Resetting Our Internal Scale
Society fosters the idea that we are the center of everything because everything is built around us.
I'm writing this week's post in an airport. The airports I've been in are all starting to bleed together, possibly due to traveling so much. After a certain amount of time, you begin to realize just how much all airports are kinda the same: the same terrazzo floors, plastic seats, and signage that merely changes colors from country to country (except for Changi Airport in Singapore, which has a butterfly garden, rain vortex(????), and a slide you can take right to your gate). They're like this mirror dimension we enter before we magically teleport to wherever we go.
All to make the experience smooth and enjoyable, but somehow - it never is.
Obviously, we all want to be rested and relaxed and have a hassle-free experience when traveling, but something about flying is decidedly not those things. Jet lag is terrible, naps on a plane screw up your neck, and nothing is worse than sleeping overnight in an airport. Even with lounge access and business class where the physical strains of travel go away (thank you, American Express), the mental fatigue of traveling is exhausting. And we can look at how people behave in an airport for evidence.
All the everyday things we're accustomed to in daily life get thrown out the door at an airport. People will sleep on a dirty carpet, drink at 7 AM, and pay $15 for a stick of deodorant without blinking an eye. Our brains can't handle the time we spend traveling by plane because while physically we might be halfway around the globe in less than 24 hours, our minds are still back where we came from. I think the reason airports are so bizarre is that they're the places that distort our internal scale the most.
Ok, so what do I mean by our internal scale? External scales measure three things: size, weight, and intensity. We convey size through maps and phrases like "image in the mirror not to scale," and everyone is familiar with weight (clearly, I need to lay off the mozzarella sticks) and intensity (on a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you with your fitness levels?). The three aspects of scale - size, weight, and intensity - can be posed as questions when evaluating our behaviors.
- Size, i.e., How much of our time does this take up?
- Weight, i.e., How much importance do we give to this area of our life?
- Intensity, i.e., How much effort are we putting into this?
These questions can be directed to any topic, not merely spiritual ones, but they're handy for setting the tone and guidance of what you want to do with your time on the planet. Answering these questions for ourselves and our present situation of what we want to be doing and what we're currently doing will help us to reset our internal scale.
Taking time out of our lives to detach from our standard identities helps us have a fresh perspective on these questions. Making a specific trip for spiritual renewal is something that nearly every major spiritual tradition recommends. The Muslims have the Hajj, the Jews have the pilgrim festivals, and the Hindus have their yatras. The advice given to a worldly person - or someone like me, primarily focused on my little life, filled with the responsibilities of making money and caring for friends and family - is relatively straightforward in all traditions.
Go to the forest! This is the advice given to the materialist, and it is said for a few reasons:
- Traveling makes it easier to understand that people everywhere are dealing with the same problems and that we are all connected
- Being in nature has a grounding effect on our psyche
- Going somewhere that isn't normal for us helps us separate from our standard identities
- There are fewer distractions from daily life when we enter the forest, which is very helpful for prioritizing spiritual things.
- Nature makes us realize we are not the center of existence - we are merely a guest in this world.
The last point here is probably the most relevant to our daily lives because most of us live in cities or fairly developed areas like suburbs, rather than a cabin in the woods with WiFi. Going somewhere different than our normal environment where there are fewer distractions is primarily helpful because it breaks us out of this bubble we inhabit and facilitates resetting our internal scale.
Society fosters the idea that we are the center of everything because everything is built around us. Not only is everything made exclusively for humans, but the varieties of institutions and establishments in society exist solely to cater to our various needs and desires as individuals. And now we have the Internet, which enables us to remain in our own worlds, gorged on personalized algorithmic meat in the form of Instagram memes and suggested articles.
As soon as we detach from our existence in Civilization™, where everything is built and revolves around the human experience, we can see that we are not the center. When we are in nature, we realize that we are, in fact, quite small and insignificant. Our lives are fleeting and temporary; nature has existed before us and will exist after us. This insight is what I mean by resetting our internal scale, and the man-made monuments of machinery (such as airports) we encounter daily are a significant roadblock to having this insight daily.
As I travel to England for a personal spiritual retreat next weekend, I'm choosing to meditate on my internal scale and answer for myself the questions that pertain to it. Because I'll be detaching from my devices and going on a retreat, I'll take a break next week! See you all the week after.
Happy to be taking a break,
-Sid
