The Wave You Cannot Control
La ola que no puedes controlar
A student shares the struggle of trying to fix a perceived problem with their child, and the teacher explores how letting go of the conviction that we know leads to a more responsive, balanced way of living.
The Wave You Cannot Control
A student shares the struggle of trying to fix a perceived problem with their child, and the teacher explores how letting go of the conviction that we know leads to a more responsive, balanced way of living.
I resonate with so much of what everyone shares in this group. Although sometimes I'm very quiet for long periods, I find a lot of value in what others bring, and I get a lot out of it.
I wanted to share some things that have been happening for me recently. Some of you might remember me sharing about my son a long time ago. A lot of what the teacher points to for all of us in our different worlds and concerns keeps coming back to me. There's this recurring theme: for me, there's this problem, and I have to solve this problem. The illusion that I know what the problem is. I'm going to do all this research, I'm going to fix this problem, and after it's fixed, I'm going to arrive at where I need to be.
It took me so long to learn that maybe there is no problem. Maybe my idea that it's a problem is the problem. And it's just so humbling to see that I'm creating so much chaos in my own life.
What comes up for me is that story about the farmer and the horse.
Yes. It's a Zen story. You can tell it in different ways to make the point. The farmer has a son and a horse. The son falls off the horse and breaks his leg. The townspeople say, "Oh my God, your son broke his leg, how unfortunate!" And the farmer says, "Whether this is good or bad, I don't know."
Then the kingdom goes to war and all the young men are conscripted, but because the son's leg is broken, he doesn't go. Everyone says, "You're so lucky your son doesn't have to go to war!" And again, the farmer says, "Whether this is good or bad, I don't know." Then because the son didn't go to war, something else happens, and there's this constant reframing: what seems so good balances out, and at every point the farmer says, "Whether this is good or bad, I don't know."
Yes. That idea of me knowing, but in reality I don't know. I feel like my son is such a unique individual and doesn't really fit within the norm of what a lot of other families experience. It's been so hard trying to figure out how to be a good parent for him. I spent hours researching on the internet, thinking I was going to be the best parent. But it was really hard to just follow his lead and arrive at a place of, "Maybe I don't know. Maybe there is no problem. Maybe this is exactly what he needs, and he knows what he needs."
I kept trying to hammer down on activities, thinking we needed to spend more time at home, get used to routines, focus on this or that. It was all me trying to problem-solve and figure things out. What I actually needed was to let all of that go, reach out to people, try different parenting groups. Things would pop up in my email. I drove halfway across the city to listen to people talk about these special kids. It took me so long to realize I can't do this alone and that I need to be curious and talk to others.
I reached a point where I said, "This is not working. I have to try something different." And that's helped me so much. I'm learning so much. When you talk about being in a place of curiosity rather than knowing...
Knowing is the end of curiosity
Knowing is the end of curiosity. And it's also the beginning of madness, because we really don't know.
I would get so neurotic. "Okay, we need to try this, this, this, this." It took so much of me just to say, "Stop. I need to stop."
What you're describing points to a better way: not knowing whether anything is good or bad. You still have to act and make decisions, but you do so from a place of exploring, going with your deepest insight in the moment, while knowing that you don't know.
The moment you are convinced you know, humans will start acting more poorly. Because that knowing only comes from believing something we cannot really verify as true.
I would look for things to validate my ideas.
Of course. That's going to be theories, people, all kinds of confirmation bias and validation. That's how humanity operates. People don't want to be around those who show them how mistaken they are and how false their beliefs are. It's not fun. We open up to that only when things really stop working. That's the humility you mentioned: "I don't know what I'm doing. This is not working."
And so just being curious, trying new things, and talking to different people has completely turned things around for me.
That's great.
So now I have this other idea of what I should be doing.
The risk of new certainty
Yes. Just remember that you have a tendency to become convinced something is a problem, and that you can and will have to solve it, and then you convince yourself of a solution. If you see that pattern, then you can hold things differently: "Whether this is good or bad, I don't know. But I'm interested in this direction. I have a feeling it might be better this way, but I don't know. So I explore, I'm open to seeing what happens, and I'm open to being wrong."
There's a risk in dismantling all this conviction of knowing. The risk is becoming paralyzed and overwhelmed, where we stop acting, stop moving, stop exploring. So the combination is: acting, moving, and exploring, while knowing that we don't know.
If I were going to write something on a piece of paper and put it on my mirror, it would be: "I don't know."
In fact, the wisest people in every field instinctively operate this way. The greatest scientists operate this way. They don't operate from knowing. They learn and they're curious, but they operate from seeing what potentially is false, looking at what could be false, and trying to understand more deeply.
Einstein's breakthroughs came because, at a very young age, he could see the unexamined beliefs embedded in the physics of his time, assumptions that were purely unsubstantiated. All he had to do was say, "What if I assume these are false? What would be a better explanation for the whole thing if, instead of building upon this assumption, I remove it and import the insights of a deeper understanding of reality?"
I'm speaking about time and space, which until then were believed to be absolutely real and fundamentally separate. There was space as an absolute reality, and then time operating on things within it, both assumed to be absolute no matter where you are. He saw the assumptions: what if time isn't absolute? What if space isn't absolute? What if they're not separate? And from that came the theory of relativity and all the breakthroughs of the last hundred years of physics.
He then ran into beliefs he himself held, and that's where he stopped innovating. My point is: he innovated because he knew he did not know something which others around him thought they did know. They believed, and he saw that it was just an assumption.
So: stay curious. Act from a place of "I don't know." And notice when you're looking for validation of your theories.
Yes. From that perspective you can have a balanced approach. You can notice you're looking for validation or evidence and say, "Well, there's information that points in this direction. Let's try this out." But remain open to it not working, because you don't know. Even the sense that a thing is a problem, you can't be sure of. But you might have a sense that something is causing unnecessary struggle. So you see if you can resolve or improve it in another way, and you explore that.
Because otherwise, what's really happening is that we're projecting our own beliefs and ideas, what we need, and it's not really in relationship with the reality of a partner or a child. As a parent, you need to make calls, take risks, and act. You need to listen to them. But if you do it from a place of "I know what the problems are, how to solve them, and it's all up to me," that's going to be less effective than operating in reality, which is: I don't know. I don't even know if there's a problem. I don't know what to do, but I'm going to try this or that.
Surfing the wave
That openness is more aligned with reality. Imagine a surfer who goes into the ocean, waits for a wave, and says, "I'm always going to go left and push on my right foot, and I'm going to do that over and over again, and that's going to work." It's just not going to work. But if a surfer goes into the ocean and moves with the feel of the wave, taking time to respond to what's happening intuitively and with attention, that surfer is going to stay vertical much longer.
Responding to the present.
Exactly. And remaining open. Because what normally happens is the wave is going in a certain direction, and you're telling yourself it's going the other way. You're convinced, ignoring the fact that it's right in front of you. That misinterpretation, that projection of beliefs onto reality: "I have to do it this way for it to be this way." What we're actually trying to do is make the wave go the way we want so we can be right about it always going left.
Contrast that with: I'm surfing this wave, I'm attentive, the wave is the present moment. I'm attentive to what's happening, in complete openness and sensitivity, without any preconceived ideas of how I need to move. I'm responding to whatever is happening, and the more I do this, the wiser I appear to be. But it's not that I'm wise because I always know which way to put my foot. It's because I'm sensitive to the moment and in balance. It's not a knowing from thought, from beliefs.
Operating from beliefs is such a trap.
Yes. We're on the wave, and first of all we're saying, "This wave shouldn't be here, and I'm going to make it go away," instead of, "How do I surf this and have fun?"
There's a massive difference. Same ocean, same waves, two people. One is thrown in there, trying to get on the board, trying to make the wave go away, trying to force it to go the preferred direction. The other is just figuring out the shape of the wave, attentive, open, navigating it. One is having a blast. The other is getting tortured. It's literally like that.
If you then study what is actually happening in either of these two, that's when we talk about identification and the actual mechanism creating the belief system that produces all that suffering and struggle. But the effect is that difference.
It's like I'm the one struggling and thinking the other person is crazy, while believing I'm the sane one.
Exactly. You're the person struggling with the wave, you look at the surfer having a good time, and you think, "That seems like a better option." That recognition is actually a rare thing.
Thank you. I learn so much every time.
You're very welcome. I'm learning all the time too. That makes two of us.
So much for me to learn, because I don't know.