Hey Guys!
As stated in my post last week, I’ve been listening to a lot of Alan Watts lectures. “Just So” is the current collection. Listening and absorbing Alan Watts requires no attention while simultaneously requiring all of your attention if you really want to grasp the concepts he’s discussing. You can just listen and get the gist of what he’s saying or you can fully immerse yourself in his calming and tranquil voice to really break down, interpret and apply what he’s saying to your own life. It’s hard to really listen to these things when you have 3 kids being kids in the background, but I called in reinforcements on Friday so I could take a beat and collect my thoughts. My dad (bless him) was able to come watch the kids while I went for a very brisk and windy walk by myself. The point of this walk was to really just clear my head and get about an hour of time where little people weren’t asking me to wipe their butt or make them a snack. I decided, what better way to spend my alone time than listening to Alan? So I popped my headphones in and started on my walk…
What I heard next, changed my entire perspective.
Alan started discussing how as a society, we are obsessed with straight lines and rigidity. Problems always need to be “straightened out” and people who need to follow every rule are considered “squares”. In everything we do, we look for straightened out lines, rules, angles, sharp corners etc. when in fact, the world is naturally full of curves, wiggles, and movement. I feel like I had this huge revelation in my understanding of how our society is just flying through the days doing and being straight edge when there are so many more fun ways to wiggle or dance through life. You know, one of those “AH-HA” moments where your entire perception of life changes.
As we grow up, we’re conditioned to stop talking/singing/moving so that we can work or learn, when in fact, in older civilizations, laborers used to sing their entire day away while working. Productively, I might add. This conditioning completely contrasts how children naturally interpret the world. They’re always moving and dancing and singing…and it would also seem that they’re enjoying their time and days overall more than adults are. Adults, in my opinion, have been conditioned to remove the “wiggles” Alan mentions in the above quote. All throughout elementary school my report cards had the same box checked, without fail. “Excessive Talking”. Looking back after having children of my own, I have to wonder, maybe children are supposed to be talking all the time. Maybe it’s one of the ways they learn to digest and comprehend information or different social situations. I certainly was not the only one who was getting this particular box checked, so I was not an outlier in my need for conversation. What if we started encouraging these natural habits our children show instead of constantly telling them “no”? I feel as though people are forced to suppress a lot more than they’re able to express…and what happens when you bottle everything up? Eventually, the lid pops off.
While listening, I had to laugh at his example of a singing bank teller. Yes, literally walking and laughing to myself as I passed people giving me weird looks. Some might call them, hmm, I don’t know, squares? He asked his audience, “what would you do if you walked up to the teller at the bank and they were singing a song while counting your money?” He said, “most of you would probably be freaked out and ask to speak to a manager claiming this person is goofing off instead of doing their job”. And it got me thinking, why are we so “afraid” of people enjoying themselves? Imagine a world where people sing their way through work and might actually have…dare I say it…fun during their workday?! This example got me thinking what kind of world I want my children to grow up in. Do I want them to wake up 5 or 6 days a week, to leave their families to go to a job they hate until they’re 60 or 70 years old? I think we can collectively say we do not want this for the next generation. So how do we start to break these cycles that have been in place for so long? How do we start to live fun and fulfilling lives and help the next generation do the same? Start to wiggle, my friends.
Keep wiggling, my friends.
-A
**I know this post seems kind of haphazardly thrown together — I’m having a hard time really articulating my feelings on this topic but still think it is worth a discussion. But I’m also trying to organize my thoughts here in some way that I can check back to and in an authentic fashion. Growth is never linear (imagine that, it’s wiggly!!) and it’s not always nice and neatly packaged. Sometimes it’s just a hodge podge of thoughts and ideas.
Think of different ways YOU can turn your straight edges into wiggles. It will probably be uncomfortable at first, but I’m sure if you truly and honestly look at your daily routine, there are a lot of straight lines just BEGGING to wiggle.