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Could the view inside my writing space be of value to you? My first guess is that unless I am harboring a team of tireless AI robots that write my books for me then the answer is “no”. I mean, the robots would be great for my leisure time (which is preciously little), they would make for a great exposé (if you’re a writer) and an interesting reveal (if you’re a reader). But barring them, which I obviously have none of, the picture of the space where I write in is pretty mundane. Right?
Well, I thought about this and no, it’s not quite like that. Let me explain.
The environment we live in reveals a lot about who we are, what we do and why we do some of the things we do. If I were, for instance, isolated from technology and society for months on end in a hut up in the mountains, surrounded by flocks of sheep; the chance of my writing anything of value to your own personal journey in a world of complexities tinged with ambiguity, would be pretty slim.
Writing about the inner lives of sheep, on the other hand, would be something I could probably do better than any writer safely ensconced in a city pad, in front of a laptop with half an eye on the news blaring in the living room and all social media accounts open on phone and tablet. The reason I’d do it better would owe nothing to any special sheep-whispering skills I may have and a whole lot to the proximity I’d have to sheep each day.
I know, it’s a simplified example, but it hides some deep truths. Back in Britain, in the year 2005 I was faced with a stark and identity-wrenching decision. It was December, just before the New Year and I was standing in the middle of my living room staring with sadness at the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lining an entire wall.
There, arranged by color, format and spine height were some 3,000 books some of which I’d bought, at huge cost, when I was barely a teen, working as a paperboy for pocket money. I’d read them all and occasionally, when I had nothing to do (which wasn’t often) I’d spent a rainy afternoon rearranging some titles or just running my finger through them, bringing up memories of the past. There was a book I found by chance while browsing-shopping with a girlfriend. Here was a title I hated but kept to remind myself how not to write bad books. Up above was a book my father had gifted me on my 15th birthday to make up after a massive argument.
Each of those books represented a wealth of feelings and memories that reflected my life. And I was about to give it all up. The choice I was facing that day was that come January the following year I’d have to leave the country for over a year on a work assignment. My books couldn’t come with me and storing them all was a cost I couldn’t afford. In the wrench to leave all those titles behind I was consciously and deliberately shedding some of my identity, a significant part of my attachment to the past. I knew that even if I managed to replace those titles digitally (some of which I have) I’d still be losing all the elements that holding a physical book you bought yourself, invoke.
Seeing where and how I write now means that obviously I have made the transition. Since that day I have had to move countries three more times. That has contributed to my being entirely digital. Everything I need to write and research resides in the cloud. My devices are access points but they are completely dispensable to me.
So, when you see where I write the clinical cleanness of my writing space means that really I can write anywhere there is an internet connection, a laptop, tablet or cellphone and a cup of coffee. In deciding to ditch books in physical form I made a conscious decision to focus on function over form. My digital library is always with me but, in addition, it is also easier to search, annotate and use than in the past.
The fact that I am no longer tied to the physicality of books has not been lost on me. Nor has its effect. One of the points made in Intentional: How to Live, Love, Work and Play Meaningfully is that we can only truly, embrace the future by letting go of the past. It’s a glib line that takes some thinking about. The past holds us in its grip in many subtle ways. For me, those books, cherished as they were, in retrospect, represented a treasure trove of safe memories I’d dive into from time to time to replenish or reinforce the sense of who I was.
But that sense of self, created by remembered past memories, was one that was also bound to them. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, by shedding the connections represented by all those books I was also giving myself permission to try new things, seek fresh experiences and – significantly – experience knowledge differently and understand its value through the functional benefits it delivers.
This forced me to become a better writer. As I worked, slowly, through the minor but nevertheless persistent trauma of losing that part of myself I also evolved. I learned to be nimble in my thinking. This made me place the reader and their needs above my own. It taught me that no matter how smart a piece of writing was it was useless unless it helped the reader feel that way and think that way.
A book, I’ve always known, is a vehicle of ideas. But the ideas have to have the kind of clarity that helps those who read them understand more, do more and be more than they would be without them. Would this have been possible without me writing wherever I am, whenever I can with whichever device I have at my disposal? Maybe. But it would certainly have taken more effort to do so and we are not neurobiologically designed to put in sustained effort indefinitely.
So, when you look at my writing space, consider that basically everything around me is transient and a placeholder. What is constant and of real value are the facts that I write and think and then use my writing to share my thinking. Thank you for being part of this journey, with me.
Live your life the way you want to. Manage stress better. Be more resilient and enjoy meaningful relationships and better health. We all want that. Such life leads to better choices, better jobs, loving romantic partners, more rewarding careers and decisions that are fully aligned with our aims.
What stops us from getting all that is the complexity of our brain and the complicated way in which the external world comes together. The misalignment between the internal states we experience and the external circumstances we encounter often leads to confusion, a lack of clarity in our thinking and actions that are not consistent with our professed values.
Intentional is a gameplan. It helps us connect the pieces of our mind to the pieces of our life. It shows us how to map what we feel to what has caused those feelings, understand what affects us and what effects it has on us and determine what we want, why we want it and what we need to do to get it.
When we know what to do, we know how to behave. When we know how to behave we know how to act. When we know how to act, we know how to live. Our actions, each day, become our lives. Drawn from the latest research from the fields of neuroscience, behavioral and social psychology and evolutionary anthropology, Intentional shows you how to add meaning to your actions and lead a meaningful, happier, more fulfilling life on your terms.
Enjoy an Excerpt
Whether we realize it or not, we all feel the need for this kind of guidance that gives us a deep sense of purpose. Because we are born physically helpless we have evolved to latch onto and work hard to understand our immediate environment and the people around us. This makes us, as we grow older, intensely pro-social. At the same time it provides us with a ready-made set of expectations, rules and guidelines to guide our behavior that arise from the collective behavior of those around us.
That behavior is the culture we experience and the traditions we abide by. The problem with this is that rather than defining for ourselves what is important to us we accept that which is given to us. That which is given to us is rarely what we want, but it can very easily become what we settle for.
Settling is an evolutionary-programmed trait. Let me explain: Life is hard. It really is. Even if we happen to have the extraordinary luck to be born into a very rich family whose legacy gives us everything we need to live comfortably for the rest of our life, maintaining that fortune and navigating through life is going to be fraught with risks, traps and constant upheavals.
We need other people. Other people need us. That is a truth. But the reasons for this mutual need are usually contradictory or, at the very least, sufficiently at odds with each other to make trust an issue and turn cooperation into a risk-assessment exercise.
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Thanks for hosting!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for hosting this and for the question that led me to think about where I write and what it means.
ReplyDeleteSonds great, thank you for sharing.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like a great read.
ReplyDelete