Episode 10
Not Everything All at Once
It's important to have a small space, and a place where time stops for a moment. Whether that's a Sabbath or whether that's a room where you close the door and there are no clocks.
In "The Sabbath World," Judith Shulevitz talks about the way that time became standardized over time; it didn't become standardized right away, it became standardized in chunks and bits, until finally, we had a global sense of time. And with that global sense of time came a global sense of immediacy, a global sense of something happening everywhere all the time at once. And with that sense of everything happening everywhere all at once comes this sense of overwhelm. How much time can you let go of, to find the rhythm, to find the space where you can just be yourself?
The Instagram reel I mention is here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CczR7bljUNQ/
Judith Shulevitz's book "The Sabbath World" may be found at this link.
Transcript
I was thinking about this already. But then
Leela Sinha:this morning, in this moment of, what I have set aside as
Leela Sinha:vacation, this thing happened. I opened a library book, a
Leela Sinha:physical paper library book, that I've been working my way
Leela Sinha:through in a kind of eccentric, inconsistent way. It's called
Leela Sinha:the Sabbath World. And the author's name is Shulevitz. And
Leela Sinha:in this book, she's talking about this kind of contrast
Leela Sinha:between the modern world and the very concept, the very idea of a
Leela Sinha:Sabbath, of a set aside, non working time, that's not just
Leela Sinha:individual but communal. And as part of her work around this, as
Leela Sinha:part of her conversation around this, she talks about the way
Leela Sinha:that time became standardized over time, it didn't, it didn't
Leela Sinha:become standardized right away, it became standardized in chunks
Leela Sinha:and bits, until finally, we had a global sense of time. And with
Leela Sinha:that global sense of time came a global sense of immediacy, a
Leela Sinha:global sense of something happening everywhere all the
Leela Sinha:time at once. And with that sense of everything happening
Leela Sinha:everywhere at once comes this sense of overwhelm, which is
Leela Sinha:what I was just saying, yesterday. I made an Instagram
Leela Sinha:reel. And I talked about how I need my I need my information in
Leela Sinha:buckets. And I was also talking to a client. And I was saying, I
Leela Sinha:don't think we need as much completeness as we expect
Leela Sinha:ourselves to have. I think, this internet, global reach, where we
Leela Sinha:have access to pretty much everything that has been written
Leela Sinha:down, and everything that has been spoken into a microphone or
Leela Sinha:recorded in some way. And access to so many people and so many
Leela Sinha:experts in so many opinions and so many ideas, I think we have
Leela Sinha:this idea that we have to first go and collect all of the
Leela Sinha:information, like we're all PhD students of everything. And
Leela Sinha:while I think that there are times and places where it's
Leela Sinha:useful to have as much information as humanly possible,
Leela Sinha:I'm not sure that this much information about everything is
Leela Sinha:humanly possible. In fact, I think it is not. It's okay to
Leela Sinha:read three or four opinions and then formulate your own and then
Leela Sinha:share it with five or six people. And that's the end of
Leela Sinha:it. It's okay to have human scale interactions, not just
Leela Sinha:with other people, but with data, with information. With
Leela Sinha:transformative experiences. We don't have to have all of the
Leela Sinha:peak optimized things happening all at once. It's okay to
Leela Sinha:operate on a human scale. And in fact, it may be better if we
Leela Sinha:operate on a human scale, because when we try to operate
Leela Sinha:on anything that isn't a human scale, often we amplify our
Leela Sinha:mistakes before we know that they're happening. If I say an
Leela Sinha:unkind or unwise thing to one person, sitting at a cafe table,
Leela Sinha:or over breakfast, that unkind thing reaches that one person
Leela Sinha:and that one person, if they are a kind and wise member of my
Leela Sinha:community may reflect back to me that I have said, an unkind
Leela Sinha:thing. And then that unkind thing goes no further, it has no
Leela Sinha:larger impact than that. I said this to this person, it will
Leela Sinha:ripple outward for that person in some way it may ripple into
Leela Sinha:our relationship. But it's not everywhere, all at once with
Leela Sinha:that mistake magnified. I have an opportunity to correct myself
Leela Sinha:in small community, I have an opportunity to grow unobserved,
Leela Sinha:almost unobserved, I have an opportunity to become, on a
Leela Sinha:human scale, in a human way, at a human pace. Broadcast is a
Leela Sinha:very complicated way to learn about yourself. And right now,
Leela Sinha:social media, the internet, everything, is kind of forcing
Leela Sinha:us into that. But we have choices. In most cases, we have
Leela Sinha:choices. We don't have to allow that to be the thing. We don't
Leela Sinha:have to allow that to be the model. In some ways, we're all
Leela Sinha:prototyping all the time. We're prototyping ourselves, we're
Leela Sinha:exploring ourselves. It's not... it's like those sketches that an
Leela Sinha:artist does before they decide how they're gonna do the big
Leela Sinha:painting, they just kind of, you know, put little sketches in the
Leela Sinha:corners of their notebooks, they experiment with poses, they
Leela Sinha:experiment with lighting, they experiment with color palettes
Leela Sinha:that don't actually have any figure in them. They're just
Leela Sinha:trying to get the skin color, right, or the color of the
Leela Sinha:light, right, or those flowers in the background, or this
Leela Sinha:really weird color of yellow, and they can't figure out how to
Leela Sinha:make it. So they're doing all these test swatches and test
Leela Sinha:sketches and experiments, how will this work? How, what if I
Leela Sinha:put this body three inches to the left? What will that do for
Leela Sinha:the composition? And we're doing that with ourselves, too: test
Leela Sinha:sketching. We say something out loud to three friends. And they
Leela Sinha:reflect back to us what that looks like, when you stand back
Leela Sinha:from the easel. Then we can make adjustments before we're
Leela Sinha:invested in hundreds of thousands of dollars of
Leela Sinha:materials and time and energy and, and before our soul is
Leela Sinha:really invested in that thing so deeply. We just test it. And
Leela Sinha:that's why community is so important. Because when someone
Leela Sinha:test... balloons? When someone test... pilots? When someone
Leela Sinha:tests something in front of a small audience, and you're part
Leela Sinha:of that small audience, you are the place where that thing
Leela Sinha:becomes encouraged or it doesn't, where it grows, or it
Leela Sinha:doesn't, where it emerges or doesn't. And you are part of the
Leela Sinha:possibility that it could emerge in a different way that there's
Leela Sinha:a gem of truth, but there's also a thorn, and we need to work out
Leela Sinha:how to have less thorn and more gem, or just less thorn, maybe
Leela Sinha:the gem is perfect as it is. Or maybe the thorn is important,
Leela Sinha:maybe it needs two thorns. But that's what we do in community,
Leela Sinha:in small community, in unamplified voices in
Leela Sinha:unmagnified spaces. So if I think about this concept of
Leela Sinha:immediacy, of everything everywhere all at once, all the
Leela Sinha:time, it's overwhelming. And if I think about adding my voice to
Leela Sinha:that, that morass, it can be terrifying. What if I do it
Leela Sinha:wrong? What if I get this thing wrong? And it's amplified and
Leela Sinha:magnified? And it does massive amounts of harm? On the other
Leela Sinha:hand, what if I have a really good idea, and I don't share it,
Leela Sinha:because I'm afraid that it's going to do harm? How do we
Leela Sinha:resolve this? We resolve this in small community, we resolve this
Leela Sinha:in intimacy, we resolve this in trusting relationships, I don't
Leela Sinha:expect everyone to have a trust relationship with me. But the
Leela Sinha:people I do have a trust relationship with and who do
Leela Sinha:trust me, those are the people. Those are the people that I rely
Leela Sinha:on. To help me do less harm. I don't expect to do no harm. But
Leela Sinha:those are the people I rely on to help me do less harm, to help
Leela Sinha:me do more good, to figure out which things are advancing just
Leela Sinha:my own curious energy and which things are advancing some larger
Leela Sinha:agenda. Some things aren't interesting beyond the confines
Leela Sinha:of my own head or my own pad of paper; other things, anything is
Leela Sinha:possible. Other things are liberating. Other things are
Leela Sinha:transformative. Other things. Other things have an effect that
Leela Sinha:I have no way of predicting. In which respect, I'm a lot like
Leela Sinha:some of the tech mega giants. I don't think Google predicted
Leela Sinha:where they would be. I don't think Facebook predicted where
Leela Sinha:they would be. I certainly don't think Twitter predicted where
Leela Sinha:they are at this point. But you start with an idea that might be
Leela Sinha:transformative. You start with a thought, you start with a
Leela Sinha:noticing of something, a place where the shoe rubs against
Leela Sinha:everyone's foot. Maybe not everyone, maybe just a lot of
Leela Sinha:feet. And you're like, Hey, I'm pretty sure I can avoid that
Leela Sinha:blistering problem here. Let me see if I stick this moleskin in
Leela Sinha:there, if that helps. Let me see if I can get that rock out of
Leela Sinha:there completely.
Leela Sinha:But to figure this out, and to figure out how to focus, how to
Leela Sinha:how to make it smaller, how to find our communities, our small
Leela Sinha:spaces, where we can test things before we bring them to the
Leela Sinha:arena, before we bring them to the stage, before we bring them
Leela Sinha:to the globe. We have to forget for a moment that everything is
Leela Sinha:happening at once. We have to set down for a moment, the mind
Leela Sinha:blowing, comprehensive immediacy of mutual time. And instead we
Leela Sinha:look at when the sun rose in my window, we look at when the
Leela Sinha:flowers bloomed in my neighborhood. I look at my
Leela Sinha:neighborhood with my people and my neighbors. You look at your
Leela Sinha:neighborhood with your people and your neighbors. There are
Leela Sinha:people beyond our spaces, that's important to know. But we don't
Leela Sinha:start there. We start wrestling with our own group of two or
Leela Sinha:five or twelve. We start wrestling with ourselves, with a
Leela Sinha:book, on a quiet morning.
Leela Sinha:Or when we just can't do the laundry anymore.
Leela Sinha:Or when someone asks us for help. We start the wrestling
Leela Sinha:with ourselves, with our own communities. With our small
Leela Sinha:groups. It's important to have a small space, and a place where
Leela Sinha:time stops for a moment. Whether that's a Sabbath or whether
Leela Sinha:that's a room where you close the door and there are no
Leela Sinha:clocks. I sometimes try to imagine what it would be like to
Leela Sinha:live in a world before motorized transportation. Where everything
Leela Sinha:is circumscribed by the amount of land you can cover by
Leela Sinha:yourself or with the help of another animal. And this is not
Leela Sinha:that different than how much time can you cover
Leela Sinha:by yourself? By the rising and setting of the sun? By the
Leela Sinha:changing of the temperature of the day or of the season? How
Leela Sinha:much time can you let go of, to find the rhythm, to find the
Leela Sinha:space where you can just be yourself? Thanks for tuning in.
