Jargogled Impressions.

Our mindset drives the approach we take to challenges or situations we meet in our lives. As the Stoics teach us, the things within our circle of control are what we should occupy ourselves with, not the things within our circle of concern. But often we find that things cannot really be neatly categorized within the two concentric circles. As with everything in real life, there are often intersecting issues that hover over our conscious minds, and which we are unsure of whether we can control them or not.

Consider your health for instance.

You have a moral and ethical duty to keep yourself in good health – for your and your family’s sake. But there is an invisible line that separates what you can and cannot control, if at all. And this line itself is too specifically dependent on your health history, your genetic composition, your context and surroundings, and the various inputs that go into defining your physical and mental constitution.

In cases like these, I think it becomes a game of probability and of reasonable doubt. If you think it is within your control, then make that a belief and go with it. You can adopt rules of thumb to account for things science has not yet described today and catch up on nutritional science (if you can make sense of them) to drive the remaining areas of health.

But that is not enough. Because carpe diem.

Yes, despite all your machinations and efforts, you can still fall prey to the fate that is prescribed for you. And I guess this fear, of the unknown and the uncertain, is what drove people to religion and the belief in superior being. In that being we ascribe the things outside our circle of control and let HIM/HER decide on what is best for us. I realize as I add years on me, that my proclivity to believing in God as a convenient entity to point fingers continues to grow and expand. Not considering even that my previous generation makes it a consistent point to suggest and preach the importance of doing so. Religion is a sort of non-secular meditation for the human soul. The more unquiet the human mind is, the more there is a need to calm it through making sense of the vast interstellar space of uncertainty that governs our lives.

Going back to our mindsets, and narrowing our focus now to our circle of control – is it possible to continue expanding our circle through practice, training, hardening of our skills and capabilities? And should we endeavor to do so given that expanding this circle only amplifies the variables in our lives? I have led my life so far with the intention of making my circle bigger, even if it comes at the expense of convenience and comfort. It is one of the reasons why traveling is an intrinsic part of who I am and is also the reason why living outside my country of birth was always on my to-do list. There is an element of constant, lifelong learning and challenging we that is drove my life philosophy with. But as I grow older, and my energy wanes, I have come to realize that maybe how I led my life is how most of us lead our lives, at least when we are young and open to experimentation. But as some point of time, an ennui begins to settle on our life force wherein we start prioritizing familiarity over novelty, comfort over motion, and depth over breadth.

Is this transition a factor of age though? Or is it merely a factor of our self-induced mindset? In other words, can we, despite our age and correspondingly the energy we have, continue to lead an existence where we prioritize growth over convenience?

There is a line of thought running inside my head that says that we need to give ourselves latitude and free rein to use joy as the organizing principle for our life. But what gives me pause is that it really implies we are resigning ourselves to what we have, accepting the station we have been offered, and optimizing the components such that we can do the best we can do with it.

Optimization is inherent to our evolution as human beings; it is how our body responds naturally to external stimuli too. So, there is nothing wrong with it per se. But what we optimize for indicates what we are prioritizing in our life. And while priorities shift and shuffle around as the life force around us eddies, I have come to believe that holding some principles or values steady brings a type of consistency in life that makes our narrative stronger and more coherent in front of the monkey mind we have all been bestowed with.

Which brings me to the core question I am chasing with this post – should we, as we continue with our lives, hold some ideas and values sacred? Or should we maintain a sense of distance with these values, evaluate it at different junctures of our lives, and take a fresh evaluation of whether they should find a place in our ammunition box?

What should be in our ammunition box to confront the pathos of life? For one, it should have a mental model with which you can make sense of the world you see around you. At minimum, it should include algorithms that get lighted by identified triggers that you may deem action worthy, and lets you take charge of the motions of your life. For often, we find ourselves straddled with a static view on what constitutes a good life. This view needs to be challenged constantly, for without the pressure-test, we are bounded within the confines of the things we know, instead of letting our imaginations soar with the things that we do not. It’s not as far-fetched and obscene to try and find a method or a standard approach where a “rethink” is called for, as that helps keep a lid on what you are asking your mind to process, relying instead on this second brain that you build for yourself – one that is constantly humming, regularly shifting, and always on the move.