Jen Knox's Blog, page 23
February 21, 2023
On expansion
There are life events (the external journey), and there is our perception (the internal journey). To reconcile the two, well . . . let’s unpack that.
In Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality by Frank Wilczek, there is a concept that the best way to view the internal and external worlds is to explore the idea that they are one and the same. The author won the Nobel Prize for Physics, and he sets up his book beautifully in his preface by saying “There’s a lot to unlearn as well as a lot to learn on the journey to deep understanding.”
He discusses the way a child begins to learn about the world by compartmentalizing and assigning meaning, watching and recording patterns, then ultimately making predictions based on those patterns. This system is how humans have studied nature and, ultimately, other humans’ behaviors in order to create their internal worlds. As we grow, our patterns and histories then take on varied meanings and interweave with emotions to create stories (memories) and even philosophies.
I personally believe that anyone stands to benefit from exploring their life story (commoditizing it … well, that’s for another blog), and I want to explore this question in more depth through the lens of exploring both what happened and what we felt/thought/saw (not necessarily the same thing).
To reconcile the inner and outer, we need to ask how much of our story and our perspective can be traced to the internal world alone. How much truly happens to us? How do we remember and measure our lives against expectations (ours or others)?
As I am exploring my own life story with as much honest detachment as I can, I am realizing that the way I saw the world at various times in my life truly did create my reality by creating my aims within it. Not everything was a response to lack or pain. So much of the change that occurred in my reality boiled down to my burgeoning ability to hold a vision of something more, despite conditions.
In his book, Wilczek introduces the cosmic distance ladder, which refers to how Astronomers calculate the distance to astronomical objects from our planet, intergalactic to extragalactic. The “ladder” essentially means the method in which we measure distances from Earth to, say the sun, will only work to a certain point. As we expand our reach, conditions change, and we need a new way to measure. And this holds true for successive increments of distance. What works for one sequence of measurement will only work to a certain point.
The way our internal journey shows up on the page (or in any self-analysis) may amount to our personal “rungs” of expanding perspective.
There come times in our lives when, regardless of what’s happening externally, there’s a shift in the way we see what’s happening around us and the tools/skills we need to utilize change. That job we hate suddenly doesn’t become so bad when we take more initiative, or that dream we had seems less important now that we’ve clarified our mission. We must step on a rung to get to the next.
Ultimately, I’ve come to realize that there is no ease of living, not that I can tell. The more people I meet and the more stories I hear, the more I believe this. But there is an ability to reevaluate where we are and where we want to go. We can reach the cosmos, after all, if we are willing to understand that what’s worked in the past is just enough to get us here.
Reconciling the inner and outer journeys may mean not only observing what’s around us but also questioning our assumptions as we look back, trying to find those moments or times when the way we measured our lives changed completely. For me, these times seemed to materialize when least expected. Panic attacks arrived when things were peaceful. Growth came when things were most difficult.
It is often mysterious. But one thing examining our internal journey can offer is an invitation to expansion that is only possible when we consider that what we see is not all there is.
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February 14, 2023
On EI & writing a novel
Not long ago, I did just that. I apologized to a small restaurant staff on behalf of a family member. She’d arrived at breakfast late and looked exasperated the moment she sat down. Despite smiles and niceties directed her way, this family member treated both our server and our fellow tablemate rudely. As time passed, she became increasingly impatient, and I couldn’t figure out why.
I had to respond, but how?
"Compassion is . . . a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity." -Pema Chödrön
While I teach things like emotional intelligence and situational control at Ohio State, understanding theories can only equip us with so much. It’s never particularly easy to respond to an emotionally heated situation when we’re caught up in the moment, especially when initial attempts fail. The best we can do is find enough patience to take a step back and allow our limbic brain to finish its song & dance before responding.
A simple choice to pause, to force a sliver of hardwon patience, allows us the ability to cultivate compassion, but what good does that do? Training ourselves to take this pause takes time, but when we can pull it off this moment offers processing time and often a much more desirable outcome. It also offers us perspective. After all, when we take the time to remember that we too sometimes lose our cool illogically, we can better relate to extreme behaviors and not react.
Okay, okay, so emotional awareness (or “intelligence”) is a thing we can develop, and this can help us in the day-to-day, but what does this have to do with writing? I remember a teacher once telling me that the lessons we need to learn in life are the lessons we need to learn on the page—our limits and weaknesses show up in our work the same way they show up in our lives.
For me, this is and always has been a lack of patience. A desire to ignore the value of the pause.
As a young/new writer, I knew this: emotions are the currency of creativity. Without anger, I don’t think I’d have written a single creative word. Without sadness, I wouldn’t write empathetic characters. Without joy, I couldn’t offer those glimpses of hope.
That said, anger does a shit job of revision. Other terrible revision partners include grief, sadness, worry, romance, and elation. Revision, especially in longer work, takes emotional calibration. It takes more than a pause. And to write a novel takes a shitton of pauses. It takes months and sometimes years to create the same processing, perspective and desirable outcome one might be able to manage when dealing with an unhinged tablemate.
My first novel, We Arrive Uninvited, was a seedling in 2013. I wrote some of the scenes that remain today way back then, and I caught the emotional resonance of the entirety of the novel in that first year, maybe even the first days, of writing. I thought it was complete in 2015. I thought it was complete in 2017. I thought it was complete in 2020. It was completed in 2021, and it is just now about to emerge to either fanfare or a tepid response—who knows? But what I know is this: it is ready. It’s fully cooked. It is my best work, and I’m proud. Prouder than I would’ve been in 2015, 2017, or 2020. I know it’s ready because I can see myself at the table with my family, watching chaos ensure the same way I can see myself at the computer, saving “_FINAL” again and again.
And I can see what happens when I allow the pause.
The last server to come to our table and find herself berated was angry. She snapped at my tablemate and then made eye contact with me alone as she spoke to her. I nodded and told her to bring us the bill as the voice next to me continued to complain about the lack of quality service.
Thanks to the pause, I reached out to the upset party and placed my hand gently on her arm. She was too upset to register my touch with anything more than an increased annoyance, so I asked her if she was okay.
I told her the meal seemed complete, but maybe we could pick up the discussion another time, or continue it at my house. She left, and I got the bill. I apologized to the staff on behalf of my family member, and they seemed surprised.
“I apologize as much as I can on behalf of another person,” I said. But as soon as I said it, I knew it only did so much. We can’t apologize or make up for the acts of another. Nor can we repair anything another human has done, but we can recognize that we are so often just a few upsets and a few pauses away from acting much in the same way they did, especially if we haven’t learned and trained to take that step back.
That simple step that so few people take. And to be fair, I am only just beginning to learn this lesson myself in both writing and life.
On Creative Emotional Intelligence
Here’s a sample video on Creative EI for a longer course. The exercise is simple, but I find it rather useful.
February 7, 2023
On humility and humiliation
A writing student recently told me that she was avoiding writing because she didn't want to be humiliated.
“You won’t be humiliated,” I wanted to say.
But the words would’ve been insincere. Audre Lorde said our silence will not protect us, but silence sure can feel like a snuggly place to hide.
To put one’s interior journey “out there” in the public arena, whether fictionalized or not, can often mean a certain level of humiliation. In fact, even sharing art with good friends is an act of incredible bravery. Things will get messed up. Things will get messy. One’s fears of humiliation most certainly could come to fruition.
Humiliation: from late Latin humiliat or ‘made humble.’ The original meaning was ‘bring low’If we think of the root of humiliation, it is only possible if the way we identify or would like to identify is challenged by another. And yet, is to be ‘made humble’ necessarily a bad thing? Could it be seen, instead, as a gift to the world that supersedes any external goals attached to one’s art?
A willingness to be humiliated is the great superpower of the public artist, and a willingness to be humiliated, to be humbled, is to truly live.
To me, literary publications feel great but, here too, they come with profound humility. I believe the best possible quote to describe a writing life (or any artistic life) comes from A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles when the narrator is describing what is referred to as the “Confederacy of the Humbled.”
"Knowing beauty, influence, fame, and privilege to be borrowed rather than bestowed, they are not easily impressed. They are not quick to envy or take offense. They certainly do not scour the papers in search of their own names. They remain committed to living among their peers, but they greet adulation with caution, ambition with sympathy, and condescension with an inward smile."
I post blogs that will no doubt have errors and issues. I share work I might change my mind about later. Thoughts evolve and change and lose context. Ideas can be good one day and bad the next. But how do we find the confidence and trust to share our ideas anyway?
To put one’s voice out there in the world is to set oneself up for humility, which might come with a fleeting sense of humiliation. As a proud member of the “Confederacy of the Humbled,” I just wanted to share that I wholeheartedly believe that it’s all worth it.
Some say the secret is to take ourselves and our work less seriously. But perhaps the point is to dive into the humiliat and learn to live expansively and share our thoughts anyway.
*Speaking of all this, if you’re not sick of my words yet, read about ASCENSION from the perspective of a table busser at a horrible little diner in Ohio. #truestory
**My next post will be On Patience & Writing
February 2, 2023
On ChatGPT
Similar to the way cats and dogs mature at a rate seven times that of humans, I feel as though I’ve matured (to the threshold and beyond) about three times as quickly as most well-adapted people. The fact that I feel about 120 years old is just another side note in this joyous adventure of being a human in the world, and it might explain the following thoughts.
I was an early adopter of technology. I worked an average of three jobs leading up to and throughout college, and one of those was helping Google create algorithms in the early 2010s by manually accepting/rejecting search results. In other words, my moonlighting gig was pretty much what led to ChatGPT-like and other AI programs. That’s right, folks, I am part of the problem (or gift?) of AI.
But look, I had to eat then, and I was poor.
So fast-forward to 2023 and, as a professor and writer, I am not a fan of what I helped create. I told ChatGPT to write me a story of 1,000 words about a young girl who finds empowerment, and it came up with a story that fit Freytag’s bill with a beginning, middle and end. AI dusted off its hands after about 90 seconds and stood back to examine my reaction. I shrugged, but inside … Well, I was a mixture of emotion.
While the story itself was not great literature, it was about on par with a beginning writer’s attempts at their first or second or tenth short story. It had the elements, but it lacked soul. And it also lacked polish. While I think AI will graduate to achieve more polish, I do wonder if its writing will ever have soul.
Thoughts?
Examining this subject in a different light, I also want to address the tech from an educator’s standpoint. (This might get me fired, so it’ll be for subscribers only.)
January 31, 2023
On fortitude & joy
The image of a light bulb atop our heads, in other words, could be quite literal if we had the right power cord.
The ways we generate, contract, expand or expend energy are fascinating because they illuminate the human mystery. But energy is not necessarily a good thing. I like to imagine this lightbulb being changed by the quality of energy, which would…
January 24, 2023
On the every-woman anthems of the 90s
Prior to this invention, there were only portable radios that offered limited broadcasts. The Walkman was a gift that extended beyond entertainment value alone. It enabled us, I’d discover later, to find a new way to disappear, to be introspective in the world, to augment emotion, and to master the senses—all while being accompanied by a soundtrack to make our lives feel more cinematic, our roles feel justified.
I wouldn’t own my own Walkman until I was thirteen, but the day I first listened to Whitney Houston’s “I’m Every Woman” while walking to the mailbox under the predatory gaze of a man creeping close in an old Cadillac, I knew my life would never be the same. I couldn’t imagine an existence in which I could not escape into such an anthem. It’s all in me, Whitney said. What’s all in me?
I didn’t know much about the every woman then, but I knew she had a soundtrack. She could imagine an existence in which a walk down Mount Pleasant Avenue would dim if she was left to ingest the raw and gravel-like sound of that man’s voice calling to her before easing away, or the bottle being thrown from a car or the gritty bustle of High Street nearby. The Walkman was there, too, when discord peaked. Or, worse, at the moments of soul-bending silence that would come on Saturday afternoons before overdue confrontations arrived like slow-moving cars.
At fourteen, I’d been told my mother had been the reason my parents divorced. She had to move, while my father kept the house. As she struggled for years to find suitable pay in exchange for hard work, my mother would be the one who seemed in the wrong because she did not fit a mold. No woman in my family did. It would be two more years before I’d purchase Gwen Stefani’s “I’m Just a Girl,” and scream it out as I got dressed in the mornings.
When I was growing up, I’d constructed an image of the ideal woman that went something like this: beautiful, extroverted, a community builder, selfless, contagious laugh, never complains, and always knows the proper etiquette. Did I mention beautiful? She was ambitious but never overstepped or took up too much space or said uncomfortable truths. According to the legends of my family, none of these attributes lived in my genetic current. I was destined to be selfish and ignored, aloof, and probably one among many to navigate the seas of the mentally ill.
My Walkman became more magical with each tape, and while most songs were more about diminishing women than building them up, I clung to those that suggested something new. Songs by Alanis Morrissette, Destiny’s Child and Eve enabled me to change the very rhythm of my life—a timeline that could now be sped or slowed, energized or romanticized, depending on what I needed to augment in my life. My collection of possibilities grew with the number of beats. Most deliciously, I could drown out the perils of being a teenager and fully dream, falling deep into soundtracks that offered more hope than my immediate worlds seemed to. The blanket of predictability would change with the right rhythm.
I used music to get through and, sometimes, to justify bad behaviors. To imagine being a woman treated with respect, not being called too much or too little of something, was impossible growing up if I listened to the collective mythology. Even Whitney, who introduced me to the idea of the every woman, wasn’t immune.
My mother was the reason for my sister’s rebellion, or so the family myth went. My grandmother was the root of my panic. Her mother was the reason for her mental illness. Women in my family were archetypes of destruction, and their fleeting offerings ceased to exist beyond reproduction. But in songs, I heard collective strength—the strength I saw in the women I knew.
Perhaps one day we will easily be able to deconstruct what’s ideal. If we find the right soundtrack, we’ll understand that acceptance is the anthem we all need. Around the year my parents got divorced, I found the ability to lower the volume in a world full of myths. And while I wouldn’t avoid them completely, over the years I would slowly come to realize that much of what I’d been told was about as credible as what a girl might’ve heard if she took off her headphones and acknowledged the misguided advances of a man in a slow-moving car.
Meditation: Connecting to Truth
Next week, I’ll be posting “On Joy”
January 19, 2023
Observations: on writing nonfiction again
I had only begun to write about my journey. And in many ways, I had yet to fully understand it.
What I wrote about then, specifically, was what I had decided amounted to poor decision-making skills as a child and young adult. I wrote words I had yet to fully understand the definitions of, and I molded them in cadences that flowed. I wrote scenes from my …
January 18, 2023
Impress yourself
The difference between manipulation and influence seems huge, but maybe it isn’t. When we begin to study human nature for the purpose of getting others to listen, we need to be sure we have a message worth listening to. Otherwise, we’re just trying to be admired.
I feel like this is true for writers, too. So many (myself included) want to be “heard” by …
July 28, 2022
Coming soon
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