Each of us came into the world unable to exert any direct influence, unable to even feed ourselves! Some of us were born with the proverbial silver spoon in our mouths. Others of us beat steep odds by just surviving childhood. It wasn’t our choice, either way.
But whatever our circumstances, as we grew, we became aware of our thoughts and started to understand the place of our own needs and wants in a wider context than just ourselves in the current moment. We learned that wanting a cookie doesn’t mean you get a cookie. That’s an easy if unhappy lesson. Beyond learning that our desires/needs aren’t met simply because we have them, we learned that context matters: Sometimes there ARE no cookies. Or cookies are something that happens only after broccoli. Or cookies must be shared.
Across so many different contexts we learned patience, waiting, delaying gratification, and planning…all of which require a strong awareness of where and when we are in relation to the context in which we exist.
That initial awareness and the lessons that it brought are what makes it possible for us to live more or less comfortably and fairly with others, taking turns and cooperating. We can set and achieve goals, give up something small today in return for something large tomorrow, and wait until the time is right for specific actions. These are fairly sophisticated strategies and more or less how I suspect most folks live. It allows one to avoid being jerked around too much while simultaneously optimizing actions to a relative degree. It’s probably a win, as things go; avoidance and thoughtful planning will keep you in cookies.
But if we’re aware of our awareness, a whole lot more becomes possible. Again, while we can’t necessarily choose the path we’re on at any given moment, we can do far more than use our awareness to intentionally shape our actions. Think of a camera. Instead of just pointing it at different things (how basic awareness works), we can use a wide angle lens, filters, different shutter speeds, and even use it with a microscope (and see molecules!) or a telescope (and see galaxies!).
In other words, we can use awareness of our awareness to CHOOSE A NEW PERSPECTIVE…to literally change our minds. We can intentionally add to our awareness by adding to our knowledge. When we do that, the world based on our awareness changes. WE change. We can make a quantum leap from where we are at any moment by working with our awareness. The difference might be between a strategy for getting cookies and a strategy for maintaining physical health through attention to nutrition. They aren’t really comparable in any straightforward way, but we can appreciate the value of the difference with respect to quality of life.
Awareness of awareness means that we can decide that where we stand—the exact point on a path—will proceed in a direction that does not make a straight line from where we stood yesterday. We are not prisoners of the momentum of our yesterdays and our path doesn’t have to be the path of least resistance. We can change a thousand things in our life in the current moment, each of which will affect our life in some (possibly small) way. More critically, we can change a thousand things about our awareness and how we’re using it in the current moment. That doesn’t just change our life…it changes us.
The more aware we are of our awareness and the more willing we are to work with that awareness (explore what we can do with our camera), the more agile we will be in not only thoughtfully creating the circumstances of our lives, but in changing our understanding of what is meaningful. This is the foundation on which we can build a more sustainable life, full of consistently better and more informed choices.
And the occasional cookie.
