Jul
31
Staying Young
I was at a bar with a friend of mine at a Spanish bar near my house. She is a few years younger than I, who was surprised that I had just had my 29th birthday.
“I think one of the things that makes you seem young is the way you emotionally engage with the world.”
And I thought about it – yeah – I suppose I work hard to keep my emotions sharp.
That my emotions have dulled since college is apparent to me after reading The Facebook Effect, a book that documents the founding and evolution of Facebook. Descriptions of their enthusiastic work style, driven by the euphoric confidence that they were changing the world, remind me of when I came to interview in Japan. I had then had less than a year of Japanese language study, and I think my employers hired me just because of my gumption and indefatigable optimism. The feeling then was that just gone through commencement – and I could do anything I put my mind to. One of my Japanese co-workers said to me, in my third year, over a beer – “As a spectator, it seemed like it must have been hard – nobody was mentoring you. That was the way we did things – everyone was busy tending to their own projects – nobody had time for you. But you were so positive – that’s why you survived.”
New environments are stimulating. Young people are constantly stimulated because everything is new – they are having to learn about things and improvise solutions as they move through the world. That was what made Japan so fun – it was an adventure just to go to the convenience store.
But we inevitably acclimate to our environments. In a way this is good – it saves time an energy to have habits and processes for doing things. But our habits and preconceptions also act as a filter that blocks the ability to see new experiences. In February I had a friend visit from Australia – he smiled at everyone – he had that vacation glow, and I could see everyone reacting well to him – from the waitresses in restaurants we visited, to a funny-dressed man in the Azabu McDonald’s whom my friend chatted up, and who talked about how horse-racing was related to powers of observation, and hence to the Way of the Warrior. My Australian friend visited me at the right time – he reminded me of the importance of a fresh outlook – of staying perceptive and sharp.
What it would mean for me, to have my emotions sharp, is to use them as a beacon to guide my actions and the actions of people around me – so that I give my hypnosis clients confidence in their abilities in much the same way I “hypnotized” my previous employers to hire a recent college grad who spoke broken Japanese. Unbridled confidence.
What it would mean for me to have a fresh outlook on things all the time is to be increasing grateful for things that we have now, compared to the way things used to be a long time ago. I stayed in Mongolia for 12 days, 7 of which were in the desert. The life of pastoral nomads is harsh, but relationships are close – they spends most of their time in the family tent together, unlike the American tendency which is to have members of the family in separate rooms doing separate activities. Everywhere we went, we were welcomed with tea and biscuits. I love running water, books, movies, social media, and the ability to walk to the store to buy groceries. None of these are found in the desert, but modern society has brought with it a host of other diseases: obesity, suicide, loneliness, and a certain forgetfulness of our origins, and a host of worries related to societal constructs regarding status (having a “good” job, having more money, etc.) To be in the desert and gaze upon the vast arid grasslands, one is thankful to have a tent as shelter from the sun, and a family as a shelter from loneliness. It is to realize that one’s neighbor on the horizon is subject to the same natural forces of heat and cold, that can either nourish livestock, or kill them off by starving them of grass or frost.
To gaze up at the starry night sky is to be reminded of the larger universe to which we belong. To forget this perspective is to construct one’s own Tower of Babel, to be struck down perhaps not by God’s wrath, but by a heart attack. I am not advocating that we give up modern conveniences, and retreat like the Amish have chosen to do. I am advocating that we live in the present, but see the world as if we lived two hundred years ago. That means making all the use of modern conveniences that we can, and to remember that the basic things that lead to lasting happiness are fundamentally unchanged, and to feel a basic equality of all people.
My experience in Mongolia left a deep impression on me in regards to these, but one need not refer to pastoral society to have a sense of going beyond the human world and reconnecting with the natural world. A philosophy professor of mine spoke of a student of his who took up a career as a politician, and in order to stay sane in a human-created world of endless fights for favor and status, read daily from the writings of Chuang Tsu, a philosopher who was contemporary with Confucius. Confucius spoke of the perfect society – Chuang Tsu speaks of happiness independent of society. My professor’s student was able to remind himself of happiness independent of society, and that made him all the more important within it.
Religions like Christianity and Islam, too are helpful to the extent that they are democratizing – they place the vast majority of all believers on equal footing before God, this enabled the intellectual enlightenment of the Islamic Empire, which precipitated a similar enlightenment in Europe. But these religions fall short of the mark to the extent that they concentrate power in people who are supposed to interpret things for us. Those in power proclaim dogma, which followers are encouraged to accept. I feel closer to Judaism because it is a more democratic religion – Rabbis give opinions and interpretations, not dogma, and I feel like it’s more allowable to give one’s own interpretation.
Perhaps that’s what keeping one’s emotions sharp comes down to. Emotions are proto-thought. They are omens or oracles that when one consults them, give a cryptic answer that becomes clear only if one pays attention. Paulo Coelho in The Alchemist wrote that if you ignore the omens that lead to your treasure, they will desert you. Perhaps this is what my friend was thinking of in the bar yesterday as she commented on how age seems to lead to less emotional sharpness.
And I think that is related to why I quit my job. Despite all the excitement and the wonderful people I worked with, it supported gambling machines, and though I know they bring many people pleasure, I know that for many people it is a diversion from full consciousness – that people who play are really playing because they are trying to keep their emotions stuffed in a corner of their minds by placing their attention on something else. Why else would people sit in loud, smoke-filled pachinko parlours, watching flashing lights, launching small steel balls in silence? Despite the excitement of my sales and marketing job, I felt uneasy about continuing with such a direct hand in the industry, and I know I must follow that feeling. Or else, if I ignored it much longer, I might become like the people I was serving.
Your emotions are there for a reason. They are telling you to pay attention to something. Ignore them, and they will stop speaking to you.
