So as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, one of the things I do is that I’m a programmer. I do this both in my day job and on the side. It can be very enjoyable work, but at times it’s also frustrating, often quite daunting. Recently I’ve been tinkering with adding some messaging capabilities to my side thing, Project Longbottom.
At first I wanted the project to use push notifications. I dug in hard, investigating what looked like a promising way to add them in, leveraging a big library that’s part of the tech stack I am using. Then I ran headlong into an insurmountable limitation. Well, crap.
A few days ago I found an alternate way to get where I wanted, using SMS notifications. I started putting it in place. Hit another speed bump, that my wonderful brother Spacey helped me get over last night.
Now I’ve got this plan, this recipe for how I’m going to build this thing. I can see the step I’m on, and see the ones coming up.
That’s actually a pretty standard behavior for me, in almost everything I do. I make a plan, a recipe, but I only hold onto it loosely. To really lean into this particular food metaphor, let’s take that a bit further. Maybe I start out wanting to make a caprese sandwich, but realize that I’m out of mozzarella, so then I take the sliced tomato and capers, and mix them with some sautéed mushrooms over a salad.
It’s a Taoist thing, a form of intentional mindful practice. In Ron Hogan’s awesome gritty, modern translation of the Tao te Ching, Getting Right with Tao he describes this as “forgetting what you know, and understanding what’s real.”
“Can you hold on to your ego and still stay focused on Tao?
Can you relax your mind and body and brace yourself for a new life?
Can you check yourself
and see past
what’s in front of your eyes?
Can you be a leader
and not try to prove you’re in charge?
Can you deal with what’s happening and let it happen?
Can you forget what you know and understand what’s real?
Start a job and see it through. Have things
without holding on to them. Do the job
without expectation of reward. Lead people
without giving orders.
That’s the way you do it”
This behavior is a huge thing for me. I fall out of it daily, and then find it again. When I let go of how I think things should work, and refine my recipe based on how things actually work I become calm, relaxed, and profoundly more capable.
I’m grateful for it.