I’ve been a bit distracted lately. More active, less mindful.
Sometimes I want to do everything and I forget to do nothing. Even in my extremely privileged position it can be difficult to find the time to allocate to all the things I wish to do.
I let a few good habits slip while back home visiting family, and now I’m forced to compensate.
So what does a man do when he is running low on mindful-levels? A bit of yin yoga.
I came to get a light stretch and a peaceful escape from screens, maybe some of that music that goes oowwwwaahhhhhh, you know the stuff?
In an unfortunate turn of reasonably expected events, the middle-aged woman who hosted the class was very excited to use her mat as an altar.
With my body contorted in angles it did not wish to be in, I was told the location of Mercury and the threat of radiation in my wifi.
My dream of peace was gone and my fact-checking brain was back. Why does my participation automatically imply I would align with such things?
Every time I successfully focussed on my breath, another false fact would be softly spoken and my brain would start ticking. How many people have heard and believed these things? The largest organ in the body is the SKIN!!! Not the ‘connective tissues’!!!!
This is actually something that gets under my largest organ frequently. This assumption of someone’s entire being based on what they say or where they are.
There is something evolutionary in wanting to understand someone entirely. The desire to be able to ‘know someone’ just from looking in their eye.
Malcolm Gladwell in his book Talking to Strangers highlights that bail judges think they’re great judges of character. A team of researchers made an algorithm that performed significantly better than the judges.
25% less crime would be committed if we just used data instead of intuition.
Even with all the information about someone we have no fucking idea what we’re talking about, but that doesn’t stop us from being confident with almost no information.
The other day I had a brief interaction with an Aussie guy who immediately presumed that I hated immigrants because I no longer lived in Australia, like he did.
I introduced a friend to a girl saying he was once a surf instructor and the girl immediately started accusing him of being a cheater. She had never met him but had a bad experience in the past… and a fair few beers.
The issue of stereotyping people is well known, but that is not why I was annoyed at the yoga teacher. I am guilty of stereotyping her myself.
My issue is that we were all in a shared space, regardless of our interests, and she made it about why she was there.
There are people who spend their entire lives not being their authentic selves because they don’t believe they fit fully into one box.
Men who would love to learn pottery but feel it is too feminine, women who want to do power-lifting but don’t want to stop getting their nails painted.
Shared space is sacred and we fucking ruin it when we focus on what brought us there instead of the shared nature of the space.
I know some successful people who hold opinions that I believe to be absolutely fucking mental but it doesn’t stop me from enjoying a game of tennis with them.
A few times I’ve clicked on a Twitter profile that was complimenting my work only to realise that I have very few things in common with them.
I might attend a yoga class because my girlfriend made me, you might be there because Jupiter was primed. Who cares, let’s get this fucking cat-cow.
What leads us to a certain place doesn’t matter. It is our ability to co-exist with strangers in a strange world that makes life worth living.
If we cannot co-exist in a room we all want to be in then there is no point trying to talk to people in the wild.
This is why the yoga teacher pissed me off. She presumed everyone in the room was there for chakra-related reasons. Everyone was actually there for yoga-related reasons. What brought her to teach was not what brought her students to learn.
We are in the middle of a loneliness epidemic. Shared spaces are dying. It is more important than ever before to appreciate the beauty of coming together and caring about whatever the fuck it is you care about.
Your family is filled with people you wouldn’t hang out with. The supporters of your favourite team probably don’t agree with you on much, but when you’re at the game you are family.
You are there for one reason and the millions of smaller reasons that collectively brought everyone there don’t matter.
Tribalism can be beautiful if you forget about the enemy tribes. If you concentrate on community and family and shared ritual. This is what my yoga instructor robbed me of.
I wanted to listen to some peaceful music and hit that downward facing dog with my new middle-aged homies. I always strive to find common ground in a room full of people who I would hate if I saw their Twitter feed.
Social media wants to push us towards known categories because it makes us an easier product. We may not be able to fight the algorithms but when we have the privilege to share a room with our fellow man, or middle-aged woman, we must appreciate what brought us all together.
Even if you are on opposite sides of the room, you can understand that passion and belief are shared even when they are spent in opposing directions.
Seek shared spaces with people you don’t share opinions with.
There is no us and them, there is only a fucked up world filled with complex people doing their best.
