What does your name mean to you?

How do you identify with your name?

The other day I heard someone call out for ‘Kevin’ and I immediately felt they were in good hands. I wasn’t even the Kevin they were asking for. I just associate my name with quality and efficiency. I know it will be done right.

In reality, the other Kevin could have been a complete loser, but this didn’t disturb my calm. It was a Kevin and that meant quality.

I remember back in high school we had a diving contest. We were supposed to do something weird diving off the platform into the pool. I was in the contest and did the weirdest move I could think of. I recall thinking it was pretty average but was pleasantly surprised when I got called up for round 2. They liked me, they really liked me! I stood in line waiting for my turn. I stepped up onto the diving board, ready to wow them. The judges looked at me, “Oh, sorry, we meant Kevin B.” Talk about the walk of shame. It’s enough to bring a high school sophomore to tears. Not being called up is one thing. I wasn’t too invested in it to begin with. But when I got called up for another round my pride jumped on board. I’d made the cut. But I hadn’t. I so hadn’t, that they didn’t even consider that there were two Kevins in the contest. I was so out of the contest in their minds that there was only one Kevin and I wasn’t it. Ouch!

I take pride in my name and associate my actions with it. I strongly identify with my name. It is a critical part of my identity. I often don’t even think about how deeply it’s wedged into my psyche, but there it is. It is a fundamental building block of my identity. I have been called Kevin since birth.

I don’t like disparaging remarks about Kevin’s in general. If I hear someone talking smack about a Kevin, my ego jumps in to defend.

I’m glad we don’t have a president named Kevin because I would have to separate my identity to allow for criticism of a Kevin that wasn’t me.

When you take a long step back. Given how deeply ingrained your name is to your identity, it has to be a really long step. It can be very difficult to step back this far. But when you do, it is interesting to see how much your name is just another label.

It’s a label that means something to others.

It’s a label that means tons to you.

It’s a label that you find being used to identify yourself and in turn locking yourself into a behavior. You may find when you label yourself with your name you are in fact setting your expectations based on that label instead of based on who you really are.

Who is that? Oh, that’s Kevin.

Don’t get hung up on labels.

Namaste,

Kevin

You have been told to reach for the stars. It’s good advice. But remember to reach for one at a time.

I am attending a technical conference this week. I always get very “into my head” at these conferences. Sure there is a strong technical component for learning and connecting, so my brain gets into that and starts to build new models for how the universe works.

But the part where I really get into my head, involves people watching and comparison. Oh my goodness, the comparison engine goes into overdrive.

I know more than that person.

I know better than this person.

I wish I knew as much as her.

Wow he really comes across as put together.

Wish I could present like that.

Wish I knew that level of architecture.

etc…

etc…

The voice in my head is having a feast.

I am constantly ‘dialoging’ with myself that I should know more technical details. I should know more computer languages. I should know how to manage web servers better. I should be a better system administrator. The list of perceived deficiencies goes on and on. At the same time my head voice wants me to know more about architecture and how systems are put together. I should know more about security. I should know more about internet infrastructure deployments. I should be able to design large systems…

The truth is, I can do a lot of these these, but I can’t do all of these things. I know a lot of programming languages, but I don’t know all programming languages. All my brain needs to see is a single example, where I don’t know something, and the judgement starts.

Why did you never learn that?

Why don’t you know more about that?

He’s younger than you, how come he is better at that then you?

The truth is I know a lot. The truth is that I know enough.

The truth is that I am adequate and perfect. I am exactly who I am supposed to be.

The truth is, there are lots of days when I don’t believe the truth.

I often find myself judging my own experiences as inadequate. When in fact my own experiences are perfect. They are exactly what they need to be to make me the man that I am today. Adding a burden of perceived gap between what I know today and what I think I should know, doesn’t make me better. It actually degrades my value.

By seeing myself as inadequate or lacking I am simply feeding the voice of doubt in my head. This voice is in need of a diet, not a good hearty meal. There is no need for me to spend my precious time preparing food for the voices in my head.

This inadequacy leads to reaching. But reaching from a place of inadequacy is like looking for balance from a place of imbalance. If the foundation of your search is all wibbly wobbly, then no matter how strongly you build on top of it, you will always be wibbly wobbly. So the reaching becomes frantic and instead of reaching in one direction, or picking a few discrete goals, you reach in all directions, you pick all goals.

Instead of trying to reach a single star, you find yourself reaching for all stars.

You cannot do everything at once.

You cannot reach in all directions at one time.

You cannot boil the ocean, you must heat up one pot of water at a time.

Remember one of the most important skills for reaching the stars is focus, not having long arms.

Focus, breath.

You are adequate and perfect.

I am too.

Namaste,

Kevin

I walked on a crunchy leaf the other day. It was a hot day, the sun was baking the blacktop. The air was still and the thermostat was approaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The crisp leaf had fallen from a tree and the summer sun had baked out all of it’s life juices. I looked up to place the sun, I could not see it. Between the sun and I there was a beautiful tree.

The tree trunk was a mottled white and brown, large patches of each color covered the trunk all the way up. As if a guernsey cow had been good in a past life and was reincarnated as this tree. The lime green leaves covered all of the branches. Together the leaves and the branches teamed up to create a canopy that blocked out both the sun and the heat. As I walked briefly under the sheltered stretch of cool sidewalk I pondered the tree and it’s released leaf.

The leaf cannot live without the tree. Yet it is also not dead upon release. It still has life in it, yet now, it’s days are numbered. How would you describe the moment of time between it’s separation from the tree and it’s connection with the ground? Freedom?

When attached to the tree it is part of the whole and part of the system that is the tree. The tree provides nutrients to the leaf to grow and unfold. In turn it provides nutrients to the tree extracted from the sunlight.  It may dream of one day being free, but that freedom comes with a price. For a moment it will fly and be set in motion by the wind or the air currents as it gently makes its way out of control toward the ground.

Remember that freedom is not control. Freedom requires being free, nothing more. The experience of freedom is relative. What are you free from? The leaf is free from the tree. But it is not free from gravity. It is not free from the wind. Only for a moment is it free from the ground. Yet relative to it’s past association with to the branch, it is free.

What if we are the leaf?

What if our moment here, in this life, is just a fall from the tree?

We separate ourselves from the larger tree and this moment, this instant that we live here on earth, that we consider free, is just an flash of time. A brief experience of separation from the source. We spend much of our time wondering what we are missing, because we are so used to being connected to the source. Everything we knew before was being part of the whole, and now, for a brief moment, we are free.

Freedom is relative. We are still bound by rules and roles and contracts. But we are free of the source. And sometimes we’re not sure what we’re supposed to do during the fall… Enjoy it!

It’s only an instant. A flash of light compared to the larger picture. But this is your moment. This is your freedom. In the end your shell will land on the sidewalk used up and dried out. But you will return to the source and reconnect as you were.

You are not presently as you were. You are as you are.

Experience what you have instead of seeking what you had. What you had will come again.

But what you have is this moment, and this moment will never come again.

Namaste,

Kevin

Have you ever seen The Curious Case of Benjamin Button? It’s an interesting story about a man who ages backwards. He is born As a withered, shriveled, old, decrepit man. As he ages his health slowly improves and his body becomes younger and younger.

It’s a very… well, curious story, based on a short story by F Scott Fitzgerald. I’ve always found the idea intriguing. How would your life be different if you aged in reverse? How would it impact your behavior if you knew your best health was yet to come?

I’ve often considered, as I’m now several years that other side of 40, that life is a process of learning, followed by a process of unlearning. Meaning that we spend a large part of our early years making logical leap, filling in gaps with assumptions and believing what we are told. As our knowledge becomes more well rounded and complete we begin to identify these gaps/errors/falsehoods.

In engineering terms you could say your thought processes were standing on a bridge that had been laid out with good intentions. But upon further inspection you find that the bridge has no supports under it and if the slightest bit of pressure is put on the bridge, also known as the idea, that idea will collapse and leave you at the bottom of the ditch. Philosophically speaking.

So the second part of your life tends to be a process of trying to walk backwards.

Similarly to trying to undo a tangle of rope, or in this modern age to be able to user wired headphones that have been wadded up in your pocket all day. You have to grab one end and trace back till you come to the first knot. Working out that knot gently and then moving on to the next. Retracing the steps of the cable through and around itself enabling it to regain it’s original form and utility.

The nice thing about the unlearning process is that you are facilitated by the tools you have picked up during your early journey. You have the ability to validate stories now. You can draw your own conclusions. You can trust your own instincts. When you are a child you trust what you are told because you don’t have any other information to go on. As an adult you now have the tools to vet your conclusions and research those base assumptions.

The process of unlearning isn’t always easy. It can be downright painful. And it isn’t always complete. You can’t rebuild the whole infrastructure in one day. So you must deconstruct and rebuild a bit at a time, to avoid a mental collapse.

Consider that our mind is like a large chalkboard. When you are born you start with a clean slate. Over time you fill up the board with all sorts of information. Now as an adult you can audit that information and establish where to use the eraser and where to update the equations.

To quote a great and powerful teacher “You must unlearn what you have learned” – Yoda

We owe a lot to our upbringing and the foundation provided to us by our parents and teachers. But the time is here to begin walking backward.

Perhaps we will learn to walk backwards on water.

Perhaps we will unlock the secrets of the universe.

Perhaps we will simply make peace with our brothers and sisters that don’t deserve our subconscious prejudice.

The knowledge you have learned, has boxed you in and narrowed your focus too far. You’re bigger and better than all that.

Namaste,

Kevin

The Forest

I feel the forest around me.
It protects me as I am wary of life.

I travel along the winding path,
an echo of my spirit guides me.

I see the future behind me.
To go on, I must turn back.
I must leave myself behind to
travel this new direction.
A path of my own without myself.

-Kevin (1992)

It’s all about contrast and focus.

Do you notice the walls in your house?

Mentally you’re used to avoiding running into them. (Though I still have trouble with door frames every now and then.)

They break up the spaces of your home.

Give you privacy and separation.

They hold the roof up.

But in general they can pretty much go unnoticed and unremarked.

Now shift your attention to the wall. Find a bare patch of the dull boring wall and stare at it.

Not so dull and boring is it?

Well okay, maybe it is kind of dull and boring. But, the closer you look at the wall the more nuance starts to appear.

The walls are not really flat and nondescript. They can be kind of bumpy, or slightly irregular. Maybe they’re patched up like mine with a little putty.

Then there are the shadows playing across them. Light filters in and the color shifts in your mind’s eye as the underlaying true color remains the same as it ever was.

Then you look away again and your mind begins to edit them out. They’re just boring white walls again, no attention needed, nothing of interest.

The detail is always there, the depth is there, but most of the time you don’t notice.

You notice contrast where you give focus.

Where you put your attention the contrast deepens.

Where you focus, your mind begins to highlight differences.

Suddenly a simple wall becomes a battlefield of lightness and darkness. Shadows mixing with light in a contrast of image. You look away and it’s all gone.

Attention is in fact deceptive.

Inattention is equally deceptive.

If you don’t pay attention to something it will blend to all look the same.

If you pay too much attention to something the contrast will make you think it’s an ocean of malcontent and cacophony.

Seek balance between attention and inattention.

Find the placed where you can see the contrast, but know that we’re all the same.

Seek for the place where you are not deceiving yourself in either direction.

The truth, as always, is somewhere in the middle.

The mind is a contrast engine. Contrast creates drama. Contrast draws attention to the light.

A good photographer knows how to work with the light, drawing attention to their intended focus. Using darkness to draw attention away from what they don’t want you to see.

The images you are seeing are a lie.

Sometimes it is another lying to you. Sometimes it is you lying to yourself. They are images generated by the mind and constructed through a particular focus. Whatever they want you to see… Or whatever you are looking for. Drawing attention away from what remains hidden in darkness. Just because you don’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

Generate your own light. Illuminate the corners of the world that often remain hidden.

Light is a tool. So is darkness.

Become the light where light is needed. Become the darkness where dark is needed.

Seek balance.

Namaste,

Kevin