Continuous travel doesn’t provide a lot of meaningful space to just breath… So I headed to Bali to surf, save a little money, and find some space to think about stuff.
I stayed at a surf camp/beach house on Medewi Beach. Medewi is a pretty ideal spot to get away from all the unintended stress induced by the “civilized” life. Unlike other parts of Bali, it remains relatively rural, and it’s still pretty quiet (…other than the 2 mosques and calls to prayer at 4:30 AM.) It’s mostly just terraced rice paddies, cows, egrets… and good surf conditions for beginners like me. There’s almost no internet connectivity. So it’s kind of perfect. There’s not much to do other than surf, read, and listen to things.
The local sounds are nice- the ocean, wind, rain, cows, chickens, lizards, crickets, frogs… even the hand operated tractors in the rice fields. It’s funny how you don’t really pay attention to those sounds until there’s nothing else to pay attention to.
It’s easy to lose track of the time and the days. The daily schedule is dictated by high tide, low tide. It’s the same things everyday- fruit and coffee for breakfast, noodles and eggs for lunch, catch high tide around 12:30, catch low tide around 5:30. It’s repetitive, but watching the sun set in warm seas on a surfboard beyond the breakers… never seems to get old.
For me, watching cows doesn’t get old either. I like cows. After spending some serious time contemplating the bovine way of life, the word ruminate makes way, way, more sense. I like watching cows chew stuff. Especially baby cows. Someday I hope to have a cow I can sit with in some pasture and think about things and talk to. We can chew on things together, (both literally and metaphorically.) I imagine cows would be great therapists. Featured image is of some local kids socializing on the beach during low tide. Get ready for a lot of cow pictures below.
Speaking of therapists, there’s a guy I talk to who helps me with shit. He also recommends books for me to read. One of the books I read in Bali was a recommendation from him- Raising Your Emotional Intelligence, by Jeanne Segal. Another closely related book I read there, was Brene Brown’s new book, Rising Strong. The long story short is I started working through some of the stuff mentioned in these books while I had the time and space in Bali… and something clicked, which is kind of… exciting and scary. It’s stuff about emotions and stories basically… I’m not sure how to organize or articulate it all, but some of the more significant shit for me includes the following-
- (To some extent…) Coming to terms with the massive limitations of reason and intellect generally, but in particular, limitations to change a person’s mind and behavior and to make sense of injustice;
- Also coming to terms with how powerless and unhelpful reason/intellect/knowledge (and specifically argument/debate,) are in the context of relationships-
- A related point is… Coming to terms with the power of story/ narrative, and how essential stories are to relationships and identity (in regards to being known/understood/accepted.) I’m pretty convinced stories have the potential to have a huge effect on a person’s feelings/choices/behaviors that abstract reason or facts cannot… and furthermore, I suspect stories can transcend or obviate the need to make sense of injustice, (where reason just ends up running around in circles with different theoretical conceptions of justice that all end up having major limitations.)
- I suspect an important part of this, is the power or ability of narrative to transmit feeling and emotion, (something that abstract reason and fact cannot do.) When someone’s story gets told, there’s transmission of some really important information that’s occurs- more than just the facts. It’s like… relational and identity “data.” And it’s information that’s actually really important in life.
- Feelings and emotions contain unique, important information. Not like.. data per se, but… no less important than the facts. And in particular, heavy/hard/challenging feelings mean something, and are often especially important, even though they might feel bad. Important information is lost, and important opportunities for connection, integration, knowledge, and growth are lost if we don’t learn how to accept and handle the heavy shit… (I suspect people who never experience and handle the heavy shit never actually… grow in a lot of ways, and are going to miss out on a lot of deeply meaningful/satisfying stuff. I suppose it’s that kind of stuff I want to get into, and not miss out on.)
- (I’ll quickly add here, what I mean by “story.” Brene Brown does a good job in her book for these purposes, and I’d like to do more investigation into it, but it’s the idea of Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero’s Journey” or the “monomyth,” As far as I’m concerned our stories are just… the arc of events in our lives that include conflicts and resolution, “sin” [I like David Brooks’ construction of sin here] and redemption/reconciliation. So everything from dealing with an annoying incident to major heartbreak and failure.)
I think one of the most important thoughts about my emotions and feelings is that I guess… I’m realizing how essential they are to actually living out any of my beliefs or theories on ethics and morality… and they’re also essential to my construction of “faith,” (if it’s going to amount to anything other than abstract history/mythology/theology.)
The way I imagine it, emotions are like the flesh and breath to my construction of “faith.” I still believe reason and evidence are also still absolutely essential- I feel like it’s that reason and knowledge are like the skeleton to faith… it’s the structure that everything is built on, but alone there’s no life to it. That’s where feelings and stories come in… Until there’s flesh and breath, it’s not something that’s… flexible, responsive, animated… relateable. (It also makes some sense of a complete and absolute lunatic like St. Francis.)
(I suppose the most important thing about emotions and stories is the role they play in our identity and in our relationships, but that’s a domain in which, truthfully, and in practice, I don’t know my ass from my face, so I won’t say much.)
So that’s what happened in Bali while I was surfing.
This shits all new to me. All that to basically say there’s probably some changes happening that I’m looking forward too. I guess the main thing is for my entire life I’ve prioritized, (as a product of culture and circumstances,) reason and intellect, and simultaneously actively sought to minimize the role and influence of emotions. That’s been really efficient for some things in the world and in life; however, there are also some pretty tragic and massive consequences for that way of living. So the main thing is moving more into a life that’s… emotionally alive, aware, and healthy.
I guess, after a bunch of ridiculous bullshit, I just got to a point where I finally became hopeful about emotions and trying to reengage them in a healthy, wholehearted way. Emotions and stories provide really important information about identity and relationships- and therefore are critical to figuring out shit like purpose and vision for the future. (For example, I’d suggest that trying to figure out career stuff is going to be pretty profoundly incomplete and uninformed if you’re excluding or ignoring all that emotional information that’s found in the story of your life.)
A few other quick notes about Bali-
I met a lot of really great people there- Some of the folks I shared the beach house with included a couple from Portsmouth, a ramen expert/chef and surfer from Japan, a documentary filmmaker from Australia, and some kids from Munich.
Also highly memorable- fresh lobster dinners, Balinese style. Like 1 kilo of fresh local lobster for about 7 dollars. So awesome.
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