When I lived in Seattle in a boarding house, I met a woman named Jen. She was an elf really...maybe 5 foot with elfin features and interesting ideas on the world. In our time together as friends she always talked about "the perfect moment". Her life, everything she did, was based on finding this unicorn of an idea. After we parted ways as people do in big cities, I had that longing for "the perfect moment" swirling in the back of my mind. As a person who grew up in adversity this notion seemed unattainable, but definitely worth chasing.
In my life I have spent an exceedingly large amount of time trying to be "perfect" even after I became a Buddhist. It seemed as if it were my Achilles heel and this drive for being seen as perfect, having the perfect idea, the perfect solution, the perfect everything became the downfall of my own personal identity. In middle life, I have discovered that there isn't perfection and that frankly, perfection is boring. It is the oddities of our character that make us attractive and interesting. But in the same breath, I understand what my friend was talking about. It wasn't so much about perfection as it was about being aware enough to see when something amazing is happening to you so that you can enjoy it. In a world where much of the population walks with their head down, void of eye contact, void of the possibility of moving outside their own circle. I understand this and still, I struggle.
Last week, I went to see Jad Abumrad. He is the creator of Radiolab which has been one of my favorite shows for years. I wasn't sure what to expect from the lecture titled "Indoor Plumbing", but I was keen to find out. It was an intimate setting with a packed auditorium of about 200 local people and Jad on the stage with a few electronics and a stool. He was warm and personable and it was acutely surreal to hear his voice while actually watching him talk. Jad's lecture was about how he lost his deep connection with his love for Radiolab, his disillusionment with journalism, and how he came back to the light.
Sometimes we are given things we need. I had been looking forward to this lecture for a month and at the last minute my friend asked me to watch her baby. I had my ticket already (it was free as I was a member of the museum hosting it) and I sat in the dilemma I have sat with my whole life. Do I give up something for myself to make someone else happy? I had such a huge guilt as I text her back to say no I can't do it. I walked to the lecture in a beautiful fall night, watched the sunset over our valley as I crossed the bridge, and felt as if I was on the verge of something I couldn't name.
Jad Abumrad's lecture had four parts:
Chapter 1: Indoor plumbing
Chapter 2: Be Quiet
Chapter 3: Little Shit
Chapter 4: There was trouble aboard the Washington Bus
I am not going to recount this lecture in detail but I did want to share what I learned from it, because I think it was pivotal for me and could be useful to others as well. More and more I learn that I am not on an island with my disparities and that knowledge lends me to be more open to the world and the people in it. It makes me look up from the ground.
Chapter 1: Indoor Plumbing
This section of the conversation was about learning to step out of your normal routine and how when you do this...even if it is a very small step, it opens up your vision and sense of the world around you. When you find you are stuck in a loop you have to do something surprising in order to find the gratitude in what you are doing. After you have this realization and step back into your life you can begin to recognize the miracle you were living in the whole time.
Chapter 2: Be Quiet
How often do we really be quiet in life? How often do we stop and listen to what people say, to what the world says to us? Jad talked about how he uses this in Radiolab episodes and calls the negative space the "sizzle silence" because it is alive. Sometimes you have to sit in the quiet space and remain unmoving and listen. He said something profound in this section that really sparked me:
"It's hard to perform in a relationship you never really had"-Jad Abumrad
Chapter 3: Little Shit
Yes, we all laughed when he said this, because we brush away the "little shit" and move on, but he says little shit is like punctuation...it's the detail that fills in the space. It adds movement or stops it. It creates a rhythm. Little shit is the tension between the cosmic and the ordinary that makes life interesting. They are the things that seem incidental but are connected to something deeper beneath the surface. Little shit helps you discern what you are truly interested in rather than what you think you SHOULD be interested in. Stop when you feel something. Take notice.
Pay attention to the "can't stops" which he says are the things you hear that you can't stop thinking about. Those are the pieces of life you have to pay attention to, the ones you follow down the rabbit hole.
Chapter 4: There was trouble aboard the Washington bus....
He said he took this quote from Octavia Butler's story "Speech Sounds" which is about a post-apocalyptic world in which half of the population can speak but can't read and the other half can read but are mute. Imagine this world. Imagine it. Is it that far off from where we are headed?
Jad talked about how in this place where he questioned his chosen career and the great podcast he had built he had to hit rock bottom first. He had to be in the space where nothing makes any sense. He said that Octavia Butler went through this too. She was having trouble getting published, her dear friend was dying of cancer, and there seemed as if there were little hope in the world for her to achieve her dreams. She was on that Washington bus; she had hit rock bottom. Then, the first line of a story popped into her head. She went home and wrote it down. Then she wrote another and another. She couldn't stop writing out this echo of a world that she felt inside. This, this is called "writing yourself back to hope".
Here I sit in the cliche coffee shop drinking tea, listening to Mac Miller, and writing myself back to hope. I am going to do my best to blog every week, to keep checking in with my "can't stops" and my silences and my off trail happenings. Keep your heads up everyone. There is so much to see.
Thanks for reading.
Aleathia
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