Raw Dog Reality

I've been thinking a lot lately about how to be more present, more in touch with and within my own physical body. Embodied. It sounds a little bit weird because it's not an idea you hear people talk about very much. Except for maybe athletes and yoga practitioners. It's a really valuable thing to cultivate. And that has been getting more true with each passing year.

Transcript

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This is the Rough Draft. I'm Anthony Alvarado, and today's episode is about outsourcing pretty much everything. I've been thinking about how we have this tendency in the digital age to outsource our attention, our presence, our awareness, and kind of thinking about how to counteract that, how to be just more in touch with the present moment and my own physical body personally, like being here and now. And it's a little bit weird because it's not an idea that you hear people talk about much outside of maybe like yoga practitioners and meditation and athletes, but I think it's like a common thing. Like it should be a common thing. It should be something that everybody thinks about how to do, just like you should know how to like, I don't know, uh make a peanut butter sandwich and find your way uh around on, you know, with a map. And I don't know, just it's basic. It should be about as basic as like knowing how to um cook a meal for yourself. And uh it's just something that I think we didn't have to cultivate previously, but we need to start thinking about how to cultivate being more present, more aware, more here and now. And yeah, it just seems to be getting more true with each passing year as we continue to kind of um yeah, watch everything through this little black rectangle of glass that we have in our pockets. I was biking down Marine Drive a few days ago, uh, riding my bike by the airport over there by the Columbia River. And there's a spot where you can watch the planes take off and fly right overhead, so low overhead that it feels like you could just reach out and touch them. And I saw a family there watching the planes take off. Everybody was watching a plane fly overhead through their phone, you know, and that's not that unusual, but instead of watching this like kind of crazy giant jet uh fly overhead like a story away, like it feels like you could you could like hit it with a football. Um, everybody's watching it uh through their phones and you know, much smaller version that's just like a couple inches wide. And it's it's kind of trippy because I think that that moment really captures something kind of basic about how we interface with life these days, uh, to our detriment, obviously. And, you know, this isn't like um this is not an idea that's like totally revolutionary. I think everybody's kind of saying it right now. Like, how do we get back in touch with being here now, uh being present a little bit more and less having everything mediated through our phones. And, you know, I'm just as guilty as as anyone else of like taking pictures and videos of moments rather than like sitting with them and experiencing them. But I think that we're at a place where we kind of have to be more intentional about doing so, you know, about doing that. Um, for example, last Sunday I just sat around in my backyard, it was a lovely sunny day, and I just sat around listening to some good music on the radio and not really doing much of anything, like literally just sitting there and vibing. And it's something that I've been trying to do more regularly, like once a week, and making just a really mindful effort to not be on any device to just like raw dog reality. And you know, so the example of watching an airplane through your phone is just one example of something that's really common where we are living on our screens and connecting and talking and watching and doing all this stuff via the phone, via laptops, via whatever devices that we could be that's time that we're not like doing the same thing um in person, in face-to-face. And I feel like we're going to be uh coming to this place where almost like with food, you know, there's like very clear distinctions now that have kind of come about recently of like there's organic food, there's natural food, and then there's like fast food and junk food, and making that distinction. And I think that that's very similar to how we could think about connecting in real life versus connecting with our screens. We have outsourced much of our physicality, and now even things like connection, community, and friendship and being present in the moment have also been added to the things that we humans in trying to chase after and get more of and have ended up with much less. And now with the advent of AI, we're in the process of outsourcing our thinking and writing and creating as well. Where does it end? It really is starting to seem like there's going to come a day when there's nothing more we humans can outsource to our technology. And it seems like we're just working really hard to make ourselves obsolete. I think it's time to figure out how to adapt, how to push back, and how to navigate the world that is always going to have these winds and pressures to put a screen in between yourself and real life, or to let a computer do your thinking for you. This is the point in history where every individual has to make the choice for themselves. Do you want to be free or live in a cage? Do you want to be the domesticated version, the brainwashed, caged version, or do you want to be the organic free-range version? And you're the one that gets to make that decision. They say that at a certain point, once an animal has become fully domesticated, it becomes afraid to leave its cage. You can leave the door open, and the animal doesn't know what to do. It's become scared of the wild. It'll just sit there and not realize it could leave if it wanted to. I think that's where we are now as a society. And I think society at large is going to continue to choose the cage because it's easy. But as an individual, I think that we can start looking for ways to break free from that. While we still have memories and can see what life was like before, present moment became so mediated by screens. Now's a good time to face getting more FaceTime, more face-to-face meetings and touching grass and getting sunburns and being outside. Now is as good a time as any because it's only going to get more challenging. Now is as good a time as any to make the effort to reconnect with what's actually real. And how do you do that? I think quite simply the first step is recognizing how much these devices and social media and phones and all that is costing us. Simply paying attention is being on this app or this game or this site or whatever, a plus or a minus, a good experience or a bad. And then choosing, choosing to be more present and more in your own actual life. That's today's show. Short and sweet. Thanks for listening. I'm Anthony Alvarado. This is The Rough Draft. Talk to you next time.