July 18, 2024

Relevance

HI ,

One of my favorite simple observations is that truth is abundant; it is everywhere. The challenge is to find relevance. The sun appears to rise in the east and set in the west. This is a truth worldwide. But is this relevant to what is important to you right this moment? Probably not. Millions of bits of data are flowing into your nervous system every second. These bits are truthful points of information about everything inside you and around you. But our brain can only process a tiny handful of that information in any given moment. We ignore more than 99% of the truthful data we are given and selectively pay attention to less than 1% of our world each moment. For information fans, the brain can process 11 million bits of information each second while we can only be conscious of 40 to 50 bits. Put in context, whatever you think you know is only a drop in the ocean of information around you every second. For this reason, whatever your attention grabs hold of needs to be relevant to you and your needs. 

This perspective points out how important relevance is to us. This plays out on every level. The arena that has my attention right now is the world of our relationships. The relationship one has with their boss is highly relevant to their continued comfort and survival. If one fails to attend to that relationship, one could easily get fired, lose their income, and in short order, lose their lifestyle. The same could be said of one's relationship with their mate in its relevance to their comfort and lifestyle. On the other hand, what someone I don't even know thinks or feels is typically not at all relevant to me. That person believes their thoughts and feelings are relevant to the world, but the reality is they are just part of the background noise that gets ignored by almost everyone. We all want to believe that we are important, but 100 years from now our existence will be unknown. About one person in a million leaves an enduring legacy that is recognized one hundred years later.

This fundament temporary impact we have on life becomes a powerful subconscious driver of our actions here and now. Our sense of identity comes largely from how we impact others in our lives. It is their feedback to us that provides the mirror that allows us to see ourselves. Just how important this is to us was understood by the old Amish communities that would use shunning as the ultimate punishment. Our modern prison system is a watered-down version of this practice in which a convicted person is withdrawn from society as unworthy to participate for some time.  It is a way of saying that they are not relevant to society for the length of their sentence. They are simply unimportant.

So where is all this going? Why would I be contemplating this right now? Well, another class of people lose relevance to society and life in general that I am becoming more aware of – old people. I have been in practice long enough that I have watched many of my patients transition from middle age to outright old status. I am even having patients dying off. This feels really weird to me. One day they are around and I see them every so often, and then suddenly they are gone. What I see that seems to be a major factor in their downhill health slide is loneliness. But even those who have lots of family around, I see a degeneration of their interest in life when they stop seeing themselves as relevant to anyone anymore. Their existence ceases to matter on a day-to-day basis to their loved ones. Yes, they still see everyone during the holidays and on other special occasions, but day to day they gradually become invisible.

Not everyone slips down this slope into non-existence. One favorite tactic is to become the grandparent babysitter for the grandkids. This gives them a new lease on life. It is fascinating to relate to folks who were corporate executives talking and dressing like movers and shakers a couple of years ago, now coming in with grandkids in tow and fully dressed for the role in their polyester stretch and comfortable shoes. Others take on the role of movers and shakers in a new venue by giving service to some charity. Some of these patients end up working much harder in their volunteer charity role than they ever did in their work life. The idea here is that these patients found ways to continue having an impact on their lives. They stay social and participate.

I am taking all this in on a very personal level. I turned 70 a while back, and even though I am still 38 in my head, I see the need to plan for my future. I have never been a social person, but rather a confirmed workaholic. My idea of recreation is researching articles for my newsletter. My service as a doctor is my participation in the larger world of other humans. So far my method of staying relevant has been by continuing to work. That is why retirement is not really in my vocabulary, but realistically I know that I am slowing down. That is why I only work half-time these days. I have set a goal of keeping this up until 2032 just to meet the 50-year mark as a doctor. But what happens after that? How do I create impact and maintain relevance to affirm some sort of purpose for continuing to take up space?

This has been my personal inner dialogue, but I suspect that finding meaning in life speaks to many folks. To quote Burt Bacharach – What's it all about Alfie? (For you young tots, Alfie was a 60's film about a self-centered pleasure seeker being confronted with finding a greater purpose to life, something more about empathy, understanding, and authentic love.) I don't want to get into my ruminations on the deeper nature of love right now, but the quality of our relationships with others ties directly to the quality of our experience of being alive. I am not one of those people who feels the need to hang on to life as long as possible. When the quality of life drops below a certain point, I am ready to check out. That is why I work so hard to maintain my brain function. Without cognition, I don't see enough quality of life to keep the home fires going. I need a purpose to keep me going.

As I was discussing this stuff with Ellen, I gathered a better sense of what having purpose means to me. For me, the purpose is all about mutuality. That sounds a little odd, but it flows from my basic view of why we exist in the human experience. I see our purpose as learning how to create harmony in our creation processes through beneficial mutuality. We move from the self-centered perspective of childhood where such things as competition, selfishness, demand, entitlement, jealousy, greed, and revenge run the motivational show to the adult perspective of respect, cooperation, and beneficial mutuality as the basis for participation with others. With the right perspective, the trick to healthy aging is to remain engaged. It does not really matter what I am doing as long as I stay engaged with the right attitude.

I was concerned about losing impact in my life as I grew older. But I think that the real story is about staying relevant by growing up and becoming that adult I was describing. Relevance is a feeling concern in the present moment. We can't feel relevance in some hypothetical future time, only in the now. So I don't need to be concerned that no one will even know that I existed one hundred years from now. All that matters is that I engage in life with the right attitude today. I am enough right now just as I am. I remain relevant by showing up in life.

Take care,

David          

Ellen

Ellen has been experimenting with a new painting style, as I suspected she would do before tackling the big canvas I bought her. Here she is showing a little sample of multi-layer painting where she has a primary subject that she then covers with an iridescent cover paint that will reflect away visibility from some angles and not others. Other layers are placed above these to create a painting that has a different appearance depending upon what angle you view it from.

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