The Familiar Comfort of Discomfort

It seems to be a law of nature, or at least of human nature, that a certain level of discomfort is essential to our comfort. We go to great lengths to keep our sense of discomfort at the proper level (somewhat like setting a thermostat), and that level seems to be set innately at a different place for different people. Just as we can maintain the temperature of our homes regardless of the weather that rages or languidly warms us outside, so we engineer the comfort level of our souls to a set degree regardless of the ease or difficulty of our circumstances.

I have noticed in my own life, for example, that I maintain set levels of discomfort where finances and sport are concerned. Over the course of my adulthood, my income has gradually increased and with it, my standard of living. Nevertheless, I continue to increase my expenditures proportionately such that my overall sense of how well I'm doing at covering my expenses is roughly the same; I keep up with it all in the same manner regardless of the amount.

Similarly, I have always gone running on a regular basis, and yet my penchant to do so has evolved from an occasionally habitual streak of running (with the vague notion that if I failed to do it in my youth, I would never do it), to regimented training arcs that correspond to well-defined goals. The difficulty with which I used to complete a two mile jaunt around the block and with which I completed my last 20-miler for marathon training today is, however, roughly the same. I marshal all of my efforts until the goal is achieved and then the next goal must be more difficult so that I can maintain the same sense of satisfaction in accomplishing it.

Examples of this phenomenon abound. Recent research into the science of weight loss has yielded up the theory that the body maintains a set level of body fat through various physiological mechanisms which seek to maintain the status quo. (http://www.academia.edu/497061/The_Concept_of_a_Body_Fat_SetPoint). Even when people carry an unhealthy amount of weight, their bodies seek to maintain that set level of fat. A similar phenomenon occurs in the brains of drug addicts, whose minds reinforce addictive behavior.

When we feel discomfort, we so often point to the circumstances of our lives when really, they are just the materials with which our souls reinforce their habituated state. So much could fail, so many of the materials that, by remarkable chance, populate our lives, could fall away and we would still preserve roughly the same outlook, the same level of comfort and discomfort.

Will Work for Hugs

After a recent naturalization interview, my client gave me a big hug and thanked me for everything, and invited me to her oath ceremony. It felt so good to have become a small, positive part of her life that I decided I'm going to try to see how many clients I can get to hug me. When the idea first occurred to me to work for hugs, it seemed really silly. Then I realized that clients only hug their lawyers if two things happen:

1. They win their case; and
2. They show that they care about the person as a person, and not just as a client.

Most lawyers try really hard for #1 but not always for #2. I'm going to work really hard at both, and I am starting a client hug tally.

Waking Up

My eyes flutter open to the darkness
As I wake up in the habit of my species,
Carving a morning out of nature's long sleep
With rote activity.

But this is the first day of the year when,
Stepping out into the gray hours,
A hundred wings invisible to me
Are fluttering as the birds,
Who in the habit of their species have returned,
Begin to carve their songs into the morning.

Space to Play

My six-year-old recently asked me if being a grown-up was very boring because you never get to play. I explained that some grown ups don't play any more but that most of us do it all the time; it just looks different. We talked about what is the most fun kind of playing, and agreed that it's those times where you come up with an idea to do something that you end up doing for a really long time and it seems like you are in another world while you're doing it. You get lost in your imagination. Kids instinctively look for those experiences through play; they tirelessly try new activities until they hit on something that's absorbing. They are always looking to lose themselves. I think we do the same thing as grown-ups, with work, relationships, and hobbies. But we tire more easily and accept mindless substitutes and mental shortcuts more readily. If we become accustomed to accepting those substitutes too regularly and make them our daily habits, we begin to lose our ability to play, but we don't need to.

One of the keys to maintaining that sense of imagination and playfulness is maintaining a certain amount of detachment from your own life. There is a series of wonderful images in the Tao Te Ching that has always stuck with me:

Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub;
It is the center hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes which make it useful. ...

I think of the details of my life as necessary structures to house what is really its essence, and like I am always working on hollowing out the spaces in my daily routine to give space for reflection and creativity. It is only when I make the space to play inside of these activities that my genuine self can infuse them. But by infusing them, they still never become any more permanent or irreplaceable.

It's important to recognize that the shape of my daily life and all of the people and activities that populate it are just one of an infinite array of possibilities, and that as pieces of the structure inevitably fade or wear away and need to be replaced, what is important to remaining vital is that whatever life's circumstances may be, I can always craft them into a shape in which they provide a structure, however rich or shabby, with enough space in it that I can still play. 

Helping Competitors

I tend to gravitate toward competitive pursuits. I practice law and I run races. I like to push myself toward becoming continually better at both, and I also like the feeling of beating out my competition. But I also truly love my competitors and consider them some of my best friends. The better they are or the more they excel in a way I haven't considered, the more I admire and want to learn from them. But I don't just want to learn from them so I can beat them. I also want to encourage and help them. I want to help everyone achieve their personal best in these endeavors and I truly rejoice with those who do, even when it means they outstrip me. Why?

I think that everyone has a certain amount of potential in any given endeavor and that when everyone reaches their full potential, we all do better. There are a couple of reasons for this:

1. The individual successes of anyone who pursues an activity elevates the prestige of the entire field. When a runner does something amazing and a newspaper picks up the story, anyone associated with running feels a personal connection to the story and participates in the good feelings as they read it and as people who they know discuss it.

2. There are very few people who are capable of making true innovations in any field. Those people change the entire future of the field for those who follow. I personally want to create an environment in which the Einsteins of my profession can push the boundaries forward, even if that does not happen to be me.

There are other, practical reasons for helping competitors to succeed. First, helping others exposes you to solving problems that you have not yet encountered and helps to prepare you to meet them when they arise. I frequently talk other attorneys through difficult cases and as I do so, I often encounter fact patterns that I have not seen in my own practice. This gives me the opportunity to learn as I teach. Second, by virtue of helping others, I become seen as a leader in the field (which often means that other attorneys refer cases to me that are too difficult for them to handle). Third, by helping other attorneys, I help to prevent their malpractice, which again elevates the entire profession. (Who wants to be associated with a field in which there is a public outcry against professional incompetence?)

I often encounter people who treat competitive pursuits as a zero sum game in which all spoils go to the victor. But I have never experienced more camaraderie than among those fields in which sportsmanlike competition is involved. True competition is a group endeavor in which a group of very talented, skilled people work together to push every individual to their personal best.

The Things They Tell Me...

I. Snake (6)

We were driving in the car when she said out of nowhere, "How many people do you think are on the earth?"

"I don't really know," I replied, with some curiosity.

"I think it's infinity," she said with finality, having clearly established the answer in her mind before ever asking me.

"It can't be infinity," I  said, "because there's always an exact number."

"But does anyone know the number?"

"Well, not really, because at any given moment, there are always people being born and dying. No one could possibly keep count."

"Is that infinity?"

"If it's not, it's something a lot like it."
******

II. Natalie (3)

She was brushing her teeth when I chided her, "Don't stick your toothbrush down those little holes! There's dirt in there!"

"But Mother," she laughed, "there's an animal that's stuck in there and he's talking to me."

As I washed her brush out, I told her, "You know, when I was a little girl I used to believe there was a tiny family living down the drain of my bathroom sink, and I used to feed them water."

"I think at that point," she mused thoughtfully, "I was an old lady."

This was not the first time she had referred to her idea that our ages will always exist in some transverse relationship. Every time I mention that she'll be a lady some day, she tells me, "That's when you'll be a little girl!" I've never corrected her; I just keep waiting to hear the idea fleshed out more as her imagination grows.

"You think so?" I asked her.

"Yeah, I do," she said seriously.

******

Our imaginations walk before us.

Our imaginations walk before us. We cannot engage in even the simplest act without having first imagined ourselves doing it. If I so much as turn on a light at dusk as I sit reading, my mind has already imagined the feeling of putting my bare, tucked in feet back into my slippers and walking the few steps to the light switch. This forethought unfolds so automatically, weighing the consequences of potential behaviors, that I barely realize that the decision as to when to perform this simple act entails weighing a sense of when would be the best stopping point; a complex calculus of how quickly the light is fading and how wrapped up I am in the flow of the book is unraveled with the seeming ease of Bobby Fisher making a move at chess. And suddenly I act, and the tiny denoument of an executed decision becomes a forgotten texture of my emotional make-up for the day. So much of our lives, however exciting or mundane on the surface, plays out in the silent music of our minds humming away, unnoticed. The only way I feel fully alive is to notice. And we can.

And this is the smallest of scales. We are always in the process of making layers and layers of decisions, from the small things like turning a light on or off, to strategies for handling the difficult people who populate our lives and how better to consider them, to what habits we should strengthen and which we should weaken, to whom we want to become and how others see us. Our minds are constantly working away at these things. One rises to the surface and another recedes; we prioritize them, order our intentions. We meta-decide how to decide what we will do, and this is how we become. We are the pattern of our choices.