Walk Around The Boulder

Whenever we find the time, I group up with two of my good friends for an outdoor adventure. We always start at 6am sharp, marching our way forward with no direction in mind.

We do this as therapy. A break from everything. We bring bottles of mead to sip on as we cherish the silence, chatting for hours until sunlight starts to fade.

During our conversation, I brought up something I struggle with: Why can’t I internalize positive experience?

I don’t know when this aspect of my character was born, but it feels like it’s been here a while.

It feels like I live life vicariously—I’m a sponge who relies on absorbing the spill-over of emotion from those around me in order for me to feel it myself.

It’s as if my own mind isn’t able to generate these feelings on its own—it depends on others.

It’s as if my life is a constant state of idle—stuck in neutral until someone cranks the lever upward or downward.

I struggled with it while on that very hike. 8 miles in, I was expecting to feel some sense of accomplishment while staring out at our viewpoint. I expected some overwhelming sense of beauty I could not ignore. Some overwhelming sense of positive feeling.

The only thing that occurred is me telling myself that I was supposed to feel these things, rather than feeling them. It was a lame predicament.

I am always one step removed. Stuck in a state of recognizing I should be feeling something while simultaneously not feeling it.

I struggle with this often.

What is this a result of? Is it the result of some mental philosophy? Is it the result of past drug use? Is it the result of lifestyle habits? What is it?

Nonetheless, there are two ways I can approach this issue:

1. Treat this as a bug that needs to be fixed.

2. Treat this as a feature of myself that needs a build-around.

For a long time I’ve internalized this as an issue with my mind that needs fixing.

With this lens, I’ve determined that serotonin sprout—the one who feels the peace, fulfillment, and happiness of a given event—seems to be broken, and as a result, dopamine sprout has taken over, gearing my mind to over-value working towards something and failing to take my foot off the gas and reflect on any of the accomplishments I may be making.

Unsurprisingly, there is consequence for lingering too long as dopamine sprout.

One of the damning consequences of this takes place on my memory. My mind—being stuck forward-facing—has diminished my willingness to remember things. Why remember when I’m always pushing forward?

My failed attempts to feel anything while staring at my accomplishments have pushed away any reason to remember them at all. The absence of feeling accomplishment tells my brain that the only satisfaction can be found forward-facing. Therefore, by nature, this discounting of the past manifests itself as less memory formation. My subconscious believes it all to be useless information, and therefore makes no effort to hold onto it.

Memories exist for a multitude of reasons. To avoid pain, mainly, though memories also exist as storage units full of laughter, inspiration, and other positive emotions. For nostalgia. For learning. For a tool we use to remember who we are or who we once were.

But if you’re unable to reap the positive benefit of memory, why remember?

Why remember when I can face forward? The next blog. The next date. The next hangout. The next game.

Will you ever stop to reflect on what you just did? To give the past another chance?

I’ve treated this as a problem that needs fixing and have come up short.

I’ve been frustrated at my inability to find a solution for this problem, but am I looking at it wrong? Is this something that needs fixing? Or is this is a permanent feature of my mind that I must find a way to be happy in spite of?

As a reminder to myself, there are multiple ways to approach this.

I’m starting to recognize that the reason I’ve struggled with this for so long is because I’ve viewed it as a problem that demands fixing.

When I internalize it as a problem, therein follows my inclination to fix it. Therein lies a frustration when it doesn’t get fixed. Therein lies the resentment that grows towards yourself for carrying this unsolved issue.

But like I mentioned before, there’s another way of looking at it: A feature of my person, not a bug that needs fixing.

Let’s reframe this issue a bit.

I am an emotional sponge that depends on the positive experience of those around me to feel that positive experience myself.

I can sit here fuming that I’m reliant on others to experience these emotions, but does that serve to help me? I don’t think so.

A person with a neurodivergence should not spend their entire life trying to cure their divergence, but instead build a life that allows them to thrive in spite of it.

A person with autism should not cure their autism, but rather come to peace with the fact they have it and find a way to orient their life around it to find fulfillment.

A person diagnosed with a terminal illness may be better off reaching a place of acceptance about their disease and mortality rather than spending the rest of their days trying to cure themselves.

A person in a relationship may be better off learning to accept their partner’s weird quirks rather than trying to fix them.

Sometimes “fixing” does not demand change, but instead a workaround.

And look, there’s beauty to be had when we take on this frame of mind. Sometimes when we develop a build-around, a new beauty emerges that’s greater than the sum of it’s parts.

Look at this house, for instance. A gorgeous home designed from scratch by an architect named Christian Waassmann.

“Some might have found themselves between a rock and a hard place after finding a prehistoric glacial erratic in the middle of their land, but for architect Christian Wassmann, it was just what he was looking for. The boulder became the central feature of Wassmann’s design and is always present in his family’s impressive home–the perfect example of how humans and nature can coexist as one.”

To many architects, this boulder would have been a construction nightmare. How do we get rid of this boulder? How do we destroy it, clean it up, then transport it down?

It’s easy to see the boulders in our mind as things that need to be crushed, but it takes a bit of wisdom to recognize that not all boulders need crushing. Some of them can exist as features of you—that when built around—express a beauty we couldn’t have known otherwise.

So, after reframing this, what are some build arounds I can make to find peace with my flaw?

If I rely on other people’s emotion, I must make sure I cultivate my friendships properly, ensuring that I’m doing my part to be a good friend. To be alone is to be deprived of that positive emotion.

That’s it, the workaround—continue to put effort into building intimate friendships rather than bash my head against the wall looking for emotions I can’t cultivate myself.

One thing to note is that every human has their immovable boulders. This is not exclusive to you. Taking the liberty to ask these questions about your friends can prove valuable too.

Recognizing the boulders of others can turn someone’s annoying behavior you see no fix for into something you work around. Maybe you limit how often you see them. Maybe you talk with them a little bit differently than everyone else.

Doing so can open yourself up to friendships you didn’t think were possible to keep, all by finding a workaround rather than a solution.

There is a time and place to fix things and there is a time and place to build around things. One is not better than the other, but if you find yourself at war trying to fix something within yourself or others, remember: Not all things need fixing. Sometimes the solution is best found in building a multi-million dollar mansion in upstate New York, right?

It starts with an unconditional acceptance of our own boulders, trailed by a workaround to shift it from a burden to a beauty.

Not everything needs fixing. It’s always more nuanced.

Now go analyze your boulders.

Til next time,

sprout 🌱

_(┐「ε:)_🤍🌱

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