It's so much a part of the landscape, it takes up so much stage
front and center of ordinary day to day experience that it's
almost impossible to consider or even
imagine
what Life could or would be like if at least it wasn't so all consuming
or at most it wasn't there at all.
I'm talking about the noise in your head.
("Noise? What
noise?".)
If you listen to it for a while, you'll notice it never stops. It has
opinions - which it offers unasked about just about everyone and
everything. It explains everything (or it tries to), and then it
rationalizes what it can't explain. It's constantly judging (notice how
its judgements' bias leaves you with the opinion you're
better and righter). It compares everything to
everything else - as if everything is the same
as everything else. It predicts the outcome of things (no, it
knows the outcome of things) even before they happen. And
mostly, except in unusual cases, its assessments tell you a whole lot
more about what can't be done rather than about what can.
That said, what I assert in this essay about the noise in your head
isn't intended to be "the truth". Rather, it's intended as a
place to stand and look and to see what's possible from there.
It takes a certain kind of courage, a certain boldness, a brassiness, a
verve, to press forward without paying much heed to the noise,
to the assessments, to the opinions, to the judgements. It takes a
certain bravery to distinguish the noise from your
intention or even from what you want to do.
It takes a certain
bigness
to separate out what you want to do and love to do in Life, from what
the noise tells you is possible for you to do in Life.
Try this on for size: keep getting the things done you intend to get
done, keep doing the things you love to do, regardless of what your
thoughts or your preferences or your opinions or your judgements or
your feelings or your evaluations or your emotions or your assessments
say about what you intend to do or about what you love to do or about
how you're getting them done or about the
circumstances and conditions in which you're
getting them done.
All that noise in your head is just background soundtrack.
Having a life with an already background soundtrack is just the way
it is for us human beings. Having a life without
a background soundtrack would be like having a movie without a
background soundtrack: they don't make 'em that way anymore. The
background soundtrack has been playing forever, long before you were
born in fact. The background soundtrack, the noise in your head is
simply the sound we human beings mistake for ourselves. Just like cows
go "Moo moo!", just like pigs go "Oink oink!", just like chickens go
"Cheep cheep!", so human beings go "Blah blah blah!" (as
Old MacDonald may have said).
Old MacDonald is a wise, wise men. He found out "Blah blah blah!" is
just what we human beings do. It's our
sound and
fury.
It's the noise in our heads excusing and justifying ourselves. Yet it
never transforms one ...
god-damned
... thing! The background soundtrack never makes any
difference.
If you stay with your intention, if you press ahead with what you
intend to do, if you bring forth what you love to do regardless of what
the noise in your head says about it, if you continue
making happen what you said
you're going to make happen
without short changing yourself with your own reasons why it can't be
done, with your own opinions about why it shouldn't be done, with your
own assessments about why it'll never amount to anything, if you just
do it because you intend to and because you said you would and because
you love doing it, if you do all that and all the while let the
background soundtrack just be the background soundtrack,
that's powerful. That's worth something.