsewhere while I jogged or biked? Or was it because I thought I needed to have my attention away from running and cycling?

A positive answer to the first question cannot be the correct explanation because even while at the gym I was well aware that I wasn’t employing my attention optimally.

That a positive answer to the second question might be the likely explanation has been a source of lot of bother. If I need to divert my attention from the activity I am engaged in, then it tells me something about my attitude towards that activity. It means that I don’t enjoy running or cycling. I go to the gym not because I enjoy working out but to be fit and not gain weight.

So it may be that, at least in this case, I am interested only in the outcomes (of the workout) but not in the process (of working out).

Now I know that not everything that we do in life is fun or interests us, however, we do it it because we think it is important. Well, how many people I know would be glad to continue their jobs even if they didn’t need to work for money? How many people I know would be glad to continue working out in gyms and fitness clubs even if they had the physiological state of being fit and healthy?

There is something to be said about being absorbed in the activity that one is engaged in. I guess it is similar to Thoreau’s idea of walking. Contrastingly, it reminds me of the book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, in which the author, Robert Pirsig, takes his bike to the mechanics and is put off by sight of the mechanics working on his bike with loud music blaring in the background.

Truth May Not Set Us Free

It is a myth, George Lakoff suggests, that “the truth will set us free. If we just tell people the facts, since people are basically rational beings, they’ll all reach the right conclusion.” He proceeds to shatter this myth by explaining:

“But we know from cognitive science that people do not think like that. People think in frames…To be accepted, the truth must fit people’s frames. If the facts do not fit a frame, the frame stays and the facts bounce off. Why?

Neuroscience tells us that each of the concepts we have – the long term concepts that structure how we think – is instantiated in the synapses of our brains. Concepts are not things that can be changed just by someone telling us a fact. We may be presented with facts, but for us to make sense of them, they have to fit what is already in the synapses of the brain. Otherwise facts go in and then they go right back out. They are not heard, or they are not accepted as facts, or they mystify us: Why would anyone have said that? Then we label the fact as irrational, crazy or stupid. [pg 17].

I think this thesis can be applied, in general, to explain how people react differently to the same event. However, my question is, where do these frames come from? How do they develop? How do they change? Which conditions are favorable to their change and which conditions are not? How can we study what a person’s frame is? Are frames generic or are they content-specific

“Stop Nagging Me!”

Okay, if you are a man and have had your women repeatedly asking you to do things, (like I had mine), so much so that you have asked them to “stop nagging” you, here is an explanation for their “repeated requests” and our “repeated delays” in doing those tasks.

That women have been labeled “nags” may result from the interplay of men’s and women’s styles, whereby many women are inclined to do what is asked of them and many men are inclined to resist even the slightest hint that anyone, especially a woman, is telling them what to do. A woman will be inclined to repeat a request that doesn’t get a response because she is convinced that her husband would do what she asks, if he only understood that she really wants him to do it. But a man who wants to avoid feeling that he is following orders may instinctively wait before doing what she asked, in order to imagine that he is doing it of his own free will. Nagging is the result, because each time she repeats the request, he again puts off fulfilling it. [31]

In her book, “You Just Don’t Understand”, the author, Deborah Tannen, suggests that we ought to treat the conversations between men and women as “cross-cultural conversations” because boys and girls grow up in different worlds. Getting educated on the other world is surely a much needed education, for me at least.

I do believe that women have been unfairly labeled as ‘nags’, and that we men have an important contribution to creating conditions that are conducive and provoke what we see as nagging. The above explanation does makes sense: it is how the dynamic between the two plays out that determines whether ‘nagging’ will occur or not. It is constructed by both the parties.

Back to Future

I recollected a conversation with a friend that happened several years ago. We had been to the same high school and were discussing the success of our batch (most of who were batchmates since 1st grade). Our success – as a batch – wasn’t something to be proud of, we agreed, and wondered why it was so. It was definitely not the lack of talent; in fact, we may have had too much of it. So what was the reason that many of us were still struggling with our careers?

The reason I still remember that conversation is because of an explanation he offered. “I think what we do is anticipate the success of our endeavors, taste the success in our imagination, and then decide that we do not want that success. It is not really that great, not worth all our effort, and so we give up our efforts on it. Perhaps that’s why so many of us keep switching our careers and are still struggling on that front, perhaps looking for a success that is worth fighting for.”

The reason I recollected that conversation is because of a book I am reading. In the book titled, “The Motivated Mind,” the author, Dr. Raj Persaud, a psychiatrist, discusses the results from a study by psychologists who, to their surprise, found that

“those who frequently fantasized about what would happen after they achieved their goals in the end were much less likely to be successful than those who simply had a clear idea of what they wanted and a positive expectation of achieving it.

One theory as to why wild fantasizing about desired outcomes is so counterproductive when it comes to actually achieving goals is that if you mentally enjoy a desired future in the here and now, then this curbs current investment into a possible future. After all, if you are having a fantastic time fantasizing about that date with Julia Roberts, why bother going through the strain of actually getting fit?” [98-99].

Though the above theory is not exactly the one my friend had offered, may be he was onto something here.

Soulmate(s)

Interestingly, in Philosophy, whereas the concept of ’soul’ has been extensively deliberated, the concept of ’soul mates’ has been not. But outside philosophy, especially in popular media, most, if not all, books or movies on romance have the concept of soul mates embedded in them. It does not take a philosopher to speculate about soul mates, and many a philosopher have been born out of a sorrowful ’soul mate’ history.

Going through such a phase myself, of late, I have been wondering about the concept of soul mate. Not about my soulmate in particular, (though it could be), but about soulmates in general.

1) What if there can be more than one soulmates for a person? If we were to assume that soul is multidimensional, then cannot a soul have a mate for one dimension, and another mate for other dimension?

2) What if a person can be one’s own soulmate? In its current form, a soul mate is understood as external to oneself. So, the search for wholeness is externally-oriented, seeking to fill in one’s incompleteness from outside. But what if the internal holds the potential for wholeness?

What set me off thinking was Richard Bach’s book ‘A Bridge Across Forever’, in which he writes at one place:

“If the perfect mate, I thought, is one who meets all the needs all the time, and if one of our needs is for variety itself, then no one person anywhere can be the perfect mate!

The only true soulmate is to be found in many different people.”

And how does the idea of evolution of a soul fit in with the idea of a soulmate? Do soulmates evolve together? Because evolving entails a change in wordviews, values, abilities, knowledge, etc, then how does one soul’s evolution affect its soul mate’s evolution?

How does one know when he or she has found one’s soul mate?

Thoreau and Nanak: If you wanna walk …

Commonalities often run through messages of great thinkers. To appeal to our nobler aspirations and point us towards the higher ground, they often use metaphors or an actual site to simulate the higher ground. Continuing the conversation from the previous post, a case in point is Nanak’s and Thoreau’s use of walking and path, metaphorically and literally, and the price of admission for this journey. Nanak says:

jau qau pRym Kylx kw cwau ] isru Dir qlI glI myrI Awau ] iequ mwrig pYru DrIjY ] isru dIjY kwix n kIjY ]20]

If you desire to play the game of love (for all), then come to me with your head on your palm. To step on this path entails a readiness to give your head without any hesitation.

Thoreau’s concept of walking reflects this spirit. In his book, Walking, Thoreau writes:

We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return — prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again–if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man–then you are ready for a walk.

Whereas Nanak used the words street, path, steps metaphorically, Thoreau used walking in the literal sense. However, there is a strong overlap between the two messages. Both address the walker’s conception of walking, of what it means to walk (on a path) and what it takes to walk (on that path). It is about the price one should be willing to pay for the walk. The knowledge of what it takes to walk that walk. And the willingness to pay the price.

The mood is contemplative, one of absorption and meditation, of being completely immersed in the activity. The path is one that leads to higher ground. And the price for admission to this trail is high: readiness to give up life (in Nanak’s case) and family +friends (in Thoreau’s case). A high cost for the higher ground.

Here and Now

7:45am. A knock on the door. I swivel my chair and see Kennie at the door. I have been expecting her. We leave for our morning walk.

Today is the first of – hopefully – many more morning walks. We have decided to have a morning walk built into our routine.

Cutting through the fields, we reach the ‘trail’ – once a rail track now a paved 5-feet wide trail that passes through open farm land, cuts through woods, crawls through a tunnel, and brushes several backyards on its way to the bridge over a river. Cyclists, walkers, runners, skaters frequent this trail.

We walk a walkie-talkie: walking and talking. I recollect a passage from Thoreau’s Walking:

“When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods … Of course it is of no use to direct our steps to the woods, if they do not carry us thither. I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to Society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is — I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods? I suspect myself, and cannot help a shudder when I find myself so implicated even in what are called good works — for this may sometimes happen.”

I mention this to Kennie. With me, it has mostly been walking for the purpose of thinking. Usually when I am writing a paper, or prepping for teaching, and am confused about something, I usually take a break and go walking. Sometimes I am thinking about the paper all the time that I am walking, and sometimes not. But when I get back to my desk, I have attained a clarity that is a result of not only the physical activity of walking but also of thinking.

Thoreau, however, would take a strong objection to what I would call as ‘walking’. “I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks.” For Thoreau, walking is not just a physical activity; it is a state of mind, a state of being that entails being ‘here and now’. It means not carrying the village to the woods. “Our expeditions are but tours, and come round again at evening to the old hearth-side from which we set out. Half the walk is but retracing our steps.”

It reminded of the following story. Guru Nanak, was traveling in Mecca when a Qazi, challenging Nanak’s open mindedness, invited him to join them in the prayers (Namaz) at the local mosque. When the namaz ended, the Qazi was offended that Nanak had not gone through the motions others went through in the prayers. Nanak replied that had others been actually praying, he would have joined them in those motions. But they were not wholly present: During the prayers, the Qazi was worried about the new-born calf at his house falling into the open well and another was thinking about the upcoming business deal of Arabian horses.

I experience this wandering every time I go to Gurudwara. I am not present there. Thoreau would say, what business have I in the Gurudwara, if I am thinking of something out of the Gurudwara?

Whether it is Thoreau’s walk, or Nanak’s prayer, or Buddha’s vipassana, the idea of being present in the present, to be focused, to be in the moment, to be aware and mindful, not so as to avoid being someplace else, but to be here and now.

Artist or a Copy Cat?

This morning I was on Skype with my brother and his family in India. Engaging my 6-year niece in a conversation, I showed her (webcasted) a sketch of a handsoap bottle I had drawn recently. (OK. I confess. Sometimes I carry my sketchbook to the restroom.) Last time I was in India, my niece and I spent quite some time sketching together. It had helped the ‘bonding’; it also helped her on her homework. She continues to display a healthy interest in coloring assignments and drawing, and if that continues, will hopefully continue forging the common ground.

Today, on Skype, holding my sketchbook close to the webcam, I asked her:

Can you see the drawing?”
“Yes”
“What do you see?”
A pause. Then,
“A spray”
(I held back my urge to correct her right now. I am not sure if the 6-yr old has been using bottles like this one in India.)
“But it is a copycat,” she added.
“What!”
“Chachaji” – she was refering to me – “is a copycat. Last time he drew my bicycle. Now he copied the drawing from a bottle. Chachaji is a copycat.“

I have been scratching my head since then. Does sketching an object mean that I am ‘copying’? And as a sketcher, then am I a copy cat?

Was my niece just being a precocious kid or was she calling attention to the Emperor’s clothes?

Mustang Passion in a Junkyard

Chanced upon an interesting talk on NPR on the way home from a 3-hour shopping at BJ’s. (My motivation for putting on the radio was a rather political one: I was seeking an update on the Guam primaries). The program had a 10 minute segment on a person Delonzo Rhynes in Indianapolis, who restores junkyard Mustangs to their original glory.

Delonzo Rhyne collects Mustangs, not as in a collector of Mustangs, but runs a “dumping ground for Mustang”, or “a graveyard where Mustangs come to die”. From this wreck, he creates new Mustangs and has a new name for the restored Mustangs – “Thunderhawk”. Towards the end of his interview, Rhyne laughs. It is a hearty laugh. He laughs as if he can’t help himself. He is having lot of fun, he says, and it sure did come across in that interview.

Delnozo’s passion for his work left quite an impression with me. Reminds me of the line in Illusions by Richard Bach: The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work. It was good to hear a man in love with his work: Enjoying his work, giving his customers a great product, making money, (the first car sold for $125,000 and the next 2 are ready for around $150,000 each), and having a good laugh too.