Two Curiosities

I come into work with the plan: Fridays tend to be quieter, so I can start to buckle down and finish entering records to increase the stats. I get into a flow of diligently staying with the experience of doing the task. My focus narrows to what is in front of me. But every so often, I need to stop and answer a question from a co-worker, or engage the trickier aspects of the business. I try to resolve the ambiguous cases, the problems that don’t have a yes or no answer, and the unknown, undiscovered grey areas. I notice the ways in which I stop to reflect and have to open my mind in a certain way, especially when I am faced with new situations. It is not easy to stop when I am anxious to meet the ‘targets’ I assume for myself.

There seem to be two processes involved when I am at work. One is the process of trying to do as much as I can with what I know, trying to accomplish a lot in a little time. The other is a more reflective, often collaborative task where I start to wonder, ‘what do I really know?’  In fact, I learn that what I ‘think’ I know is really just a set of conventions, and it is always possible to explore other questions until I am no longer certain what I do know. And these two processes seem to create different lines of inquiry. I refer to the first process as ‘strategic curiosity’. That is, I am asking the question of ‘how’ I can be more productive and reduce the time to do certain things, as well as maximize the value from the company perspective. The second curiosity is being mindful of my more basic assumptions about life, including my emotions and the purpose of work. One might think of this latter as an ‘ontological curiosity’, because it is open to the question of the value of life and the meaning of experience as it is, not as it is supposed to be. While strategic curiosity assumes that there is a definite goal to pursue and one must align with that goal, ontological curiosity questions that boundaries around any goal, and wonders if fulfilling the goal is truly the goal of work. It is the curiosity of stopping, looking and wondering with a completely fresh mind. And I think this ontological curiosity is always present in the periphery of my experience, waiting to be ‘re-discovered’ again and again.

At work, the more I am involved in a specific task, the better things seem to flow for me.  I start to get into an uninterrupted groove, where I am no longer feeling I am separate from the task itself. Being really unified with the work requires a let-go attitude, and it is hard to sustain over a long period of time. But there is also the different flow that needs to be cultivated. It is the flow of being prepared to stop what I am doing at any time. It is the ability to ask, `what is happening for me at this moment? How am I feeling? What thoughts underlie my actions? Is this constructive for my being as a person? To truly be in flow, I can’t just attach to the pleasant experiences of work or get lost in the easy parts of the job. I also need to prepare to stop or be stopped, since the rhythm of experience consists of these long strides and stops. I need to make space to challenge whether what I am doing is comprehensive and considers the full picture of work life. Otherwise, I could be doing things that only overburden the body and mind.

Each moment is a new beginning. I don’t need to continue from where I was two seconds ago. I can move if I need to move. This is the flow that comes from not confusing the previous moment with the current moment. And I try not to get lost in the endless train of thoughts which often form a pressure in the mind. For example, I might say that today I was giving myself pressure to achieve a lot of things for the sake of increasing quarterly statistics. But a deeper inquiry might lead me to ask, who is being pressured to achieve? Is this pressure so real that it impinges on my whole being? How am I even able to witness this experience if it is impinging on all my whole being?  I think this is ontological because it doesn’t just assume that one is a means to a specific end. When there is a gap between who I think I should be and an awareness of this ‘such’ moment now, I can find room to breathe. I can explore and question whether the idea I have of myself is sustainable or not. It is sometimes a good thing that we are never fully unified with our own ideas. Because ideas regarding what I should do are tentative. They work in some cases, but it is nearly impossible to apply a simple set of rules of principles to all that we do.

But am I suggesting that I should do away with all strategic curiosity? No, I don’t think that one needs to do that, and there are still things to achieve at work. But I think that all strategies need to be seen in the context of a greater ethical life that is based in the mind. For example, if someone pushes himself to the very limits of exhaustion and abusing his own body to achieve a goal, is this really productive?  If I decide to cut corners and do things speedily to achieve statistical results, will this not create more problems down the road? If I cling to my ideas of ‘good work’ and ‘good use of time’ will this not affect my health when I am forced to step aside from my role or do non work-related activities with co-workers? I need to be able to see that the ‘pressure’ comes from specific trains of thoughts. It is not that the outside environment ‘pressures’ me to increase my speed. It is that I get caught up in those thoughts, and this vexation results in the anxiety to avoid feelings of pressure. Instead of accepting the pressure as a feeling that is arising, I link it to trying to eliminate pressure by keeping up with a certain standard.  But standards do not need to become dogmas. They can be adjusted according to a person’s condition. And I can allow for the possibility that the experience will never match what I expect from that experience, because the expectation is only a kind of thought. It is already removed from the present moment. If I contemplate that deeply, I realize that there is a big ‘unknown’ between the expectation and the real unfolding experience. Things often look ‘easier’ in thought than they are in the unfolding present experience. With that in mind, do I need to chain myself to those thoughts?

This discussion seems abstract, but one way I think of this is ontological curiosity deals with the effects of experience on basic being and mind. It is about having a beginner’s mind, resetting back to an original experience of ‘what it is for me now’ rather than always operating from a thought of how it is supposed to be. Without that perspective, I get ensnared in vexations and expectations of how I should think, feel and perform as a person. And sadly, schools don’t teach this fundamental awareness because it is somehow taken for granted that one experiences one’s own being and nature. Quite often, such an experience is clouded by the anxiety of achieving and failing to achieve. And I am pretty guilty of harboring this anxiety myself.