Being refugees and having yearnings
Is anyone home?
“I long, as does every other human being, to be at home wherever I find myself” writes the galant Maya Angelou.
The human condition is such that we mostly feel… displaced. Isn’t it? We’re all here on this awesome planet just trying to figure out… Who are we, truly? Why are we here? What is the meaning of our life? What is our personal purpose?
We all yearn to be at home with ourselves. To feel safe in our own company. To know ourselves all the way into compassion. To live in alignment. To flow through life. To avoid our values rubbing against our daily activities.
„The most heroic thing you can do is to refuse to hate yourself, and instead earn your own self-respect by living in accordance with your values.”
The problem is there are all these noisy, shiny things that get in the way. Money, title, status, praise, recognition, prestige. All of those fuel the ego to the point where you end up doing things that you really aren’t meant to do. You end up in places that don’t cherish you for you. With people you share no values with. You’re living somebody else’s life. According to rules made up by external forces. Likely believing that you’re now stuck. And all throughout, depleting your true spirit, your personal zone of genius.
What they don’t teach in school
Here’s something I wish I knew at 25, that I know at 35. No one cares about you the way you care about you. Nobody cares what you do in life, how much money you make, your new title or recent promotion or lack thereof. Nobody cares about your instagram feed, latest tweets, or the recent LinkedIn updates. Nobody cares about your self image. Nobody cares if you choose to be a youtuber, an attorney, or a psychedelics guide. (There’s also a different kind of cosmic insignificance that I am obsessed with, which I wrote about here).
Whatever you decide to do in life should be done according to what you truly, deeply want to do. All the layers of acculturation, expectations, and status signaling make it hard to know what that is. We’re steeped in a hustle-obsessed, status-driven culture and it’s hard to fully opt out. Our egos are in overdrive from all that.
(Goes on a total mental tangent: I wish they taught this in schools… If I had to choose between learning this kind of “life know-how” and chemistry class - guess what I would choose? How could we be helping kids grasp this before they’re in their 30s? How do I introduce my own kids to these ideas in a way that doesn’t feel patronizing or annoying? Am I even a legitimate source for them, given I’d be the “acculturation / expectation” culprit?)
"You need to have the courage to eliminate everything that doesn't directly feed what you really want."
The meta in your meta-cognition
To quiet the ego you need to get to a place of self-knowing. A deep understanding of who you are, what you need, what you want, what fuels your spirit, and what depletes it. Also known as meta-cognition.
Meta-cognition starts when you become aware of the chatter in your mind, the reactivity in your emotions, and the patterns in your behaviors. It’s the deep comprehension of what makes you you. What motivates you. What drains you. What nourishes you. What incites you. The upside of having a strong connection to your inner knowing is that you can start to make choices that aren’t informed by anyone else’s opinions, beliefs, or values.
There are larger impacts of growing your meta-cognition. As my friend Franzi Gonder of the brilliant Leadership That Heals the World substack always says - we build our own capacity in order to learn how to walk others home. Which is level pro and definitely aspirational for me.
Kyle Kowalski the creator of Sloww, which is one of my favorite nooks on the internet, argues that the mind and how artfully humans use it may be the solution to many of mankind’s problems (wars, inequality, climate crisis, and beyond).
“We are unlikely to effectively solve these problems unless we truly understand their ultimate source: the human mind. In our view, to survive and flourish…we must look inward. In an era defined by human impact, the most pressing questions of this time are about ourselves. The duration and prosperity of our species’ journey together on this planet will, in part, be determined by the extent to which we can come to understand our minds and apply the lessons we learn to how we live our lives.” — Nathaniel Barr & Gordon Pennycook
The practice
There is no one practice for building your meta-cognition “muscles”. Journaling - writing about your emotions, thoughts, reactions on a regular basis in a reflective manner - definitely helps. “Parts work” builds deep self-awareness and self-compassion as well. Setting intention again and again ad nauseam also works. Try any, try all!
But there’s one exercise that has been particularly impactful for me in clarifying my values. The best way to clarify our values is to go back to the things that give us pure joy and fulfillment. Our values show up in things we simply love to do.
You love doing yoga with goats - great! Perhaps your value is to stay in touch with your body, mind, and the creatures around us. You love meeting new people and thrive in social contexts - wonderful! Perhaps you value learning about the human experience and value showing up as an empathetic listener.
The exercise is pretty simple. Spend 30 minutes, maybe an hour, reflecting on, and capturing your highest highs and lowest lows. Don’t overthink this, don’t question the memories or the moments that come to you immediately. Don’t try to curate what comes up organically. Set a timer and try to stick with focusing on each part - your brain will definitely want you to get distracted, it doesn’t like thinking about such hard questions. Trust me - set a timer and stick to it. Things will start pouring out. At which point… Go with the flow.
