Your essay is comprehensive and thorough without ever once dragging - I could see multiple longer essays as offshoots from this one and I would read them all! It also makes me want to be more curious about how I used to play as a kid vs how kids play nowadays, as well ask all my friends what they played! Being a Gen X-er, a lot of us were just outside wreacking havoc. Great essay!
My professor friend I mentioned over on your 'stack said something similar! Especially about continuing down the line of "mindfulness as just one more form of productivity." That'll be an interesting angle to tackle, since mindfulness has been so helpful to me, while also feeling overcoded by the hustle mentality... These days, I actually feel most mindful while *doing* things, like reading... Or playing!
Thank you so much for reading, Trilety! I'm so glad you enjoyed yourself!
I dig this professor friend of yours! And yes,, I had never - until your post - thought about the capitalistic hijacking of the mindfulness movement. And like you, I've actually been able to be mindful while "doing" as well - even really focusing on hockey can be mindful. . though i think my recent meditation habit could be helping that as well. Thanks!
I've honestly been thinking about this comment since you made it. "I'll do it anyway" sits with me as such a profound response to all this. Cousin to Bartleby the Scrivener's infamous, "I would prefer not to," but with a different energy. I love it. Thanks for this, and for reading!
Nov 7, 2022·edited Nov 7, 2022Liked by Lyle Enright
Thanks for the reply. Where this came from for me originally is the various claims that go around about music (my vocation) being good for other things. Back to 'Mozart Makes You Smarter," ages ago, and these days memes that list all the things playing an instrument accomplishes *besides* playing the instrument! I always have that refrain in my head. (And there's the irony about memes commenting on intellectual development, focus . . .)
This was amazing. One of the most inspiring pieces of the Symposium.
"“helpfulness,” which—are my compasses spinning, or does that also sound an awful lot like “usefulness” to you, too?"
I've been reading a lot of the Work Symposium today (while on a gig actually haha) and because of the sheer volume of content sometimes my eyes start scanning rather than reading, resulting in interesting discoveries. This one was that I read "helpfulness" as "usefulness" the first time and wouldn't have noticed that it was "helpfulness" if you hadn't called it out.
"one’s own useless (because miraculous) existence."
This is everything. I don't have more to add to it, it says it all, but I became extremely less stressed out and scared by life once I learned there's nothing inherently useful about it. It just is and that's okay, so it's up to me how I want to experience it.
Dude, I stepped away from comments for a bit and am so bummed I missed yours when you posted it. Thank you so, so much for reading, and for your insights here. I want to follow up on this connection, too, between "helpfulness" and "usefulness" and how these words kind of funnel us into worlds of prior assumptions that can lead to more or less conviviality with one another... Sounds like you've been thinking similar things. I'd love to continue this line of conversation with you and a few other people.
Perfect thought to take into the holidays, lol. Here's to a supremely useless time!
So right, Lyle, I don't want to know myself, like in the Latin, nosce te ipsum. There should be plenty of mystery in the multitude contained, that each of us has, many things, including hopes, dreams, and ambitions we don't have yet or will pick up again. Sometimes, a toy train is just a toy train.
You remined me, that one of the least designed toys is the big empty cardboard box which could become other things, like rocketships.
Some of my favorite Calvin & Hobbes comics involve those big boxes they use to break reality. Talk about an example in "attending to yourself"... Thank you so much for reading and commenting, Edward!
I love it, this feels heretical, which says something about the society that makes it feel that way. I'm sometimes embarrassed to tell other people if I took a day during the week just to relax and read and meditate. I wish that were something to celebrate as balance, not hide or feel ashamed of.
Stephanie, "heretical" is about the biggest compliment I could get! Thank you!
A friend of mine asked me to keep going with the whole "critique of mindfulness as productivity" angle. I think you're pointing to another reason why that's needed: mindfulness doesn't seem to lessen our guilt about stepping away. Rather, the assumption is that meditation helps us *handle more*.
Your essay is comprehensive and thorough without ever once dragging - I could see multiple longer essays as offshoots from this one and I would read them all! It also makes me want to be more curious about how I used to play as a kid vs how kids play nowadays, as well ask all my friends what they played! Being a Gen X-er, a lot of us were just outside wreacking havoc. Great essay!
My professor friend I mentioned over on your 'stack said something similar! Especially about continuing down the line of "mindfulness as just one more form of productivity." That'll be an interesting angle to tackle, since mindfulness has been so helpful to me, while also feeling overcoded by the hustle mentality... These days, I actually feel most mindful while *doing* things, like reading... Or playing!
Thank you so much for reading, Trilety! I'm so glad you enjoyed yourself!
I dig this professor friend of yours! And yes,, I had never - until your post - thought about the capitalistic hijacking of the mindfulness movement. And like you, I've actually been able to be mindful while "doing" as well - even really focusing on hockey can be mindful. . though i think my recent meditation habit could be helping that as well. Thanks!
"Mindfulness will decrease your anxiety, help you accomplish more, and make you better at math!!"
"That's okay; I'll do it anyway."
***
A thought-provoking essay, Lyle. Thank you.
I've honestly been thinking about this comment since you made it. "I'll do it anyway" sits with me as such a profound response to all this. Cousin to Bartleby the Scrivener's infamous, "I would prefer not to," but with a different energy. I love it. Thanks for this, and for reading!
Thanks for the reply. Where this came from for me originally is the various claims that go around about music (my vocation) being good for other things. Back to 'Mozart Makes You Smarter," ages ago, and these days memes that list all the things playing an instrument accomplishes *besides* playing the instrument! I always have that refrain in my head. (And there's the irony about memes commenting on intellectual development, focus . . .)
This was amazing. One of the most inspiring pieces of the Symposium.
"“helpfulness,” which—are my compasses spinning, or does that also sound an awful lot like “usefulness” to you, too?"
I've been reading a lot of the Work Symposium today (while on a gig actually haha) and because of the sheer volume of content sometimes my eyes start scanning rather than reading, resulting in interesting discoveries. This one was that I read "helpfulness" as "usefulness" the first time and wouldn't have noticed that it was "helpfulness" if you hadn't called it out.
"one’s own useless (because miraculous) existence."
This is everything. I don't have more to add to it, it says it all, but I became extremely less stressed out and scared by life once I learned there's nothing inherently useful about it. It just is and that's okay, so it's up to me how I want to experience it.
Dude, I stepped away from comments for a bit and am so bummed I missed yours when you posted it. Thank you so, so much for reading, and for your insights here. I want to follow up on this connection, too, between "helpfulness" and "usefulness" and how these words kind of funnel us into worlds of prior assumptions that can lead to more or less conviviality with one another... Sounds like you've been thinking similar things. I'd love to continue this line of conversation with you and a few other people.
Perfect thought to take into the holidays, lol. Here's to a supremely useless time!
So right, Lyle, I don't want to know myself, like in the Latin, nosce te ipsum. There should be plenty of mystery in the multitude contained, that each of us has, many things, including hopes, dreams, and ambitions we don't have yet or will pick up again. Sometimes, a toy train is just a toy train.
You remined me, that one of the least designed toys is the big empty cardboard box which could become other things, like rocketships.
Some of my favorite Calvin & Hobbes comics involve those big boxes they use to break reality. Talk about an example in "attending to yourself"... Thank you so much for reading and commenting, Edward!
I love it, this feels heretical, which says something about the society that makes it feel that way. I'm sometimes embarrassed to tell other people if I took a day during the week just to relax and read and meditate. I wish that were something to celebrate as balance, not hide or feel ashamed of.
Stephanie, "heretical" is about the biggest compliment I could get! Thank you!
A friend of mine asked me to keep going with the whole "critique of mindfulness as productivity" angle. I think you're pointing to another reason why that's needed: mindfulness doesn't seem to lessen our guilt about stepping away. Rather, the assumption is that meditation helps us *handle more*.