Truth as the Gateway to Adventure

“If you say the truth and nothing else, you will have an immense adventure as a consequence. You will not know what is going to happen to you, but you have to let go of clinging to the outcome. You have to let go.The truth will reveal the world the way it is intended to be revealed. The consequence for you will be that you will have the adventure of your life.The other part of that ethos—which makes perfect sense to me and I cannot see how it can be any other way—is that whatever makes itself manifest as a consequence of the truth is the best possible reality that could be manifest, even if you cannot see it.”

@dr.jordan.b.petersonSay the truth and nothing else.

The attempt to avoid conflict is also the method by which we avoid adventure. What is adventure, after all, except the walk into the unknown, the fierce presence with everything that presents itself to us, interacting with it with personal agency?

We know the scripts. We know the safe things to say.

How often do we hold back an opinion or a conviction, because it’s something “controversial?” We avoid this “controversy” in case it opens up a conflict - but it’s equally or more likely that it would open up a connection.

The most fascinating people in our lives are those who own their tastes and own their space.

This includes owning their thoughts, and this takes them out of the mold of the average. This makes them enjoyable to talk to, because by speaking with them, we might encounter a perspective we haven’t before, allowing us to learn and expand.

If we, then, are seeking friends and acquaintances with original thoughts who are willing to explain and explore, doesn’t it make sense that those around us, too, are craving an authentic parlay with someone who doesn’t always say what is expected?

Who is going to go first? So often after an interaction with someone I don’t know very well, I’ve second guessed what I’ve said. Often, I’ve followed up to ensure I didn’t step on any toes. The responses are usually “oh I didn’t notice, of course I wasn’t offended!” or “not at all; it was nice to encounter an original thought, I’m intrigued to talk more.”

They say it takes 25 positive compliments to outweigh one negative interaction. Many scientists posit that this is because of our primitive wiring: it’s a lot more important to remember the one tree that has the poisonous berries that will kill you instantly than to remember the tree with the most delicious berries.

From: https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Maslow%27s+Hierarchy+of+Needs%2C+Explained&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Nowadays, as our culture has climbed up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, we haven’t climbed beyond this wiring. The evasion of discomfort is default. To take on the responsibility of making the most of the level we are in, however, recognizing our tendencies to prioritize loss aversion would open up a lot of opportunities. Taking those opportunities is the only way we continue to ascend up the pyramid.

Taking each layer seriously throughout history, shouldering the burden responsibly to ameliorate suffering and decrease danger is the way that our predecessors moved from the bottom of the pyramid to the next layer, and taking the “first world problems” as our puzzle to put together is the way we continue to move humanity forward.

We so often minimize the things we individually and as a culture are faced with as “trivial,” because we (thankfully) aren’t in physical danger, and we aren’t starving. But how does this complacency honour those that came before us, those who fought to structure society in a way that “first world problems” would even be possible? What if they had coasted, riding the coattails of those who came before them, because they thought their problems “weren’t as serious” as those in the generation before.

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”- Gandalf

We are wired for security and physiologically addicted to homeostasis. Regardless of the actual odds, prospect theory has identified the cognitive bias whereby we are twice as likely to take steps to avoid a potential loss than to pursue an equal gain.

Clinging to the status quo and constantly avoiding conflict works in our favour much of the time: our day to day lives are more or less stable. We can predict how people are going to drive, how we will be treated in the grocery store, and we learn through patterns what is expected of us at work, where we meet expectations and no more. No surprises.

Who are the emptiest people you know, though? Anecdotally from observation, the people who have spent their years staying safe and minimizing risk are the least fulfilled.

Research backs this up: deathbed regrets all centre around the things they didn’t do. The things that were true to their desires and convictions.

Norms, stability, and routine provide us a lot to be grateful for. They keep us from regressing into lower layers of the hierarchy, where we would find survival struggles as chaos crept back in.

Is that all we want, though? Status quo? How do we go beyond, how do we ascend?

What if we started to notice where we held back an opinion, be it personal or political, because of loss aversion (usually fear of conflict, judgment, or rejection), and reminded ourselves that a positive outcome is at least equally likely to the negative prediction?

What if we told ourselves the story that whomever we are talking to probably holds some “fringe” viewpoints that they themselves don’t have an outlet or interface for? What if we strategized, knowing that our tendency is to avoid discomfort twice as hard as seeking reward through risk, and overrode that wiring?

What if by our going first, we made a true connection, rather than just safely surfing the small talk, where everyone already knows what’s going to happen, and is already bored?

What if we asked the questions we were actually interested in, risking appearing “too keen,” and opened the door to finding our tribe?

Then there are relationships. Once we’ve known someone for a long time, we know their patterns, fears, and comfort zones. If we do something that we know they wouldn’t immediately endorse, and we hide it, is it impossible that we have then robbed them of an opportunity to expand their mindset and grow? How is that loving to them?

Hiding our actions, our desires, and sometimes even our friends, because we don’t want to be judged or risk disapproval seems only to enable those around us to stay closed minded.

What if we spoke up and told our partners who we’d seen, and what we’d talked about, even when we know they have initial hesitation about that friend group?

What if, after their initial triggering, it opened a discussion that was actually interesting because you could find out more about what your partner values, and thus, who they actually are? What if, even after some initial friction about our choices, they felt closer to us because they knew they were getting truth? What if they themselves had fears they were reticent to bring to the surface, because we just don’t talk about that kind of thing, we are habituated to total predictability.

We all know someone who has watered themselves down to please their partner, and both of them become less of themselves over time. The fear of loss on one side has been enabled and enlarged, and the fear of judgment or failure on the other side has become inevitable, because they have lost what made them desirable at the beginning. These relationships are always doomed to either break apart, or settle into pallid automation, no spark, no life, no progress to be found.

What if the solution to our society’s epidemic of loneliness is to ask what we are curious about and say what we honestly think, allowing others to make up their own minds about us, dropping perception management entirely, because we know that we would rather have a few real friends with whom we can progress, as opposed to a hundred acquaintances who have no idea what we actually enjoy or struggle with?

We filter ourselves to avoid conflict and judgment, to manage perceptions.

But wouldn’t a more effective filter be authenticity, allowing those who are curious to come closer, and those who are addicted to their own status quos to fall away? What are we filtering for, and what are we missing out on?

Besides, smoothing down all of our edges and idiosyncrasies to blend into the average makes us nothing more than average.

We all want to matter and be accepted; that’s why we filter and play it safe in the first place - but then we are nothing, and we can’t connect beyond the surface. So if our core essence or sincere thoughts and questions aren’t interacting with the world around us, it’s not us that belongs or is safe then, it’s merely a safer facsimile of what we sort of are.

If we all want to belong, that implies that we on some level do believe we have inherent value.

If we want to matter, it indicates that on some level we know our individuality is supposed to influence the world around us, that we have a calling.

How do we enter into that life, progress, and forward thinking synergy with our connections except by asking for, and speaking, the truth as we know it?