Simple Things/ Lang Kenneth Haynes
Click
Click
A friend of mine said it more eloquently and simply than I am about to. But the idea is basically that no problem is really difficult or insolvable and that we
render problems difficult or insolvable because we have a knack or need to make things as hard as possible. It was difficult for me to totally accept the notion, at
the time it was first presented to me, because I was in the middle of a complicated and tough situation that was made more stressful by an unrealistic timeline.
The quandary, I found myself in, forced me to ask myself the questions, “Who assigned this project a level 10 on the anxiety scale (with level 1 comparable to the
stress one might feel while stretched out on crystalline sand at the edge of turquoise water on a nearly deserted stretch of beach in the Caribbean, and level 10
representing the highest form of discomfort imaginable)?” The second question might be, “Is the anxiety genuinely mine, or did I borrow it from some other
source?” The answers to these questions are self-evident even though the players and situations change with some regularity. The constants, though, are what we
bring to situations, how we interpret them, how we respond to them, and how we try to create some sort of balance between what is expected and what we are
willing to provide.
I’m not a fan of Kevin Costner. He has, I think, managed to parlay minimal talent into a burgeoning career, but I do love one of his lines in the movie
“Dances with Wolves.” In the movie, Costner abandoned his job as a soldier and lived with a Native American tribe that his former army colleagues were ordered
to eliminate which is a euphemism for kill. The soldiers finally found Costner and the tribe he was living with and Costner said something like, “There’s nothing for
you to do here” which was his way of saying that the presence of the soldiers was not needed or warranted and that the best possible course of action would be
inaction rather than carry out the orders that the soldiers were operating under. The soldiers chose to “do” rather than “not do” and the results were predictable.
All this is to say that there are times when a prescribed course of action is precisely what is not called for. There are times when being open to something that
already exists (rather than straining to create something new) is the best thing to do or -as the case may be- not do. Here’s a tiny, recent example: My desktop
computer lost all sound about a week ago. I couldn’t play any music on it. I couldn’t listen to any files. My computer was soundless. Not a huge problem, but an
inconvenience. At first I did the obvious things like checking to see that all the wires were plugged in. No sound. I disconnected and reconnected plugs after
checking to see -to the extent I could- that all the connections were intact. No sound. I put plugs in different receptacles and did a lot of jiggling. No sound.
Please keep in mind that all of these non-fixes took place over a period of several soundless days.
Sleep evaded me last night. I wasn’t consciously worrying about anything but I was simultaneously tired and restless. I rolled out of bed and onto the floor. It
was almost completely black in the bedroom and on the other side of the windows in the Wisconsin winter night. I did some stretching exercises then stood up
with the intention to go downstairs to do something productive like read or write. Then I noticed the red numbers on the clock glaring 2:30 a.m. at me like little
digital eyes, so I went to sleep right there on the floor. But not before the answer to my soundless computer problem was answered. Funny. I wasn’t consciously
thinking about it, but I guess I was relaxed enough to allow the remedy to bubble to the surface. And the remedy was to take the computer mouse and simply
click on the appropriate box to uncheck the volume mute box. That’s precisely what I did when the sun decided to yawn on the morning horizon, and it worked. I
wonder how many other solutions are just patiently waiting to make themselves known while we strain to make things happen while failing to understand that
intense and persistent effort (if it is unnecessary and uncalled for) only contributes to the growing redness and soreness of the cosmic hemorrhoid. It seems that
the trick is to know how to discriminate between the times when effort is required and when it is not. The magic is that the answer to this essential question is
likely to come during a period of “not doing.” I have the luxury of dedicating today to “not doing” and my guess is that I will get a lot done without feeling put
upon or strained. Oops. It happened again. I wrote the next column The Capital City Hues and it did not even remotely resemble work.
render problems difficult or insolvable because we have a knack or need to make things as hard as possible. It was difficult for me to totally accept the notion, at
the time it was first presented to me, because I was in the middle of a complicated and tough situation that was made more stressful by an unrealistic timeline.
The quandary, I found myself in, forced me to ask myself the questions, “Who assigned this project a level 10 on the anxiety scale (with level 1 comparable to the
stress one might feel while stretched out on crystalline sand at the edge of turquoise water on a nearly deserted stretch of beach in the Caribbean, and level 10
representing the highest form of discomfort imaginable)?” The second question might be, “Is the anxiety genuinely mine, or did I borrow it from some other
source?” The answers to these questions are self-evident even though the players and situations change with some regularity. The constants, though, are what we
bring to situations, how we interpret them, how we respond to them, and how we try to create some sort of balance between what is expected and what we are
willing to provide.
I’m not a fan of Kevin Costner. He has, I think, managed to parlay minimal talent into a burgeoning career, but I do love one of his lines in the movie
“Dances with Wolves.” In the movie, Costner abandoned his job as a soldier and lived with a Native American tribe that his former army colleagues were ordered
to eliminate which is a euphemism for kill. The soldiers finally found Costner and the tribe he was living with and Costner said something like, “There’s nothing for
you to do here” which was his way of saying that the presence of the soldiers was not needed or warranted and that the best possible course of action would be
inaction rather than carry out the orders that the soldiers were operating under. The soldiers chose to “do” rather than “not do” and the results were predictable.
All this is to say that there are times when a prescribed course of action is precisely what is not called for. There are times when being open to something that
already exists (rather than straining to create something new) is the best thing to do or -as the case may be- not do. Here’s a tiny, recent example: My desktop
computer lost all sound about a week ago. I couldn’t play any music on it. I couldn’t listen to any files. My computer was soundless. Not a huge problem, but an
inconvenience. At first I did the obvious things like checking to see that all the wires were plugged in. No sound. I disconnected and reconnected plugs after
checking to see -to the extent I could- that all the connections were intact. No sound. I put plugs in different receptacles and did a lot of jiggling. No sound.
Please keep in mind that all of these non-fixes took place over a period of several soundless days.
Sleep evaded me last night. I wasn’t consciously worrying about anything but I was simultaneously tired and restless. I rolled out of bed and onto the floor. It
was almost completely black in the bedroom and on the other side of the windows in the Wisconsin winter night. I did some stretching exercises then stood up
with the intention to go downstairs to do something productive like read or write. Then I noticed the red numbers on the clock glaring 2:30 a.m. at me like little
digital eyes, so I went to sleep right there on the floor. But not before the answer to my soundless computer problem was answered. Funny. I wasn’t consciously
thinking about it, but I guess I was relaxed enough to allow the remedy to bubble to the surface. And the remedy was to take the computer mouse and simply
click on the appropriate box to uncheck the volume mute box. That’s precisely what I did when the sun decided to yawn on the morning horizon, and it worked. I
wonder how many other solutions are just patiently waiting to make themselves known while we strain to make things happen while failing to understand that
intense and persistent effort (if it is unnecessary and uncalled for) only contributes to the growing redness and soreness of the cosmic hemorrhoid. It seems that
the trick is to know how to discriminate between the times when effort is required and when it is not. The magic is that the answer to this essential question is
likely to come during a period of “not doing.” I have the luxury of dedicating today to “not doing” and my guess is that I will get a lot done without feeling put
upon or strained. Oops. It happened again. I wrote the next column The Capital City Hues and it did not even remotely resemble work.