taking it easy
following up from my last post
This is an essay about concepts as I best see and experience them, they are working and incomplete. Sometimes the things I write here are because I myself need reminding and am still exploring. This essay is not seeking to be universally true.
I structure my life so that I’m surrounded by spells of support. Whether they ultimately “work” or “come true” isn’t what’s important. The act of casting and creating the support is the point—is the desire itself. Lately I try to focus on desire, illusive as it is, rather than achievement. It seems desire isn’t actually interested in outcomes. Desire exists only in real time, in the immediacy of now (as all things do), and it’s only job is to ignite, to want, to seek. Satiation is the other end of desire on the loop they both inhabit~are, so too it can also only exist in the present moment. To reach something like completion I have to see the cycle through and embody both. In our modern, consumerist age it is easier to be good at desire and bad at satiation. But the solution is simple, accept this.
My desires are mysterious and silly and I’ll never have them figured out—nor would I dare want to. I explore them, play with them. In my past they were sometimes dangerous, but once I became more sober I got the hang of them in new ways. More effort is required in practicing satiation which I do by taking it easy. By slowing down. By noticing where something feels good. By being patient, which is not just a virtue but a way of being, a kind of antidote, in an accelerating world. Even my desires I hold lightly. In a realm where desire is constantly pushed, manipulated and hijacked, slowness becomes a steadfast way of wading through. Satiation is not a goal, it’s a mode of attention. When I’m doing a million things, satiation can be tough to register. And since I live here, in the land of a million undone things, I have to semi-disentangle satiation from material completion. I have to practice it now in this moment—settle for the incomplete present and mark it as enough—in order to close the desire~satiation loop. I practice satiation even though I have unfinished tasks, a messy home, and uncertainty of the months ahead. I practice reminding myself that I am, and have, and have done enough.
You’re welcome to try it yourself.
In my last essay I wrote about work and how we all do it so much and how we all glorify this and how I don’t think we necessarily should. I fear that maybe it came off wrong; privileged, or naive, or finger waggy. Everyone I know is working really hard and the last thing I want to do is offend all of my hard working friends. The point I really wanted to drive home with that essay, which I can only more fully convey now since I’ve posted and reflected, is that we ought to take it easy wherever and whenever we can. This will vary from person to person. And by take it easy I mostly mean on ourselves and maybe on others too. Life is already hard and hard work, we may as well be our own pal.
I’ve started taking it easy where I can because I realize no one is going to take it easy for me, I have to take it easy of my own accord. Taking it easy can happen in big and small ways. It can be a three month sabbatical and it can be leaning back and resting the eyes for five minutes between meetings. It can be in one area at a time. It can be a 15 minute walk with no headphones. It can be humming to or massaging oneself. It can be dancing in the living room alone or with a friend. Or cooking dinner and savoring each bite. It can be saying no or saying yes. It can be anything and I get to explore it with myself. I understand not all of us have a full say in how much we work or what we do for work. I know we all have to do what we have to do to make ends meet. Maybe it is unfair to demand we all take it easy—that we learn more about less—I can just practice myself and share about it. I understand that to live is to be burdened, but I also want to find amusing ways of carrying and off-setting the load.
I’m reminded of a dream I had recently where I became semi-lucid insofar that I could ask my dream for advice. The question: “How does one go about being light?” I meant light in energy and spirit; not being weighed down and burdened by life. The dream showed me a landscape, a sprawling valley with wide open skies. No sooner a storm came through with dark grey clouds and heavy rains, it poured across the land. No sooner it passed and the sun came out. The lands themselves began to shift. The mountains became oceans, oceans became dry lands, dry lands became deserts. When I awoke the next morning I pondered the gravity of this dream, and have thought about it ever since with deep reverence. We think all of this change is what makes things hard, but it is actually the secret to ever-lasting freedom, to levity. It gives way for the unbearable lightness of being1. It is what makes us possible, and alive, and however briefly—“real”.
The invitation to take it easy is of the same energy of this dream message—that we are merely passing through. That nothing lasts forever. That maybe all of this really is for freedom and for pleasure.2 I’m letting myself rest in the resonance of change. This doesn’t mean I am always a fan of how things change or that I am indifferent. I feel afraid most of the time; I don’t want to cease living (or living comfortably) anymore than anyone else does. But I accept both my helplessness and my strength; the simplicity that life will move and be moved; that I will resist and I will go along; ces’t la vie, ces’t la vie.
Taking it easy is paramount. Taking it easy is not about not working hard but about taking adequate care of my being while I get to be them. This isn’t at all about perfection but gentleness, this will take me a lifetime to learn and never master. It doesn’t mean I don’t push myself or feel uncomfortable or seek excellence ever again. It means just for today, just for this moment, I choose to arrive fully, with nothing to complete and nothing to gain—and so too nothing to lose. Because deep down, my deepest desire is actually to just, in the wise words of Bjork, have the courage to enjoy it.
Novel title by Milan Kundera that I’ve never read but might someday.
Go listen to Tears for Fears Everybody Wants to Rule the World as loud as you can.