Layers :: 083
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Peel It Back
Big news early this month: The last of the living Israeli hostages were released. ICYMI: two years ago, Hamas took 251 hostages from Israel into Gaza. For a few months after that, we had a sign on our lawn that said "I stand with Israel." As both a child of an Israeli and an American Jew, it felt like the right thing to do and say. But as the Israeli government chose to take action in ways I didn't agree with, I felt conflicted in the message and took the sign down.
What I really wanted was a sign that could explain everything I felt. Something like:
I stand with the Israeli people and their right to exist in peace.
I do not agree with how the Israeli leadership is using the IDF.
I sympathize with the innocent Palestinian families.
Bring the hostages home now.
I want peace, too.
That's not even a complete picture of how I feel. And it's definitely not sign-worthy.
It's just that we live in a world where there's so much nuance. And yet, everything needs to be encapsulated in a headline, Tweet, or lede.
We miss out on the layers of what the thing actually is.
For example the thing about Tylenol is not actually about "causing" Autism. That's just the headline. Peel back the layers and it's about the administration creating mistrust in trusted systems. It's about trying to normalize marginalizing neurodiverse individuals. It's about controlling women's bodies.
We've crossed the threshold into fall, and that means one thing. Pumpkin spice. #jkjkjkjk I'm talking about layers. Not like an onion. As Donkey in Shrek says, "no one likes onions. Cake! Everybody likes cake."
So let's take some time this month to peel back the layers dig into the tiers (of joy) in this cake, fresh from the fridge.
Sustained Inquiry
Freshman year of high school, my English teacher posed a question as the theme for the year. "Who am I and what issues shape my identity?"
The question threaded the entire year's projects: speeches about our heroes, persuasive essays about topics we're passionate about, group projects on relationships.
It introduced a concept called sustained inquiry.
Inquiry is the idea of asking a question, but sustained inquiry is asking questions that lead to multiple sources and reveal more, deeper questions. Beyond just a Google or ChatGPT prompt. It's a process.
Because we create meaning by making sense of the unknown, sustained inquiry is one way to create meaning in our lives. And there's certainly a lot of unknown. Lots of questions to ask...
What are my core values?
Where do my best ideas come from?
What do I think about using AI to do my work for me?
What is my relationship to my phone and how does it affect my life?
How can I be a more present parent while taking my business to the next level?
Who are the people that I need more in my life– not the people that make me happy?
It takes practice to sit with a single question and let the answer layer over days and months. That process requires note-taking, observation, and awareness.
When I'm in transition, struggling with change or stuckness, I always go back to sustained inquiry. Posing a hard question. Starting a document where I come back to with notes, fragments, ideas, and sources all exploring the layers and layers of answers. The paradoxes in what inevitably comes up– that the answers I find, arrive at, and conjure often conflict with themselves. And finding my way into meaning.
We're all facing unknowns. What questions are we asking?
Un-Atomization of Life
It started last fall.
It seemed kind of silly at first, actually.
I had never heard of rucking, and then before too long, we were doing it almost every weekend last year. And this month, I went for my first ruck of the season.
A group of about 10 of us decide on a trail and then meet on Sunday morning at 630am in the darkness to hike for 2 hours with 30lb backpacks as the sun comes up in the cold.
I think for most of us, we like it that it's a little weird. That some people roll their eyes or laugh at the idea of getting up early. Or hiking in the dark. Or wearing weighted backpacks. "That's alright," we think, "it's not for everyone."
When we get home as our families are waking up, we feel pride. We did something hard.
But I think it's more than that. Over the last few years, I've been casually researching the loneliness epidemic (ahem, sustained inquiry). From interviews with Vivek Murthy, books about Depression, and articles about community. One theory has recently struck a chord. It's called Atomization.
Borrowed from chemistry, it's when large units break down into their components and further into subcomponents.
How am I supposed to work, take care of my family, keep community, maintain my house, exercise, get groceries and still feel like there's enough leftover for a good night's sleep and planning my kids' birthday parties.
It's part of the reason why our lives feel more and more overwhelming. Everything has become atomized. (Just look at our food labels. This month, Starbucks introduced Foam Protein.)
But I think that's one of the big reasons why Rucking is so great. It's the opposite of atomization. I'm building relationships on these weekly long hikes. I'm spending time in nature. I'm exercising. It's why Caveday and other coworking can be powerful– productivity and breaks in a social environment.
I'm not suggesting that everyone needs to ruck.
Or bring friends to run errands.
Or join a book club or a bowling league.
But I am suggesting thinking about folding a few needs together. (Or, to stay on the analogy– not "folding"..."fusing") When everything serves just an individual purpose, it's no wonder we don't feel like we have time.
Ok, who wants to come over for coworking and lunch next week?
Personal Geology
"Maybe in the future I'll have more to say" I wrote in 2002. I recently rediscovered my high school journal. It's a little embarrassing, but weren't we all a little cringey in our mid-teens?
Reading old entries– just like digging through a junk drawer and finding old notes, or yearbook photos, or an old baseball mitt–reminds me a lot of excavation.
Stratigraphy is the study of rock layering–what was happening in our world millions and millions of years ago based on the layers of rocks. It's that classic textbook illustration of the cross-section of the earth with rocks on top of sediments on top of fossils on top of dirt on top of iron and magma.
As I read through my old journal, I'm digging down and revealing my own layers that were formed lifetimes ago. I can see what was happening back then just by examining the layers. I can see how the processes, habits, thoughts, and relationships happening in 2002 led to the layers established in college. And the early career years.
My own fossils are sometimes kept in pristine condition. Sometimes, I have to piece them together to get a better understanding of life back then.
To dig up these layers is to find them untouched, but now in the new context of today's wisdom.
Sometimes, it feels like time collapses like a telescope.
What felt like 5 years ago is actually 25. What was decades ago was more than half a lifetime. The years between now and my first paycheck are longer than my first paycheck to when I was born.
Sometimes it's hard to even comprehend the layers of time we've amassed. But when we get the chance to dig and uncover, it can be revealing.
Maybe I was right in 2002.
I do have more to say. But even beyond now.
In the future from today, I'll have more layers to stand on, more history to dig from. And then I'll have more to say.
Flattening Our Stories
Scroll for about 30 seconds and it'll be there. A gravity toward the monoculture.
It's a word borrowed from agriculture where only one crop is grown on a farm. It's a critical term now used to describe the homogenization and flattening of diverse cultures. The fact that nearly everyone in the world now is on Facebook and doing TikTok dances and seeing the same Netflix reality shows, means that cultures are starting to converge and flatten.
In my experience over the last few years, AirBNB all over the world are looking more and more the same whether in Rio De Janeiro or Stockholm. Coffee shops and bars and these pop-up "museums" that are actually instagram bait are all the same formula.
We see flattened people too. Biopics of movies like A Complete Unknown, Tick Tick Boom, Elvis, Saturday Night, mostly feel like a Wikipedia page come to life.
In the era of personal branding and hashtag content, the pull is to find a more sellable version of our stories. I'm a creative director working at the intersection of tech and social impact. I'm a travel influencer focusing on outdoorsy family trips. I'm a TV comedy writer. I'm an events producer with experience in experiential installations.
And in writing something that reduces our stories to a headline, we're not just flattening our story, we're flatting ourselves. What would it look like to be layered? How do we demonstrate our multifaceted multipotentiality?
I'll spare you the Walt Whitman reference to just give you permission to be dynamic– to change. To show up energized and fun one day and sad and lethargic another. To be really good at your job and a good enough parent. To love sleeping in and HIIT exercise the same amount.
Here's to showing your layers.
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Thanks as always for spending time with me this weekend and sharing any thoughts you have. Until the next one, layer up.
Refrigeyalater.
Jake
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A few topics I cut from this month: not reading the news, Solomon's paradox of advice-giving, partners are supposed to keep you in check, boring but meaningful lives
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The Email Refrigerator is a monthly delivery of essays, poetry, imagery, and thoughts, written and curated by Jake Kahana. Why a refrigerator? Well, it's where we look for snacks, a little freshness, and where we hang the latest, greatest work. And besides, "newsletter" sounds like spam.