Whose Mountain # 20

A big question that drove the last 20 editions

What do you do when you have some free time and nothing to do? Maybe you watch a movie, read a book, or plan your weekend. Not me. For the last year, I’ve been captured by a question; and it’s taken over my life.

I’ve been captured

I used to live for adventure – the adrenaline rush of a stunt, the uncontrollable release of laughter as the excitement drained away, the late nights hatching a more daring test of myself. But lately, the rush seems dull, the stories less interesting. The question is all I can think about.

In writing parlance, questions create open loops. Great writers use questions to capture our attention, leaving us with a gap in our curiosity. They play with our very nature, which needs an answer to that question, wants to fill in the gap, and will keep reading until we have it. The best writers are masters at always creating open loops that pull your attention forward, asking and answering questions along the way until they’ve carried you to the end.

Look at All The Light We Cannot See and count the number of times you wonder what will Werner do, will he see his sister again, how will Marie-Laure escape the chaos she can’t see, or what is the stone which she hides. It’s a master class in playing with our emotions through questions.

Once you see it, you’ll never look at a great piece of writing the same way. Whether it’s an essay, a poem, or a work of fiction, you’ll start to notice the small gaps they create, and how those gaps manipulate your emotions until the author closes the loop. Even seeing it, I struggle to control those gaps. I struggle to imitate the master’s mastery of my emotions.

I’ve been captured by a big question. 

It’s one of those questions that demands a hushed reverie. We don’t talk about it in polite company. We only hint at it. We use euphemisms so that we don’t scare others. Talking about this question is taboo. Because it doesn’t have an answer. Instead, it makes everyone uncomfortable, and they start avoiding you to avoid their own discomfort. Or when the question is thrust on them so that they can’t escape, they solemnly work up enough courage to ask, “Do you need help? Are you depressed?”

I’m not sure whether I asked the question or the question asked me. 

The first sign something was growing was when I was unable to sleep. I was a great sleeper, until I wasn’t, risen by a pull that I couldn’t grasp. It left me staring at the ceiling, sneaking downstairs to watch a fire, hiding under the blankets on the couch while my dog stared accusingly at me for invading his kingdom. 

Then came the emotions. Like a pregnant soon-to-be mother, I was ravaged by the signs of flooding hormones. I cried at shadows on the wall, lost my thought mid-sentence, hid from friends and from myself. I desperately wanted others to help, but getting help is hard when you’re afraid to admit what’s happening. Instead, I painted a smile on my face as I tried to continue my day-to-day life, not understanding who I was becoming and how my world was reacting.

As I was staring at the ceiling one morning, watching the blue light slowly make room for yellows, reds, and pinks, the question finally emerged. One minute you're watching the shadows and then everything changes. 

Will it matter that I was born and lived? How will I know? What will I do with that knowledge?

For a brief moment, the world stopped spinning. I sat in complete silence as the question flooded my vision, flooded my hearing, stimulated my touch. It even smelled like a sweet burning. But only for a second. Then the cascade started.

Logical me: Of course it doesn’t matter. The universe is 13.7 billion years old. My time here is inconsequential. The question is absurd.

Emotional me: It does too matter. I have two children and a family and people who care about me and others who want to see me succeed. They’ll be better for my having been here.

Logical me: In two generations, no one will even remember my name. Much like my own children don’t know Pops except as a story, my great grandchildren will only maybe have a vague story about me to hold on to. And even if they do know my name, that’s not really me.

Emotional me: But it’s a damn good name. Maybe I should have passed it on to my kids.

And on and on and on. 

But the thing is, we can’t hold that big of a question for long. Like masterpieces of literature, open loops need closing at the end. They can’t go on forever, existing permanently in the liminal space. If they do, we get bored and lose our way. We start losing others. Not everyone wants to hold that space forever, not even me.

So what would the great storytellers do as our guides? 

I keep coming back to the idea of loops. Those storytellers constantly ask and answer questions; give us enough to feel like we’re getting it. If it works in a novel, why wouldn’t it work in life? After all, writing lets us know what we believe. It reinforces those qualities that are noblest in us.

Which I think is what this newsletter comes in. You, dear friend, have joined me on a quest for a way to answer that most spiritual, existential of questions. Maybe you didn’t know it – hell, I’m not sure I knew it all along, but you were here. Looking back over 19 newsletters and 11 essays, I haven’t exactly taken the advice of those great writers. This essay, this exploration, has been much more emergent. Maybe it’s time to close some loops.

So where have we been? What subjects have we explored, even as we didn’t know what we’ve been exploring?

• Cultivating Capacity: Wrestling with existential questions requires discipline. It requires self awareness, time, and talent. We need to cultivate the capacity to explore what emerges. In Community is Not Your Savior, What Risks Will You Take, How To Think About Mastery, Life is Better on the Edge, A Lost Worldview and Abundant Time, I started building a mental model to cultivate that capacity. We’ll explore more of this together, but you can expect this line of reasoning to feel tighter, more like a closed loop. 

• Lessons from Others: Thinkers since the rise of man have plumbed this most existential question, often bringing back knowledge in their own ways. I suspect that the most genuine answer can be found through the mystics, those people who have come to touch the ultimate truth and shaped their own life around it. I don’t remember what started this suspicion, but it led us to Understanding A Man, Why Mysticism May Be The Key To Some Of Our Toughest Challenges, Updating My Models Of The World, Mystical Experiences and Mystical Insights. This is still very much an open loop. I plan on revisiting this line more in the coming months, to really learn what we can from the past. In fact, I plan on opening this beyond mysticism to other thinkers I admire.

• Interconnection Of Life: How do you live your life when you’ve been struck by an existential question? Everything seems interconnected; everything comes back to everything else. Which has led us to What I Think About When I Think About The Future, On Wilding and Rewilding, I’m Creating an Anti-Fragile Family And It Starts With Our Home, Participating In Our Growth, and even Handstands And Play. Much like cultivating capacity, this line of exploration should start to feel more like a closed loop. You can expect we’ll occasionally come back to this as we learn more, but not as frequently.

And yet, as we close some loops, I’d like to open some others. 

• To quote Emerson, “Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.” Can we use fiction to explore the unexplainable in a way that reality can’t? I believe so, and so I intend to start writing fiction. I expect this to emerge as we go, but I’m excited to share stories intended to open our beliefs.

• The “craft” of exploration. Much as I believe fiction can be the vessel through which we explore, I believe the tools, techniques, and craft of that exploration matter a lot. What are the techniques – psycho-technologies in cognitive science terms – that allow us to develop insights beyond what rationality and information support? This is the craft of writing, experiencing, and connecting that causes us to think, act, and change. So let’s talk craft.

Looking back at the path feels clarifying for me. Thank you

Karena

for suggesting I look backward. I feel renewed.

There are more updates to come in the near future, but you’ll have to keep reading for those. That’s one open loop I’m not ready to close yet.

Until next week, have an intentionally curious week,

Latham

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