Navigating the Infinite

In my thirties, I had this constant awareness that I, my surroundings, and my life conditions were not as I felt they should be. This feeling of not being complete or adequate placed a constant demand for movement in me. I felt more haunted than helped by this inner companion and had a mild calling to let it go. Yet I didn’t know how. I was aware that striving towards a life as I felt it should be prevented me from fully appreciating the life I had.

I had an urge to navigate towards a spot in the never-ending universe of improvement.

Looking back, I can see how this spot moved ahead of me like a star I would never reach.

From my experience, the space between our world as it is and the world as we think it should be is one we will always inhabit. Our culture seems to have taught us one method of navigating this space particularly well: to notice our insufficiencies and then try to eliminate them through pure effort. As if a condition of completeness arrives when we have removed every obstacle that challenges us. I am tempted to compare that condition to death, which is indeed peaceful, but not a place I think you should strive towards.

The obstacles that challenge us are also the ones that keep us bound to life. Maybe this is why we will never be able to close this gap between our lives as they are and our lives as we think they should be. Our striving belongs here. It is part of human nature, and there is beauty in the movement towards something beyond our present circumstances.

The knowledge and skills we must preserve and cultivate are how to navigate this space in new ways.

How to set the direction and pace, which data points to keep an eye on and which to ignore, when to look forwards or backwards, and when to stay in the present. To remember to navigate not only horizontally through the linear space of time, but also vertically from the individual to our loved ones, to society, and ultimately to our contribution to this world.

Staying with these questions long enough allows us to begin thinking abstractly, to change our perspective on life and loosen the hold of the doctrines of our current culture. It can clear our sight and help us notice where we have a choice to do something differently.

In resisting the very existence of this gap, we may find ourselves practising the sense of being incomplete, until we feel stuck in the very discomfort we hoped to escape. The complicated work of learning to navigate the world as it is involves exploring ways of moving that are more attentive to human nature than this persistent demand for improvement.

Life has shown me how fragile human nature can be, and how readily we demand action from one another without understanding the conditions from which it must emerge.

Our culture seems to have preserved an intense demand for improvement. Marketing invites us to buy our way towards a new and better version of ourselves, while our organisations call for ever higher rates of production and growth. Yet I wonder if we have preserved our sensitivity to the world around us and our ability to grow in harmony with it. To put on warm clothes because it has grown cold, rather than because we have been prompted to change our outfits.

The images our culture offers gain a particular authority when we look to them to tell us who we ought to be. I fear we may lose sight of who we are in the pursuit of who we feel we should become.

We keep running and try to run faster, but are we cultivating the ability to discern when and how to move? I wonder how we might give more care to the beautiful instinct and intuition of human nature, so often left rudimentary and uncultivated along this narrow path. Culture can help us to develop these abilities, rather than letting plans and expectations take the place of our understanding of ourselves and our surroundings.

Can we maybe master the sense of inadequacy? Can we preserve ourselves and our ambitions while accepting being afraid or feeling insufficient? Can we practise choosing consciously between observing, curating, analysing, feeling, sensing, and thinking, then choose our response while observing the reactions, and through that practice maintain the beauty of striving forward and leaving the frustration of not yet having arrived at completeness behind.

— Mia