Wellsbaum.blog

On the hedge of hope

May 23rd, 2022

We live in anticipation. The worker who looks forward to a vacation is probably far happier and more productive than one who toils away without the slightest carrot of free time dangling in their future.

Without lying to ourselves, how do we unlock the treasure of hope (of more time, more freedom, and other imagined scenarios, etc.) without forcing it? Hope is a survivalist’s edge, an act of active revenge against reality. It sees the world for all its doom yet remains wide-eyed to know that bad times don’t last forever.

On the other hand, doubt is a disease that inhibits our perception of the world. It wants us to play it safe, do nothing, or persist through hell on a slow downward grind. Thankfully, the emotional muscle grows resilient to attacks of uncertainty and pessimism over the years.

Experience teaches patience; the results take time when we’re trying to live up to our expectations. So we treat failures as lessons in disguise and take the small wins as they come. While as plastic as it is, hope offers something even if our eyes fail to see it.
The shared intimacy of the individual

May 16th, 2022

Behavior operates at the amygdala level. Without conscious interpretation, we either fight or run away.

Instead, what we seek is more constructive: long-term serotonin levels that strengthen emotional agility. Once we develop kinship between our senses and surroundings, we can level set and carry on when things go against us.

There will always be those resistors who share a desperate need to assert their own solipsism. It’s easy and tempting to fall for impulse and avoid cooperation in the daily saga of Prisoner’s Dilemma. But just as the clock synchronizes everyone’s day, patience, nuance, and collaboration are unifying traits with many-to-many broadcasting in play.

It may be trite to say, but it pays to be nice. While strict mandates are enough to convince people to do good — lest they go to jail — most people want to do what’s best for society. However, it is illuminating to note that the individual can still cultivate a unique identity as part of the greater collective.

Being different is applauded, as the mechanics of risk-taking and breaking things is a hallmark of innovation. One can still play by the rules in the most rebellious phase of their life. The hard part is being misunderstood for a catalog of years.

Some people prefer to go it alone, not for conceit or snobbery, but for the sake of standing for something rather than nothing. What’s good for one often benefits the whole, as the audience catches up to the characteristics of the most alive forms.
When hearts and minds realign

May 9th, 2022

We are exchanging advice, ideas, and information all the time, in effect trading minds with each other. Yet, within that knowledge transfer also oozes emotion. Stress is as contagious as a sneeze.

If a family member or we bring tension home, it spreads like a virus to everyone in the house. The obstacle becomes an instant distraction from what’s good: the experience of togetherness.

Rather than deal with problems directly, screen time becomes a short-lived panacea by alleviating discomfort. But as the results show, the candy-colored apps and variable rewards are more likely to thwart happiness.

Alone, together, relationships dwindle. And then, if left to inertia, they go off track. Instead of investing in our preferred future, we forfeit. Capitulation seems inevitable when the going gets tough.

But hope neither denies suffering nor pain. While the build back can be unsettling, facing up to the unavoidable can be consoling. Instead of waiting for the storm to pass, we err on the side of freedom and dance in the rain.

We become moored to the promise, wandering chaotically until perception realigns with an attractor. Neurons reciprocate and fire at each other in the same synchronized manner. The telepathy ensues, even if it all still feels detached. With just a little bit of mindful reawakening, we break the chain of events that beget unhappiness and play our way back into the mirror of love and trust.

Nothing changed at the end of the day but the staying power of stress, directly toxic to health, as it buffeted the seas of peace. The primary barriers were self-imposed. Intrinsically, the heart kept beating with near-perfect reliability. It just needed the beautiful struggle to wake it up again.
The brilliance in absurdity

May 2nd, 2022

The synergy between brilliance and absurdity is one of the paradoxes of our time. One can’t be crazy without being wickedly smart. Thinking different isn’t supposed to compute.

For the innovator, experimentation is the antidote to perfectionism. Trial and error is a mechanism for chance discovery. The right answer is a function of the mistakes.

The great mismatch between man’s mental software and that of a machine comes down to human fallibility. The genius, trapped within their own realities, is ignorant enough to accommodate the messy unknown. It’s precisely this disconnectedness that makes their perspective wondrous and beautiful.

The mind remains unique in knowledge accumulation despite all its neuronal connectors resembling the tangled intricacy of machines. The intuition pump that drives combinatorial creativity still does circles around artificial intelligence. Humans thwart all those chips and wires with various voltage levels of curiosity.

Yet, the emergent output patterns are nowhere near normal for everybody. The nerds and outsiders must be motivated to deploy their weirdness by giving a shit.
Thinking things through

April 25th, 2022

What we’re thinking of right now often feels of the utmost importance.

Negative thoughts, in particular, turn passive onlookers into nervous inward-facing participants. The face twitch, lip biting, short breaths, full-bodied elsewhereness — says it all.

The nerves light up like a Christmas tree, flaring internally on a rollercoaster of emotions. The brain gets stuck in gear, a sprain only that a transcendent redesign can heal.

Thankfully the world challenges our inner landscapes, knocking us in different directions, often for the better — engaging in imaginative doom-musing gets pretty dull anyway. The tension of outside interruptions helps in breaking up the rote neural circuitry.

The mind snatches the nearest pen to think things through. The beauty arrives with the movement; a flow crystalized into an arrangement. But it’s the delicate pause, the silence between the notes, giving way to mind blurbs that might be insightful.

Thinking is a mysterious process.

The mind vacuums and spits out everything in abundance: anxiety, doubt, optimism, and possibilities., creating a twister of emotion. Thankfully, disfluency has elbows, becoming a welcome distraction. Trapped between provocation and constriction, we finally settle down.

Writing recenters thought from the chaos of the monkey mind and helps us decode the insanity of reality. The extra clarity allows us to put our insides out there more aggressively. We can, on the contrary, improve the quality of life through the grittiness of diverged thought.
Conformity as a preventative structure

April 18th, 2022

The obvious remains invisible only because we choose to turn a blind eye to any framework that doesn’t align with our interests.

Our minds crave homogenization. Even the misfits and activists who believe in no other cause than hope share tribal urges — there’s a strong instinct to join the pack.

The herd outwits the individual, harnessing the enthusiasm of those who “think different” to change at will to match their surroundings.

Any form of groupthink places the pillars of arrogance on a shaky footing. The makers and resistors of history become trapped within themselves, unable to self-distance from the magnet of lies. Meanwhile, the truth offers an avenue of escape.

“The price of being a sheep is boredom. The price of being a wolf is loneliness. Choose one or the other with great care.”
— Hugh Macleod 🐜 https://t.co/9lo6DLKohw
— Wells Baum (@wells_baum) April 12, 2022

How we expose ourselves to contradiction is a hallmark of first-class minds. Genius seeks exposure to assimilation and discord, spelling trouble for those algorithms that think they know us better than ourselves.

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote. Some can live with ambiguity and paradox.

Human behavior is complex. A worldview rarely lasts forever. “Strong opinions, loosely held” is a mantra that protects against the bulwark of algorithms gathering manipulative predictive data fragments. The marketer knows that a good story changes people’s minds.

The brain is a three-dimensional plastic structure that explores variable modes as it cultivates new insights. We contain multitudes, logging in new interests daily. But only by tinting the air with elasticity can we charge ahead to see beyond any rigid structure.
A test case of curiosity

April 12th, 2022

There is no plan. We go through long stretches of time, just guessing. But the passage into mystery lures us forward. It costs nothing to try.

The world changes—we change—when we live in the continuous present to see where it’ll lead us. As we dabble in life’s experiments, our efforts necessitate a kind of dream state.

What emerges is a test case on openness, the possibility, and the ability to entertain outcomes of various kinds.

Unmoored from certainty, we proceed to find a sweet spot between experimentation and well-being. As John Berger reminds us, “You can plan events, but if they go according to your plan they are not events.” Everyone deserves a chance at the highest quality of experience, bolstered by one’s idiosyncratic strengths.

What makes us unique is a source of power, not snobbery. Perceived flaws remain untrammeled to reinforce impressive persistence. We become society’s greatest participants when we harness the benefits of our clunky selves as a passport to creative freedom.

Life is a sine wave; it ebbs and flows. The path is less linear and more immersive. It takes courage to stay afloat in a sea of indifference. Yet, the water absorbs the gloom. Double down on the surf by embracing its randomness and luck with a test case of sheer curiosity.
Raging against the machine (us)

April 4th, 2022

Writing is to rage against the machine, not the powers that be. It’s a practice that hollows out the anxieties within. The machine is us, and the blank page is the battlefield of emotion.

Writing is a meditative process, a chance to pause and self-distance from the everyday. Prose allows us to exhaustively test society’s rules and expectations while confronting the shame of our uncertainties.

Feeling the squeeze, stuttering into a handicap, we bleed words on paper and onto the screen to reinforce mental fortitude. We already beat the psychology of regret over the head by making the bad decision to scribble our feelings in public anyway.

Yet it remains the nature of the playwright to scribe behind the curtain in anonymity. The author bares all and rarely becomes famous.

Whether they’re deemed right, wrong, fanciful, or insane, we own our own words. However, the brain’s plasticity guarantees that our thoughts evolve; strong positions get weakly held. The pragmatist takes a razor to unnecessary complexity.

Writing is a serotonin pump, and the practice oozes confidence into our mental muscles. Words act like bicep curls for the brain. Struggling with words is a paradoxical pleasure. As the US Marines say, “Pain is weakness leaving the body.”

Writing, like a fork or spoon, is an instrument for living. It’s also a passport to freedom. Our only concern should be its inhibition, a gauge that comes from the synchronicities from within.
Purposely absorbed

March 30th, 2022

Absorbed in the real work, unlike the spasmodic focus of want-to-be influencers.

The professional demands order, rituals, and practices that solidify the certainty anchor.

Those serious about their craft very much know they’re alive. They draw a map of the future based on reality, then lean right into it.

It’s easy to believe that armed with today’s digital tools we can all become stars. After all, all the internet’s a stage. As Andy Warhol predicted: “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” Even then — most viewers merely stroll with their eyes.

Most art gets consumed and then goes long forgotten. As much as screens captivate us at the moment, it’s always about what’s next.

The most dedicated workers remain internet-proof, detached from the ephemeral likes and favorites. They think long-term and “train” every day, bearing more influence on the culture than ever.

“In the future, everyone will want to be anonymous for fifteen minutes,” said Banksy. The question now becomes how one cultivates a sly reputation forever.
Ear players and slow bakers

March 25th, 2022

Ear players, slow-bakers, and scribblers; all are just noticers of things.

But they are also the most impeccable dancers, converting nerves into spontaneity to battle fear itself.

For the musician, the student, and the artist, what’s elemental clicks into place.

They are at their freest with the tools in their hand — the saxophone, the book, and the pen — once gifted, forever scripted, and followed for the rest of one’s life.

It’s rewarding to have a passion for something trapped inside. And it’s a blessing to share the developed talent with those immovably attached to the status quo.
Chords of inquiry

March 22nd, 2022

We remain emotionally uneven, driven by the vagaries of an electronically-fueled world tilted toward bad news.

The external glow messes with our internal wiring, where even the illusion of reprieve bears zero hope.

Yanked out of our public selves into private accountability, how do we cope with the torrent of life’s clutter?

Facing reality is a form of backtalk — an experience akin to visiting the psychologist for an open dialogue.

Embracing the suck is not a means of capitulation. Our task is to replace emotional capital with patient, big-picture thinking.

Going toward the fear releases oxytocin in our body like a friend’s hug.

We know what we want, even if the law of magnetism clashes with the dialectic. Slowly, the chords of inquiry blossom from caution into a badge of curiosity.

We’re steadfastly determined to evolve slowly by turning off the voices inside the house. The anxiety mutes — we’re finally naked, floating into discomfort.
Flow of attention

March 20th, 2022

The creator goes from broad attention to a narrower focus. They see the forest for the trees while simultaneously shifting their vision to see the trees through the woods.

Like a student, the artist aggregates what’s interesting and then goes deeper, pulsating from a generalist to a specialist, adding and subtracting, exploring the world through a lens of curiosity. Nothing feels forced; instead, the immersive play helps grasp how one feels.

When we’re deemed to make, we feel something elemental click into place. We develop a sense of kinship with even the most untouchable spaces. Patterns appear everywhere as we sample the environment inside them.

The creator is all things collector, researcher, and storyteller at heart. The messy output called art reflects the internal process. Rarely, do we paint precisely what was once fodder in the mind’s eye.

Creativity defenestrates the day-to-day doldrums. Making is a lifeline, the telescope where our attention flows and where the beauty of life opens up upon release.