jakebe | Entries tagged with introspection

I am a gay black man. I am a Zen Buddhist. (Thank you, Kevin.) I am agnostic -- I don't know if there is a God, but I don't believe that being a good person should be dependent on that. I am a writer, gamer, geek, lover of animals, myths, and the intersection between them. I'm a morning person. I drink coffee. I believe that in order to be at my best I must be stripped down and simplified to my essence. That requires the very difficult work of scrubbing away decades of gunk that has been built to protect me from the hardships of life. (I'm stripping a cast-iron skillet over the holiday, so maybe my metaphors are going to be reflecting that today.)

I didn't always believe this, of course. When I was a child -- well, I was still called gay, and a nerd, but the connotations were negative. As I grew up, I was called a pussy, a weirdo, an Oreo -- black on the outside, but white on the inside. As a defense mechanism, I took all the terrible things people said about me and turned them into positives:

"Yeah, I'm a pussy -- but that means I don't get my ass kicked on the regular or have to worry about being shot."

"I'm a weirdo, sure, but that means I get to think about stuff that you never will."

"Oreos are fucking delicious, and everyone wants to have them nearby. I'm crunchy AND I'm sweet, you jackass."

These days, I don't even engage. Of course I care about what people think about me, but at the end of the day I know who I am and what I stand for. I've put in the time and the work to strip myself bare, see what lies beneath my face and put myself back together to try and be the best reflection of that. It's an ongoing process, and I will never be finished with it -- that's life, that's self-improvement. But it is one of the most important and worthwhile things you will ever do.

The principle we focus on today, the second day of Kwanzaa, is Kujichagulia -- self-determination. I love this concept; the Swahili word is so much fun to say, but it's also one of those things that tends to work in a spiral. There are always new ways to name and define yourself, and because you're a living being who exists in a complex and ever-evolving society, the relationship between who you are, who you want to be, and how that relates to other people demands that you constantly check yourself. But first, let's start with the basics.

Self-determination, at its most simple, is answering these three questions:

Who am I? No really, who am I? It's a simple question that is almost impossible to answer. You must seek and understand the core of yourself in order to do that...but is there a core there? Are we actually the tension that exists between the various aspects that make up who we are? Am I only myself because I am gay, black, Zen, geek, etc.? Am I only a series of definitions, a collection of names I have given myself? Or am I something beyond and beneath that, some unnamable, unknowable kernel? If I can't name it or know it, how can I define it or ensure its existence? What do I think about all of this? Who is the one that is doing the thinking?

Am I really who I say I am? Determining who you are is a process that I don't think you may ever get to the bottom of. You do the best you can with the information you can, and then you try to confirm it. I think this question forces you to take a look at your actions; if you really are who you say you are, then you would behave in ways consistent with that, correct? What are your beliefs, and how do your actions reflect them?

It can be a bit of a gut check to realize that you behave in ways that are inconsistent with what you believe. But it's also necessary to face that down and make the changes you need to in order to re-align yourself. For example, if I look within myself and find that I'm not actually following the Noble Eightfold Path, then it's on me to figure out what that means and how I can work my way back there. This may mean painful changes, or stepping outside of a comfort zone, but knowing yourself and being yourself is more important. This is a sacrifice that must be made for the right to self-determination.

Am I all that I ought to be? So we've worked out who we believe we are and determined that how we act accurately reflects that. But is that enough? Of course not. We could always strive to be something more, something better -- to embody our beliefs more closely and carefully. Could I be more than who I am? What do I need to do in order to get there? Self-determination is more than knowing who you are -- it's knowing where you are going and what it takes to get there.

It is vital to know ourselves, especially as black people. My ancestors came from western and southern Africa. Somehow, they were put on ships by men who took their destinies from them and replaced them with the Middle Passage. When they arrived, they were stripped of their clothing, their cultures, their families and their very names. They were given other names, other religions, other jobs and relationships. Even after they were freed, they were told that they were lesser than their fellow Americans, forced to confine themselves to the poorest neighborhoods and work the worst jobs. This is a process that continues down to this day.

In our media we are given a narrative, a single story. Our men are called thugs and criminals; even the "good guys" are tough and physical. Our women are crazy, loud, outspoken but unintelligible; they speak almost entirely in slang and are predominantly concerned about hair, makeup, clothes and men. Our children are told they don't have the intelligence to make it in American society, that the best they can hope for is to be athletes, drug dealers, or prisoners. Our communities are impoverished and intellectually stagnant, but the fight for better is called "disruptive," "obnoxious," and "unnecessary."

We must reject that story, and find our own. Black men are smart, courageous, confused, scared and just as soft as anyone else. Black women are incredible; tough, intelligent, beautiful, complicated. Our children are precious, each a kaleidoscope of possibilities -- they could be astronauts, scientists, businesspeople, politicians, artists and activists. We joined American society being told who we were and what we were, but there is no reason that needs to continue. We are who we are, and only we know what that is.

As individuals and as a culture, we must define ourselves to be active participants in our own destinies. We must fight the pressure to be defined or named by other people; we accept or reject terms based on our own principles. That is Kujichagulia. That is life.

Have a wonderful Kwanzaa today, everyone. Know yourselves. I'll check in with you tomorrow!

Some time ago, I mentioned that I wanted to find a way to differentiate my LiveJournal and my Wordpress blog. I said that I would try to update the LiveJournal a little more often with less polished, more personal entries...and then promptly abandoned that plan. Right now, the LJ blog is just a mirror feed of Wordpress, and while it's handy to boost the signal with my fledgling little pop-culture/storytelling blog, I was never quite comfortable with that. I want something to get my thoughts out in a more-or-less raw form; maybe talking through them will yield fruit for more complete and polished work later.

The Art of Manliness recently posted an essay on the virtues of keeping a daily diary, and it really struck a chord with me. So I'm coming back to that original idea that I posted about so much time ago. This time, I'm trying to focus it a little bit just so I can overcome the barrier that kept me from posting in the first place. My life is so busy, and I'm so bad at time management, that I often feel like I don't have any time to post things any more. So...what I'll do at first is start small. Every day, post at least three paragraphs here about what's going on in any particular day and what I'm thinking. Just to get my foot in the door, so to speak. That allows me enough room to talk about something at a little bit of length while still being short enough that I can squeeze it in before I go to work, or at lunch, or right before bed.

So, besides this, today I'm trying to give the day over to silence. Ryan left for Arkansas and his brother's wedding on Wednesday evening, and for about 24 hours after he left I found that I just couldn't have silence in the house. As soon as he left I turned on the TV and left it on overnight, falling asleep in front of it. As soon as work was over I went right into the living room, logged on to a chat client and turned on the football game. It wasn't just habit; it just felt that if I let the apartment settle and grow quiet, then I would miss him too badly.

There's a lesson in this. I think it's been a long time since I've surrounded myself in silence and let whatever comes, come. There's always work to do -- an embarrassment of riches, even; I have stories to read and critique, books to whittle down, things to write, games to work on, stuff to watch, burrows to clean. And now's a great opportunity to do them, but it's also a great opportunity to sharpen my focus, move slowly, do things mindfully. Embrace the silence to create days of simplicity and purpose. If I get lonely, or bored, or frightened about what I'm missing and whether or not friends will think fondly of me, etc. etc., I can stop and explore those feelings. There's a truth in vulnerability, after all, and allowing myself to explore what makes me afraid or sad isn't a bad thing.

I've stepped away from too much introspection for years now because I came to see it as something as a paralyzing influence. Too much navel-gazing prevents you from making a decision and acting on it, which is valuable for me. I'm over 30 now; with a lot of those long-gestating dreams of mine, it's time to put up or shut up. A philosophy is no good to me if it doesn't encourage me to act. But at the same time, it's good to take up a step back, be still, and make sure that your philosophy is encouraging you to take the right actions.

Sorry, but a lot of posts for the next few weeks might be like this. :)

Current Mood: hopeful

Everyone who knows me knows what a devil of a time I have focusing. Whenever I settle down to work on a project, I can only manage it for ten or fifteen minutes at a time before I get the urge to check something else. Maybe there’s something new on EW.com. Maybe someone’s sent me an email. Or maybe there’s a new person following me on Twitter that I’d better check out. The worst thing about Web 2.0, I think, is the boundless opportunity for distractions. It seems like every second of every day, there’s all kinds of new content to take in. There are Twitter messages, or blog posts, or Facebook updates, or comics...the list goes on. It’s getting increasingly more difficult to step outside of the information stream for any length of time. Once you get used to dozens of instant updates on a wide variety of topics every fifteen minutes, you really miss that information overload.

Of course, this does absolutely nothing for productivity, either in my personal or professional life. I find that it also makes me a much shallower person -- I rarely stop to really think about something for longer than five minutes before I’m off to the next thing. And the more I look around me, the more I think I’m not alone in this, that I’m the product of my time. Haven’t you noticed how loud and empty our public discourse has become? To be glib, I think the reason the far-right have hijacked the national conversation isn’t because they make the best arguments, or have facts on their side, or have managed to tap into some primal political mood and given a voice to it. The reason that Palin and Coulter and Beck are big is because they can mash things down into a meaningless -- but catchy -- phrase and repeat it over and over and over until it sticks. It sounds just good enough to repeat, and with the steady flow of information you can’t stop to think about it.

But what was I talking about again? See how free-flowing my mind has become? I sat down to write about my problems with focus and how to solve them, and then went into a broad rant about web 2.0, and how it’s affecting us as a society and how you can see that in political discourse. That’s some serious essayist ADD right there.

So, I have trouble with focus, mostly because there is limitless distraction out there and my willpower to disengage from it is very weak. This is nothing new. Neither is the fact that I’ve been struggling with the consequences of this lack of focus for some time now. I’ve been unable to write very well, or complete any of those personal projects I’ve set for myself (learning French, or Russian, or the clarinet, or Linux, or PostGreSQL), or really engage my spirituality in any sort of meaningful way. Needless to say, this continued state of affairs is very frustrating.

Thankfully, my plan to finally conquer this once and for all kind of kills two birds with one stone. The progress with it has been slow, but noticeable, but like anything else worthwhile will require constant effort and focus to maintain. One of my favorite Buddhist principles is that of mindfulness -- no matter where you are or what you’re doing, make sure you’re there and doing it completely. In fact, one of my favorite recent quotes defines wisdom this way: “Doing the next thing you have to do, doing it with your whole heart, and finding delight in doing it.”

So...the best cure for this lack of attention also happens to be the most basic for me: returning to mindfulness. Just the practice of being aware of what I’m doing at all times is so simple, but the effects are huge. I’ve come around to the way of thinking that says multi-tasking is productivity’s worst enemy. You can’t truly be doing something if you’re thinking about three other things while you’re doing it. When I write, I’m writing. When I work, I’m working. Generally. I still slip, and it’s still easy to get distracted, but at this point I’m getting better at *choosing* to take a break rather than letting my brain carry me along with its whims.

Unfortunately, in this world multi-tasking has become the status quo, so it’s not something I can completely escape. But single-tasking is still something I try to do as much as possible. Even when I’m bouncing back and forth between a couple of different projects, I deal this way: I keep a queue of things I’m working on, so in the back of my mind I always know ‘what’s on deck’. While I’m dealing with something directly, however, I’m dealing with it fully until it’s done. When my mind wants to be distracted, I recognize the desire (“I see you Mara”) and use that as a call to come back to what’s in front of me. For the most part, it’s working.

There’s still the flag in energy and concentration in the afternoons that I struggle to deal with (Am I eating too much for lunch? Is it sugar or caffeine crash? Or is that just the end of my willpower’s capacity at the moment?), but I’m getting more productive all the time. Hopefully I’ll have the dedication to stick to it. Maybe that’s one of the reasons I’m writing about this here; to be held publicly accountable for continued progress here. Mostly, though, I just really missed journalling.