The 3 delusions of becoming (and how to avoid them).

Wake-Up Call #22

View from this week’s writing perch in Lisbon, Portugal

There’s a lot of talk in the world of personal growth and spirituality about the process of becoming.

Who do you want to become?

What kind of person do you want to be?

What kind of life do you want to live?

There’s nothing wrong with thinking about how you want to show up and feel down the road. How you want your sense of self and your world to unfold. Whether through intentional act, allowing, or some organic blend.

We love to believe we have agency in the shape our evolving identities and lives take.

To a certain extent we do.

My own 2x20 project, which I shared last week, is built upon the notion that the future is not entirely an act of hope and faith.

That said, the way we often seek to create that future—to become—can be fraught.

Enter the 3 delusions of becoming.

1. Elevating control over serendipity.

It’s tempting, once we realize we have some level of choice in how we live and grow, to believe we can entirely control it.

If I can decide X, then do Y, the outcome will be Z. For certain very simple, short-term, “me-focused” aspects of life, that can work. If I brush and floss daily, safe bet, I’ll have better dental health (and breath) both today, and long-term. Winning.

But, once we move beyond simple acts, short timeframes, and experiences that involve only us, when we bring in more of the truth of interaction—with people and our environment—control is more an illusion than anything else. Even if we could lock down what we think and do on an individual level, we have limited ability to do the same when it come to those around us, or the litany of micro and macro elements of the world we inhabit, and that, in turn, inhabits us.

Truth is, we spend our lives in a divine pinball game.

Someone else pulls the lever that rockets us into the madness, then we stand, fingers on the flipper buttons, trying to make magic happen, enjoy ourselves, and play for as long as possible, while bumping up against, ricocheting and bouncing off of all manner of doodads, bands, bumpers, divots, and chutes.

Now, imagine a thousand other balls, each representing another person, all in the same game, fighting for control over the flippers. This is the full, glorious catastrophic reality of life. We exist in an ever-changing calamity of circumstances, places, and people, all led by their own aspirations, senses of taste and identity, needs and desires, relational styles, and quests to not just stay alive, but rack up points and go for a new high. Much as we might believe (and actually do) control some aspects of our own play, trying to lock down the rest is a fool’s game. A fast track to tilt.

Control, especially at scale, is an illusion. Fighting against this, trying to manufacture a level of certainty that can never be found, is an exercise in futility. The more we seek control, the more we build our lives around something that can never be had, the more we suffer. By our own hands.

But, there’s something else.

We don’t actually want to control every aspect of our lives, present or future.

Life’s greatest moments invariably unfold in the wake of the unknown.

Sure, some of what can become the scariest moments of life are the things we didn’t see coming, then, once apparent, we don’t want. What Bruce Feiler calls “life-quakes” that shake and change us. Illness or injury, loss of a loved one, getting fired. We’d love to do whatever we can to avoid them. To control or, at least, minimize the likelihood of their arrival. Sometimes we can, other times we can’t. But, the unforseeable and uncontrollable part of life isn’t all about the bad stuff.

When we infect the process of becoming with too much control, beyond the inviting the futility of trying to live into an impossible ideal, we unwittingly crowd out the space needed for a depth and volume of goodness that can and will only manifest when we loosen our hold on the reigns of certainty.

So much of what gives life meaning and joy and aliveness is about what happens when we surrender, and let predictability yield to serendipity.

When allow life, and our own sense of self, to unfold in ways we never could have anticipated. In ways that lead to enduring love, laughter, adventure, growth, creative expression, unbridled moments or seasons of abject joy, connection, and presence.

Still, that’s not the only downside to a control-driven, relentless attempt to become.

2. Living in the friction of push, rather than the lushness of pull.

I tend to see life as a blend of impulses to think, feel, and do. These lead to experiences, relationships, and stories that define not only the moments, but seasons and, eventually, the narrative arc of our lives.

Our impulses can be loosely divided into push and pull.

The push is about force, will. These are the impulses that lead us to want to make things happen, often without regard to what our lives want for us. We may make them happen, and get what we want, but the journey requires constant aggression.

Will this approach help you check boxes on the list of items that seemingly represent a life well-lived? Maybe. Still, it’s a brutally hard way to live. Everything is you against something or someone else. It’s just fucking exhausting.

Living in the push annihilates ease.

Do we sometimes need to step into that mode?

Sure. But, to live there? Nope.

Then, there’s the other side. The pull impulses.

These are the ones that often start as whispers, curiosities. They speak to us, nudge us toward certain experiences, activities, and relationships in ways we can’t easily explain. We step into them for no other reason than the way they make us feel. Sometimes they even lead us to pay for the opportunity to do things others get paid to do.

The more we say yes, the louder the whispers become. Yeses beget bigger yeses. Growing into calls.

We give more energy to these things, because the very act of doing them nourishes us. We are working, exerting effort, but in a way that feels organic, intrinsically enlivening. We are pulled into them, riding ever deeper into the slipstream of fully aligned and expressed essence.

Push, and pull. These are the two major undercurrents of becoming.

The process is never purely about one or the other. It’s always a blend. But the more we can lean in the direction of pull, rather than push, the more ease and joy the experience delivers.

Fiercely attaching to the push of what we want ourselves and our lives to become, rather than listening to the pull of what our lives call us to be, leads to friction and suffering, rather than ease and joy.

Which brings us to the last delusion of becoming…

3. Forsaking the present in the name of shaping the future.

Much of the headspace we allocate to our lives exists in the future, and the past. We linger, regret and rehash what is now unchangeable, and fret about a someday that does not yet exist.

Learn from the past, fix what’s fixable, build wisdom to sidestep avoidable mistakes as you plan for, then bring into being, your vision of the what’s next. All well and good.

Except, for most people, this spin-cycle leaves no space to just be. Here and now. To see what’s within you, beside you, and all around you. This moment, And, this. And, this.

To savor. Revel. Unfold. Relate. Love. See. Taste. Hear. Feel. Now.

End of the day, that’s all we really have.

Truth is…

The quest to become is littered with the remains of those who missed the grace in being.

Don’t just become. Be.

With a whole lotta love & gratitude,

Jonathan

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Wake-Up Call #22

Bring some vision of what you want to become to mind.

Now, ask, what part of that can you experience even the slightest taste of today? What part of this is within your control, even in the smallest, most immediate way?

Maybe you want to become kinder. How can you simply be kind, and savor how that shapes your interactions today?

Maybe you want to be fitter? How can you take a simple action that not only moves you toward it, but lets you experience even a taste of the feeling of being someone who moves their body today?

Maybe you want to become a writer? How might you write a sentence today that makes you smile, knowing you’d have written the same words so much differently a decade from now?

And, how can you hold it all lightly, even the tiny steps, to allow for growth and serendipity to enter and potentially change both the moment, and how it might shape you and your world down the road?

Noodle on it, feel into it, journal if that’s your way. Act.

Then, if you’re inclined, share in the comments.