Being in the Now

Our general understanding of intelligence is lacking. We view the higherups in academia, those who write great books, and those who speak eruditely and eloquently as intellectual giants. But, if we constrain the concept of intelligence, especially as to how it is expressed by just the ability to articulate thought then we are devastatingly undermining on of the most valuable and noble human phenomena.

I call intelligence valuable because anything that has the power to move you forward is valuable. I call intelligence noble because anything that takes tremendous effort to obtain is noble. These two epithets provide a strong beginning to the paradigm I am attempting to present. That is, intelligence is more than just an inheritance, it is more than language, and it is certainly more than an ostentatious display of ability.

Maybe we should start here. Intelligence is good. It is very good. This is especially true for the intelligence that you earn. The information that is awarded to you because you put forth the effort. Some pieces of information are difficult to obtain not because of the complexity of the subject matter, but because in order to obtain them you must pay careful attention. You must journey through hard seasons followed by periods of reflection. You must work hard but in a way that is experimental; not working hard because you know your way to be the right way but working hard so other ways can reveal themselves to you.

I posit intelligence in this way, in a way that doesn’t make sense straightforwardly, because intelligence reaches farther beyond our ability to transcribe it into words. Isn’t there something that you know but you can’t quite describe it? In recent conversation, haven’t you heard someone say something like, “I can’t really put my finger on it”, or “It’s hard to describe”, or “I don’t really know but I like it”?

*Analyzing food or drink is expedient way to get to this point, especially if you catch someone off guard. The next time you can tell someone is intensely enjoying a bite of food or a sip of drink, ask them to describe the experience to you.

These inexplicable things, although inexplicable, I think of as intelligence. If we accept that intelligence is good. That is noble and valuable. That it can be hard to obtain but provides a way forward. That it reveals new ways of thinking to you. Then intelligence doesn’t have to just be articulate expression. Isn’t is good to know what you like even if you can’t describe it? Do I need to know exactly why I am enjoying this meal, or is it better to allow my senses to actually tell me what this meal tastes like?

Movement

Human movement is an endlessly complex phenomenon, almost literally so. There are over 200 joints in the human body, and because of this, there are more movement configurations possible than atoms in the universe (1). And because we are conscious creatures eager to explore this dynamicity, movement has evolved into skill. A skill is the ability to operate the body in an accurate, efficient, and timely manner for a specific task. There are an unfathomable amount of skills: playing the guitar, riding a bike, stitching a wound. And skill acquisition is just as much a parallel of intelligence as is the ability to communicate that skill. Do you know how difficult it is to get really good at a skill? It is noble and valuable for the same reasons as being able to effectively communicate something. It takes tremendous effort. But here in lies the rub, the expression and mastery of skill is not predicated on the ability to articulate skill. You do not have to be able to talk about it in order to be about it.

Our conception of intelligence is lacking because it excludes the inexplicable. Particularly, the mastery of a skill or movement. We aren’t giving credit where credit is due. It is accurate to call an athlete who moves fluidly and efficiently talented, but it is another level of understanding when we use the word intelligent to describe that same athlete. High level skill possession is a reflection of countless hours of work, thousands upon thousand of repetitions, and a continuously developing self-awareness that becomes more efficient at discerning right from wrong or better from worse. You would call someone who has read all the literature and successfully integrated it into practice as intelligent, why wouldn’t you call someone who has performed the repetitions and successfully integrated into practice as intelligent?

The Kid

Baseball is a unique sport, especially in regards to its motor patterns. They are unique in that they mostly all have a high barrier of access. If you have never swung a baseball bat before, then you can not just pick up a bat one day and expect your swing to look like a seasoned vet. In fact, such a swing wouldn’t even get you a nod from your local wreck-ball club.

A quintessential “smooth swing” is the product of an onerous amount of work. A smooth swing is not openly accessible to the public, it is forever closed off to anyone who is not willing to dedicate an athletic life time to it. This work must be synergistically combined with an eager and open mindset; one that carefully analyzes the endless nuance of a swing. Yes, there is an endless amount of nuance. Go watch a big league baseball game. Even at the highest level every player has their own signature on their swing. Of course, there are major trends, but nuance isn’t manifested in majority, its manifested in subtlety. Rhythm, stance, and style are all a part of this nuance. Every player has confronted this nuance and as a result have generated their own unique swing. It is their way of indirectly saying, “everything that I am doing is what I believe will give me the highest chance for success”.

It is from this perspective that I am awestruck when I watch someone like Ken Griffey Jr. swing a baseball bat. I don’t use that term lightly either. I feel awe when I watch him, because the swing that he has produced is the result of a level of intelligence that is outside of my grasp. He has paid so much careful attention throughout the course of his development and career, has been so inextricably in tune with his body and how it wields this beautifully shaped club, that even someone who has never played baseball can watch him and think, “Wow”.

It looks easy for him. It looks easy not because this skill was something that was just innate to him. It looks easy because he possesses a masterful implicit intelligence of how he needs to organize, coil and uncoil, feel, and move his body so that the result is the sweetest swing we have ever seen. It’s a profoundly intelligent achievement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0t1KQpDA6w

A Paradox

I had a recent conversation with some friends that I feel like fits the narrative of this post. It may not go exactly hand in hand, but I think it will provide an interesting conclusion. The conversation was on the topic of being in the now, or living in the moment. Theses hackneyed phrases are thrown around with the same brevity as our every day colloquialisms. It is a hell of a thing to ask someone how they are. How they really are. But we don’t give that question much thought when we ask it or answer it. And we assign the same shallow thought towards living in the moment. It is a hell of thing to live in the moment. In fact, it requires the sort of presence, a sort of intelligence, that transcends explanation.

Being in the moment is a paradox. Certainly, we cannot access the future except for purchasing it through the moments that lead up to it, and on the same hand our past trails behind with its’ wake dissolving seamlessly into the rest of time. So, perhaps technically we exist in the moment, but being in the moment means something different. To be fully in the moment, you must absolve yourself from thinking about your past and future. A feat that our existential nature does not easily allow us to do.

How much of your present reality is influenced by your future or your past? Are you doing what you are doing right now because what you are doing will provide a better future for you? Are you bargaining with your future by staving off experiences like drug induced high’s that relinquish you from the grip of what could be? Are you in the mood you are in because of something that happened recently? Did you fail at something, and is that failure affecting the way you are currently performing in this new opportunity? Answering yes to any of these questions removes you from being in the moment. It has to, because by definition being in the moment means paying full attention to what is currently happening and matters. I would be hard-pressed to deliver an accurate percentage of how much of my reality is filtered through my future or past, but I would estimate that it is much more than half. In fact, the only times that I feel like I have achieved this sense of presence have been through the medium of movement, or a task.

The most vivid and surreal example of this for me happened recently. I was playing baseball. I had the fortunate opportunity to play for a team that draws thousands of fans to the stands. The organization is an iconoclast, challenging and changing the unchallenged and unchanging traditional idea of baseball. In our last game, I was the donut hitter. This unfortunate brand meant that if I struck out during any of my at-bats, the entire stadium would be granted a free donut at some future point. To up the ante for the psychological warfare, the entire crowd is galvanized into shouting “DONUT,DONUT,DONUT” while the donut batter begins his journey towards the box. The synchronized shouting isn’t a temporary admonishment of your unfortunate position either, it doesn’t stop until you reach a base, or you feed the tumultuous crowd with your undoing and their future donuts.

But, during my second at bat, something happened. I don’t necessarily know how or why it happened, but I do know that I was living in the moment. I became unaware of anything that didn’t directly influence my success, in the moment. The crowd fell silent. Maybe I subconsciously knew that they had no direct power over me, and so I rendered their shouts as unimportant information. Maybe the level of focus that was manifested didn’t allow for anything to obstruct its stream of continuity. What I know for sure is, I didn’t hear the word donut once.

More importantly however, I became less aware of myself in an existential sense. I was liberated from the grip of my future. I wasn’t thinking about things that usually loom over a mid-twenties man, like the trajectory of my career or obtaining financial freedom. Things that I confront every single day. Or more locally I wasn’t thinking about how badly I wanted to get on base and score to help my team win the game. I also wasn’t thinking about anything that had previously happened that led up to the moment I was in. It didn’t matter if batting practice went well beforehand. All of the preparation, all of the swings I had taken until that point allowed me to feel a sense of neutrality about being there, that I could just trust that I had the skill to be successful and let that be enough.

The result of this was how I would describe being in the moment. Each moment that came, sort of like a snapshot of time, arrived with its own pieces of information that I would use to decide what to do next. And because I was only aware of what mattered, I only focused on the pitcher. He held in his hand the object whose eventual trajectory would determine my success, so he became the focal point. I knew when he started his delivery my internal tempo would synchronize with his perfectly. I knew that based on the pattern of his arm release whether or not it would be a pitch worthy of swinging at. I knew that if it was a worthy pitch, that I would deliver the barrel of the bat squarely upon the ball. I knew all of this within each moment’s time, but I definitely wasn’t consciously processing it, especially in such a way that my brain was registering it through language.

If I could summarize it, it was like I had to absolve myself of my conscious self, at least the part that speaks to me, and allow the part of me that manifests skill to permeate through whatever was left. It was an awesome and scary experience. I don’t think that whatever level of focus I experienced could be recreated through any other endeavor, only through the medium of skill and sport. I wonder, what stopped me, or stops anyone, from accessing this state more often?

This is why I think of Barry Bonds as the most intelligent hitter, and one of the most intelligent athletes, ever. I want to experience his now. I’m guessing that when he finds his moment he is able to hold onto it for longer. He squeezes out every piece of information he can from it. What does a 95 mph baseball look like to him? It looks like something he can hit 762 homeruns off of. That is an intelligence worthy of inclusion, and respect.

https://youtu.be/t8nzKHYnVbU