October 1, 2023

 

 

Dear Notes to Self Readers,

To write these posts, I consider the question of:

• What is interesting me lately? Breathing exercises (4:6 inhale exhale diaphagmatic breathing for 15 minutes); Christopher Hitchens audio essays on figures in Anglo-European intellectual history from Isaac Newton to George Orwell, along with some more contemporary figures--instead of Sports Radio or NPR on my car commutes; trying to do things I used to procrastinate about in order to feel prepared, using pressure, stress, resistance and difficulty constructively; being a teacher in order to get right what it is I didn't learn as a child, not taking the bait and getting hung up on a story that has me hooked and reactive; the sense that we're all on the verge of some chaotic global transformation. Was listening to a talk by ethnobotanical historian and storyteller/thinker Terrence McKenna from a 1995 talk in which he says that we (humanity) will either have a future of suffering and extinction (turning Earth to a "weedy lot"), or transformational enlightenment leading to love and the restoration of global environmental health. It's all comes down to the question of whether people/we can let go of the idea that we're defending our separate selves and aiming to dominate others in the process. If we do, there is the potential to make the entire world into a veritable Montessori classroom of care and collective evolution, if we don't--he predicts the alternative to transformation will be "hellish". But that begs the question: "How do we work towards the sweet alternative?" All I know how to do at the moment is do it for myself at a hyper local/personal level:  An hour a day of coherent breathing that relaxes me and makes me feel grateful and somehow empowered, a job laying the groundwork for children to feel a sense of agency as they learn.
  

• What am I trying to do with my time being a living person on Earth at the moment? Trying to figure out how become calm and focused under pressure through daily practices, trying to tame my tendencies toward self-indulgence and short-sighted escapism with these practices, trying to give what I would want the world to be giving everyone (including me). To enjoy the ride and feel like I'm on the right path.
  

• What is influencing me? Podcasts on self-improvement and neuroscience; a book called The Inner Tradition of Yoga by Michael Stone; being a Montessori training faculty member and advisor; the adventure of feeling appreciation of someone who also loves you (life partner), being a Lower Elementary Teacher. Daily hour of "coherent breathing" simplifying what I think about so I can loosen the hold that mistrustful angry, fearful anticipatory preoccupation has long had on me. 

I was listening to a podcast conversation Andrew Huberman had with therapist Paul Conti about what constitutes mental health. This is an interesting question, because if we try to answer it for ourselves we might say that mental health is a matter of: the ability to be happy, the ability to get what you are going after, the ability to make money, stay out of trouble, and have friends and be in a loving relationship with one person in a way that leads to family.

We might say that, but could be really wrong. The person experiencing their life, does not have the perspective to evaluate their own mental health, simply because they may not be paying attention to what is obvious to anyone outside themselves,  because how do we see outside ourselves without getting an outside perspective telling us what our own defenses (supposedly protecting us from being overwhelmed by painful realities) make us not see.  Besides:

 

Happiness is not mental health--a short-lasting happiness, that fluctuates based on evanescent external conditions can be unstable and even stressful. Happiness doesn't mean things are going your way, or even that they are bearable. To be overly dependent on outward conditions to turn off the sense of unease, the sense of threat, resentment or worry, is not happiness. But when things are convincingly favorable--if you are in a beautiful, sunny, verdant place without obligation, and you are happy for 10 minutes or a few days, but then not, you may not be experiencing mental health. To be temporarily delighted but ultimately miserable on vacation, is not mental health, but for a time, it may have been happiness.

Getting what you are going after is not mental health--if the things you are going after don't offer a sense of joy for very long after you attain them. You can get the job you wanted, but then realize how hard it is to have it. You can achieve the accomplishment, win the love of the masses, have things you always wanted that you never thought you'd have, and still not feel satisfied. The ability to set goals and achieve them in itself does not have anything to do with mental health.

 

Being able to make money is not mental health--the pressure to make money and fears of being without resources that press us into conformity and obedience are decidedly unhealthy influences.

Those who manage to stay out of trouble, to stay healthy, to avoid running into legal problems are not necessarily mentally healthier for it--consider the brave people who faced danger: the firefighter who died in a burning building, Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr., Edward Snowden, exiled for revealing the extent of government surveillance, Karen Silkwood run off the road while blowing the whistle on the nuclear power plant, Galileo, excommunicated for making discoveries, protestors and demonstrators beaten by police to end the 12 hour 7 day week. It's possible that making a comfortable deal to stay out of trouble--gnaws at people, takes away their voice, makes them cynical and gives them backaches, ulcers, and the constant need to escape thinking about what is not going away. One can save one's hide without achieving mental health. Edward Snowden is followed constantly, but reportedly sleeps better than most of us.

 

Friends and relationships are not always indications of mental health--what kind of friends? What kind of relationship? How truthful can we be in them? How unconditional are they? Do they support and compliment our growth?

So what are the indicators of mental health. Paul Conti says it comes down to having a cultivated and inexhaustible sense of gratitude and a sense of agency.

That sounds good, but is it ok to be a grateful, happy slave on the plantation? I think it's probably better to be grateful whatever your circumstances happen to be. But "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation," is what the Declaration of Independence says. Sometimes you take the fight to the Man, and doing that is mental health writ large, as well as a whole mess of voluntarily assumed trouble.

 

Is having a sense of agency a matter of carring out orders through your own efforts? Is true agency the same as artistic integrity--the ability to find and follow a still, small voice within, and tenaciously allow its dictates to be your path? I think so--but this is the territory of the artist, and artists who obsessively follow the imperetives of their insight, their truth, often appear mentally unhealthy and less well adjusted than the "average person" who is not haunted by visions or troubled by mysteries or by the debasements of a consumer society that offers anesthetics and compensations to those who might rather choose to not think or feel the contradictions they live in too deeply.

And when I say this, I am one of those people, driving to work, buying food in plastic packaging in the grocery store, staying out of "politics". As contemporary humans, we need a new way to live. We're in the middle of finding out what that might be. For me it might be limited to doing breathing exercises each day as the atmosphere heats up. But there also might be a species-wide shift.  The hearts in the chests of the entire human family could come instant coherence if enough people open to it. I'm serious, who knows what could happen. I'm ready to show up now for my shift at the food distribution warehouse, I'm just waiting for the plan to be announced. I think the plan is not to have agricultural surplus stored and distributed by an administrative class, because that's how we got into this mess 15,000 years ago. We'll need to reach back farther for a model, and forward too.

 

The video for this month is a cover of "A Song for You" by Leon Russell. My mom is on bass.

The essay this month is not really an essay but "A Collection of Recent Texts
With My Friend Tom". Experimental, or just lazy? Well, I won't make a regular habit of it, but it is a place where my favorite writing goes (maybe more accurately, "leaks") sometimes, just like my best reading these days--for better or worse-- is sometimes internet scrolling and watching YouTube videos.