Playing my own game

I want to live fully in the world. Explore it, create things, pursue my desires and understand myself as I go. That is how I think about spiritual practice.

I can want something and enjoy working towards it. I also want to notice when I have made my happiness depend on getting it. The desire can give me direction. The story that I will only be complete when I get there can make me suffer.

Be, do, have. Imagine the person I want to be. Do the things that person would do. Build the skills, habits and relationships that support that life.

Then I get there and discover there is no final “there”. Life continues. I can enjoy what I have created, choose again and keep going. I want to play my own game with high agency.

Naval asks, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you happy?” That question touches me. I am interested in purpose, in enjoying the work, and in understanding whether happiness is a permanent state and how it relates to purpose.

I see heaven and hell in the lives we experience here. To me, the idea of one final pass or fail misses the mystery of being alive. I can choose what matters to me and take responsibility for the effect I have on other people.

I think of religious and social rules as harnesses people have developed over time. They give people values, goals and ways to live together. I also want to examine what each rule does. When we call something progress, good or bad, I want to know: for whom, and at what cost?

Schooling, family and culture shape the model I bring into the world. We learn what to admire, what to fear and what to pursue. I think of this as a kind of training. I can examine that training and decide which parts I want to keep.

When I meet someone with fixed answers, I usually leave them with their model. Everyone needs a way of making sense of life. I have my own model too, and I want to keep noticing where I treat a story as certainty.

The world I experience is intimately connected with my mind. What interests me is the way perception, memory and interpretation shape the life I feel I am living. Blaming everything outside me can distract me from the response I can choose.

Metacognition is a useful word for noticing my own thinking. I can observe a thought, the meaning I give it and the action it leads me towards. That gives me something concrete to work with.

I want to create, imagine, love and participate, while reducing the pain and suffering I cause. I can live with the mystery. I am still trying to understand.