You know, when I started these recordings, I had this fresh new beginning feeling, the feeling that this could be about anything, and I didn’t know what direction it would go.
But now, after reaching almost fifty of these recordings, it starts to have its own kind of weight to it, the idea of, oh, this is what these are about.
Just by virtue of what I have been doing, I start to feel like, “Oh, that’s what this is about.”
And as much as I don’t want to let myself be in this box, it is like putting myself in a box, where I kind of expect to continue the way I have.
Because this is what I’ve been doing, I just have this automatic expectation that it’s going to continue.
And this can happen in all areas of life.
Just once I get into a certain kind of repeated pattern, I can start to expect that that pattern can continue.
And that seems to be just the way our minds work, as, you know, we’re always looking for those patterns, and we’re always looking for some kind of comfortable routine, so when we see something repeating, we expect it to continue.
But ultimately, this is not helpful for what I want to do.
I still want this to be open to changing.
And what I’m doing here so far with these recordings is just the bare beginning of what I want to do with this project.
So once again, I have to press the reset button, I have to mentally reset, so that I can be open to something new.
And because this is a part of everything in life, it seems to me like this is something that is really an everyday thing.
With every day, when, you know, we end the day, we put the day to rest, that is done.
That iteration of life is finished.
And when we start up the next day, that is like beginning again a new life.
And as much as that’s the ideal, it is still so easy to get into repeated patterns, and so maybe every day would be pushing it too far, and let’s say every week.
We could start with every week will be a completely new life.
I like thinking this way.
I think there’s a lot of power in thinking that way, in being open to be able to completely refresh ourselves.
Maybe it can be taken too far.
We don’t have to, like, you know, forget everything and learn everything again.
We still- we inherit what we had from our previous iteration, our previous day.
But it’s like something that I have to make myself believe it.
It doesn’t happen automatically.
I have to tell myself, remind myself, and really convinced myself that, no, you don’t have to follow the pattern of yesterday.
You don’t have to continue to do what you’ve been doing.
Every new day that you have is a new chance to live your life, and there is no chain of the past holding on.
It’s only in our minds that we create this notion, this illusion, that today will be like the past.
And of course, it’s perfectly understandable and reasonable to use that, you know, to help guide ourselves through the new day.
What is our best guide through the new day? Well, all the previous days we’ve been through are the best guide to help us, you know, be ready for what’s coming today.
So it can be useful as a guide, of course, and of course we carry on everything we’ve learned in our past days, in our thousands of past days.
But the mistake, where it goes too far, is to expect that today will operate within the parameters of yesterday.
So today, in this first recording that I’ve made in the morning, seeing the bright sunshine coming through my east window there, as we have surprising record cold temperatures in Toronto for this time of year, this is a new day, new time, new season, and anything can happen.
So I’m gonna let- as much as I can, I’m going to try to let today be a reset, let today be new.