The ability to recognize patterns may arguably be the best explanation of “consciousness” we have. Without a pattern, there's chaos. Whether we can mathematically account for that pattern, or superimpose the very idea of “pattern” onto the chaos, is what's at the edge of scientific investigation. We know the very act of observing photons denotes a pattern that otherwise looks like a probability wave. We have ancient philosophers developing the language of how to describe the “form” or what's “analogous” in our experience. It's such a fundamental feeling and discussion that we have lost, at least colloquially, the history of our species exploring the patterns that seem to run through, if not control, our lives. We have myths we're still flocking to movie theaters to watch on repeat, but how many liken their motivations or actions in the world to that of The Avengers?
A lot of my confidence is derived from speaking to patterns. When my world gets too small, I look for historical trends. When my effort feels lacking, I describe my story over months or years. I can see trends in my behavior that have little to do with many of my individual days. I hunt for free items on facebook. I retrieve free items, maybe, once or twice a month on average, which means I own dozens of free things. It's a good habit, or type of pattern to have, when you're trying to save money, believe in conservation, and wish to keep practicing the search for opportunities. It's a pattern that, unmitigated, can lead to hoarding, anxiety about “missing out,” and compulsive scrolling.
The patterns that manifest for all to see, one imagines, are the easiest to recognize. We know people who are reliably grumpy or dopey or even oddly satisfied. Your continued deference to capitalism creates a pattern around “worker” or “responsibility.” It's “obvious” the patterns you need to fall into in order to account for your “needs.” You may fall into relationship patterns that are informed by what you witnessed between your parents or what was imprinted on you from romantic stories. You eat certain things consistently, greet people with familiar phrases, seek enjoyment or distraction from a handful of activities. You jostle the fairly rigid patterns of your life to keep things mildly interesting, and you can follow them until the day you die.
For as many patterns as we may follow, it's psychologically antagonizing to know we're still at the mercy of chaos. A car can crash into you. A looming disease is working its way to a dreaded doctor's visit. Natural disasters take advantage of our collective indifference and inability to be accountable. Our underlying psychology sucker punches our hopes and dreams. What a cruel twist of fate that you might do something to elevate the experience of millions, but you'll attune to the anonymous negative commentary. You're practically required to ignore 99.9% of existence outside of your particular brain and its pattern-seeking behavior to even function, however haphazardly. You're literally ignoring the things your brain is doing to keep you alive in order to live! Fun!
My understanding of patterns is how I tend to escape “guilt.” I look at whether things I do constitute a consistent shit thing about me, or an incidental example drawn out from a series of other patterns. Deliberately moving away from a semantics discussion regarding guilt or shame, I'm more interested in what it takes to recognize patterns of negative emotion and how that underpins our behavior. For me, that recognition is built from writing. I don't just happen upon epiphany after epiphany and change accordingly. I need to find words. I need to take root. I need to explore the infinite probabilities and slowly coalesce. I need to find the ironic indirect direction that doesn't fill me with woe and unsavory contradictions.
As such, it's often non-verbal. I write so I don't have to clench or hate or interrupt my flow. I'm writing now because I woke up with an agenda. I want to carry on with that agenda without getting distracted more than I have to. I've decided today is going to be a “productive” day, and that means from errands to business organization, I need the kind of focus that only happens when I'm done brain-speaking. I've watched my insane amount of TV. I've made my lists. I'll get to places while they are open. I've decided the coffee shop I'm going to sit in and focus. I know I'll use the library as a back-up when the coffee shop no longer feels tenable.
Compelling reading, right? But I have to do it. I have to say it, now. I have to make it real in a parallel way. I have to speak to the effort that's going to make it so I can succeed across the different dimensions of my being. I have to make whatever conscious agent that sees me also tend to think of me in the terms I'm trying to lay out. The hypnosis of totalitarians isn't unfamiliar or hard to understand. Having a “totalizing” experience is a default state either deliberately attended to or ever-hijacked. You have to keep bringing yourself back to what you want and letting your auto-ignore work for instead of against you.
I learned how to let my patterns want things in ways that were better for me. I stopped pairing my sense of overwhelmed exhaustion to a signal that I was “good” or “better.” Plenty of people are killing themselves for nothing more than misguided ego or misunderstood notions of “help.” I want my contributions to be timeless. I want to tap into patterns at the deepest level of reality. I want what I mean about that sentiment to be felt in a way that no language could undermine the work it does consciously or unconsciously. That means “being” a certain kind of person, now, and listening to myself about the next move that will speak to those deepest desires.
Goals are no small endeavor. Creating one, however small, is an act of “God.” It's a conscious rearranging of the infinite sea of “potential.” Does the goal push your behavior to change? Does the goal enable goals that take even more organization and attention? Does the goal liberate you from the draw of everything poised to pull you away from its pursuit? Is the goal explicit enough to move your fingers yet fluid enough to account for the many small acts that can service it?
I'm so distractable. That is, my attention isn't mine until it is. I'm getting pulled constantly. We try to diagnose this and medicate it. We build media that caricatures the consequences of having no direction or grasp. I'm building a relationship to how my attention moves. I'm trying to not fight it. I'm trying to accept what's at the edge of my jaw being clenched or not. I know that next level I wish to be on that is not ambivalent about where I go or how I manifest. I want all of the forces otherwise to flow through too. I want the shroom trip without the shrooms. I want it because it's not enough to intellectually speak to all of the relative conclusions. I want it because nothing speaks like a feeling, and I can see how what I make people feel manifests in the world. It manifests in a way that nothing I ever speak to does.
So, if the words themselves are less than how I say them, I say them “like me.” My style is “relaxed,” and I refrain from biting back until you've damn near chewed through my arm. I write, and reread, and piece together how I think I want to work and what I think is fair much slower. It's not because I'm not anxious or not able or unwilling to “do more.” It's because it has to feel right now and forever. If I build all of the baggage of my heightened states into what I do, it'll come back around. If I can't make peace with everything I won't accomplish, with everything that needs to be ignored even after it's been brought to my attention, I'll keep missing everything I have that's worth just as much as everything I want or could create. I'm just setting an example more than bearing an unrealistic burden to an ever-obscure standard. Truly, what do I really recognize when I call Nietzsche “a real mother fucker?”
If you have a notion that your being is weighed on some cosmic scale of justice or righteousness, I assure you, you're the only one who can determine that such a scale should exist at all, let alone which way it leans. The questions at the heart of your being, your motivations, your movement, will always be obscure, but to be obscure is vastly different from being a liar. To “practically capitulate” or sublimate your being to the conditions as best you understand them is to occupy an entirely different world from the one where you're striving to live in service to what transcends your limitations. Keep fighting, or flowing, or whatever you need to do to keep you oriented towards whatever sense and order you can recognize. Here's to recognizing your example.
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