Recently, one or two nights a week I’ve found myself unable to sleep. Normally when I can’t sleep I will simply reach for my phone and beam filth into my eyes, but I thought I’d try being old fashioned and sophisticated so I’ve been deciding to truly let myself get bored and keep my phone out of reach. When I do that I find some themes spontaneously emerge in my mind.
I get this rose-tinted view of my life in 2017. Back then I was 25, living in a studio in Ede, only getting around by bike and train, and building my career at MeteoGroup. My now ex-boyfriend at the time lived in Amsterdam, so he was an hour away.
I had just stopped doing night shifts and entered a 9-5 role (same company) and so for the first time since graduating I had a healthy routine. I was disciplined with food and kept my BMI below 25.
I realise now this was truly a local optimal situation. I had for the first time in years, structure and room to think instead of just strategically optimise my sleep schedule. I had so much time on my hands and I spent it walking around dull Dutch residential streets after sunset, listening to hundreds of hours of Jordan Peterson lectures on YouTube and dozens of hours of Eckhart Tolle videos and audiobooks.
These two men couldn’t be more different from the outside.
Peterson, when not being political is like a tough no-nonsense father figure who uses his attention grabbing communication patterns for good, to encourage you to ‘fix’ things, to take responsibility and drop resentment.
Tolle, is like a gentle sage, a grandfather whos words lower your blood pressure. His warm light hearted philosophy speaks of letting go of drama, dropping the ‘pain-body’, and accepting stuff the way they are. Hao says he seems like a bit of a cult leader, which I’ll admit he does, but I don’t mind.
I remember at the time seeing these two perspectives as immensely true and helpful but not really getting how to synthesise them into a personality. At some point I realised it came down to that old quote:
“God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can and Wisdom to know the difference.”
I don’t think my job is to balance these ways of being, I don’t blur them together or I’ll water down their strength. You learn, absorb and commit 100% to both ways of looking at the world and be pick whether to be Jordan Peterson or Eckhart Tolle, depending on the task at hand, and whether it requires courage or serenity. I think of it like materialism and idealism, or whether light is a wave or a particle. Both are completely right, but not in a blended way.
Back then I think I was a better person, I think I had the wisdom to know the difference. But it was easier, I was like a plant getting all the right nutrients and water and soil. As life goes on it seems to feel more complicated and I seem to accumulate complexity like an old tree with weird shaped branches.
My task now is whispering to me and I can only hear it when my phone is out of reach, but it’s simple: find that again.
Religions understand that you need to commit to something regularly to maintain it. Going to church every Sunday is the spiritual equivalent of heading to the gym 3x a week. Similarly you cannot just read a book and expect it to transform the rest of your life, you’ve got to keep coming home.
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