Alex is an economist. He’s a straight-ahead thinker — he grew up in an Eastern Bloc country (it’s not any more, at least not for the moment!), so he didn’t grow up with a lot of extra time to futz around with situations.
That’s why he’s my go-to when I’ve got something that I suspect is problematic — Alex also has a dotted-line-to-the-flaw quality, which can at first seem at odds with his relentless positivity and practicality.
I show Alex an image (of the reality show personality Bethenny Frankel wearing her small daughter’s pajamas — it’s below, and not really important), and he says: “What an odd thing to do.”
He’s right! It’s odd! And — this is the important thing, at least to you and me — that’s all it is, at least that’s all it needs to be in my life.
Now that may seem like a funny way to look at it. But I felt a lot of reactions to this image — a single photo of a person I don’t know! — and I’m not alone. This photo generated a media firestorm. Why?
This photo created a furor because it’s sticky — most people look at this photo and see their own attitudes, fears, biases, and hopes staring right back at them. Emotions attach to the photo so completely that people no longer see the photo — they see themselves in a funhouse mirror.
But not Alex — he simply sees an adult wearing a child’s pajamas.
Why does Alex see it for what it is? Because he is detached.
Alex is successful in seeing the photo and nothing else because he isn’t weighed down with expectations, hopes, and opinions. That’s the First Big Thing in this newsletter.
While you and I think about poor Bethenny in her daughter’s pjs — as we go down a spiral of increasingly unmoored ideas, feelings, & observations — Alex carries on with his life, writing things, saying things, changing his environment, being present and available in relationships that matter.
Not us! We’ve entirely moved away from the thing we are nominally doing — looking at a photo — and are now doing something else entirely.
The Second Big Thing is this: Alex’s detachment doesn’t just save him time, his detachment creates more time.
While Alex moves on with enjoying his life, you and I have remained not one step but at least two behind. We’ve stepped aside from whatever was actually happening and retreated inward, where we can examine how the photo makes us feel — it’s such a sticky photo, there is so much we can judge and condemn, or judge and celebrate, or just shake our heads at, more in sorrow than in anger.
What are we not doing? We’re not determining whether that photo has any relevance, meaning, or utility in our lives, and moving on.
Select what’s yours — leave the rest behind. That’s the Third Big Thing. Wallowing in our attachments — inflicting them, really, on poor Bethenny — isn’t helpful, or luxuriously self-indulgent, or relaxing. It’s upsetting, distracting, and unhelpful.
Information, images, experiences — all this contextless context for our lives is distracting, and it can slow us down. It can feel like we’ve just stepped through a giant spiderweb, and are carrying through the adhesive strands.
It makes it more difficult to determine the next right step forward. It can and does get in the way of things we need to get done.
What Alex knows how to do, and what we all would benefit from being even 1% better at, is look at a thing and see only that thing. He takes himself out of the picture.
This is effective because appropriate detachment, like Alex’s, means his reaction is to the right thing. Attaching our own feelings, aversions, preferences, and so on to this image puts us in danger of reacting to the wrong thing — to something wholly unreal and imaginary.
When we set off in pursuit of solutions to imaginary things — to unreal problems! — we waste time, we waste energy. Sometimes these solutions to unreal problems can even be dangerous.
Alex takes himself out of the equation, and sees the problem as it is.
Can you?