For a while now I've had an idea for a short story. Here are the broad plot points that describe what hopefully happens:
A character in the story mysteriously disappears, leaving behind a note telling everyone they've ever known to not come looking for them
All of this person's closed loved ones refuse to accept this reality. How could someone like that do something like this? This character was loved and respected, a pillar of their community, someone who seemed to have all their shit together. No one understands, and they all feel that they must understand
As they begin seeking answers, an AI startup launches a product that promises to "explain life's greatest mysteries with AI". Basically: feed it enough information from enough different perspectives, and it will stitch everything together, analyse it, and distill the truth about what really happened
They agree to try this service, and after some bickering over how to split the $15/month subscription fee, they individually take turns to visit the startup's offices, meeting with a robot/computer screen thing to dictate their respective theories and frustrations. Everyone gets their chance to tell their side of the story and to ask the questions they want answers to.
This AI startup promises a 7-day turnaround, but on the 7th day, it announces that it has run out of funding. All customer data disappears, offices are shuttered, the startup’s founder vanishes, and chaos ensues.
For this character's closed loved ones, this is yet again another unacceptable reality. And so they each individually embark on their own journeys—perhaps one attempts to hunt down the AI startup's founder, another takes to social media to lament what happened, another starts blaming everyone else, and so on.
As of this moment, I haven’t quite decided how this short story ends.
There are a few ideas that I'm playing with, but on the whole this concept still feels a little trite, like it's better off existing as a fun thought in my head than an actual, published piece of prose.
I am not a religious person, but I love this thing that was allegedly said by the road manager of the rock band AC/DC: "God is the name of the blanket we throw over mystery to give it shape."
When I first heard this quote, it reminded me of the TV series Dark Matter, where a physicist discovers a way for humans to access and navigate countless parallel realities where they can locate versions of themselves who have lived out different lives. To do this, one enters a box and injects themselves with a serum, which then transforms the box into an endless hallway with doors that open to said parallel realities.
The physicist explains this phenomenon by describing how the human brain has not sufficiently evolved to visualise four-dimensional space. And so the 'hallway' is simply what we project in order for our minds to make sense of it.
All this to say that when I was recently home on a Saturday afternoon, drinking coffee and contemplating a nap, a thought suddenly came to me that I was wasting my life.
One moment I was perfectly peaceful, looking out the window and staring at trees, and the next, I found myself wondering: Should I be doing something more significant with my time? Should I be having more fun? Spinning up a new project?
Should I be doing something?
At first this surfaced as a kind of muted restlessness. A prickle of nervous energy dancing across my skin. Then it began to swell. It began to grow feet and arms and tentacles; eventually the feet began to stretch, planting themselves in the floor of my gut as the tentacles slowly wound their way up my spine and around the base of my neck.
And it occurred to me that I did not like this. Which was new.
Because more often than not I would have gotten up, abandoned my coffee, and started busying myself with something. I wouldn’t have stopped to notice.
As I slowly shifted my attention back into where I actually was, I realised: Everything is fine, nothing is actually happening. I am just a human being lounging in a chair. Everything is fine.
In fact, it’s kind of amazing.
These days, I am learning again to be fascinated by my own mind.
This is as opposed to feeling trapped by it, feeling like I need to fully comprehend it, or that I need to tame and apprehend it and coerce it into behaving exactly as I want it to.
If I had to describe my relationship with my mind, 'fascination' is not the kind of language I would typically use. Instead, my mind typically feels like something that needs to be appeased, comforted, and negotiated with. These are all things that feel heavy, demanding, unreasonable.
Fascination, on the other hand, has a different texture. It has a lightness to it, and it encourages me to step back. To observe and describe, rather than analyse and judge. It reminds me of how art historian Jennifer Roberts requires her students to spend a "painfully long time" looking at a single painting.
She describes her own experience doing this, referring to the painting Boy With a Squirrel by artist John Singleton Copley:
It took me nine minutes to notice that the shape of the boy’s ear precisely echoes that of the ruff along the squirrel’s belly—and that Copley was making some kind of connection between the animal and the human body and the sensory capacities of each. It was 21 minutes before I registered the fact that the fingers holding the chain exactly span the diameter of the water glass beneath them. It took a good 45 minutes before I realized that the seemingly random folds and wrinkles in the background curtain are actually perfect copies of the shapes of the boy’s ear and eye, as if Copley had imagined those sensory organs distributing or imprinting themselves on the surface behind him.
This is what fascination feels like to me. With fascination there is more humour and forgiveness, and yet it is not the kind of relationship I've always had with my own mind.
And as I'm learning to work with this, this is where I seem to find myself landing. It might sound somewhat stupid, but I'm just going to say it:
Sometimes, we need to allow mysteries to simply be mysteries. When we expect a mystery to be anything other than mysterious, we are trying to exert control over something that, by its very nature, cannot be anything else.
Here are a few things I've been doing to nurture and re-learn what it means to be fascinated by my own mind. The goal, and the very specific thing I'm working on, is to allow myself to see things as they are, and not feel the need to explain and make sense of every life event.
Slow down, do fewer things, allow more space for boredom.
Create space to hear myself. When commuting, I try to refrain from listening to music or podcasts. I've started to notice that by always wanting to drown out the outside world, I end up drowning my inside world as well. So I think of this as a way to allow myself to wander inwardly and to simply observe what's happening there.
Check in with myself when I'm doing things. Do I like this? How do I feel about this? It's less about landing on an answer, and more about getting in the habit of stopping to ask.
Intervene less. Say fewer things in work meetings, offer fewer solutions, and discern more when my contributions are actually needed, and when I can simply let things be.
And of course, I am also taking more naps.
Announcements
Last week I mentioned that I’m running a retreat in November with some friends. Early bird pricing ends in 3 days, so if this is something you might be interested in, do consider signing up!
I’ve also launched sign-ups for the journalling workshop I’m running under RICE Media’s community events programming. I’m quite excited about this because it’s really more than just a standalone workshop—it’s part of what we’re also trying to do to grow the brand in new and meaningful ways, and to deepen the impact we can have on our community. You can sign up here.
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Thanks Julian for sharing your reflections, you sure trigger lots of reflections for me. I love the tips at the end, a blueprint for a meaningful life!