The Surrender Project: Day 19: Awareness Over Everything

Today was a bit of a reset from the previous days of feeling that high energy and extra tuned in to life. During day 17 when I was sitting outside in the sun just glowing in the energy that was surrounding me I had a thought that this would happen. That there would be a day soon where I wasn’t riding high on life’s beauty, stupidly enamored with the potential for what this life will have in store for me. Another sign that there is a balance in emotions and feeling things. I knew there would be a day where I came down from that a bit and just existed in a more composed state. In all honesty it wasn’t a low at all, merely back to normal feelings with a few future worries sprinkled in to add a little spice of course.

The day started with a meditation, except this time I went outside to the courtyard of my hostel to enjoy some sunshine on my skin and restart that circadian rhythm of mine. This was one of the least productive mediations I have had in a long time. If you recall I recently mentioned that I typically get a feeling to be done around 30 minutes? Today I thought the time was up, as it was a restless meditation overall and I couldn’t seem to focus on anything except thoughts, but it had only been 14 minutes. I instead walked to a new restaurant for breakfast. Yes, you are in fact reading that correctly, I mustered up all the courage I could and stepped foot into a new food establishment for my first meal of the day. My breakfast is really lunch, as I eat two meals a day and snacks with my current lifestyle. The reason for trying a new spot is because one of the guys at the BBQ yesterday happens to have a family run restaurant a block from my hostel. I got some paneer masala and a few buttered rotis. At this point I am craving something different in my diet, something fresh and not so heavy. Every meal is a heavily spiced, heavily buttered curry that I eat with two or three heavily buttered rotis. I just feel the weight of it after and need to seek out a change at some point here. However, it seems like everywhere I go that’s the food they have. With the only fresh food being fruit from the little wooden carts on the street. Maybe I go for a day of only fruit for a little cleanse or something. The challenging part is the food does taste incredibly good, it is chock full of flavor and a depth of spices that seems to satisfy every part of my hunger. Anyway, after breakfast the guy I know at the restaurant drove me back to my hostel, even though it is about a four minute walk, it was nice of him. I wasn’t feeling super compelled to write. In fact, I sort of just sat with my laptop open for some time, thinking about where I was at mentally, what I wanted to do today, and trying to scratch an itch I couldn’t quite pinpoint. It Is like the addiction to sugar, or caffeine, or any other item that gives us a dopamine rush. For example, after a meal if you always eat an ice cream cone or some other dessert, you will find yourself craving that when you finish eating a meal. When you try and break the habit, you might notice this desire for ice cream where you almost justify having some. Or you might be sitting down thirty minutes after a meal and have a desire to do something but not sure what it is, it is an itch that you cannot place. It is because you didn’t get that dopamine rush after your meal from the sugar, so now you take out your phone, or have the desire for a drink. It can be anything. I mention this because this is how I felt sitting there staring off into the distance as my computer screen turns dim and then shuts off. I wanted something, a desire to either do something or get something that I couldn’t place. Eventually realizing it is probably my brain craving a dopamine rush that it is used to getting, probably from scrolling funny videos on Instagram. My favorite word right now is awareness. I am sure this doesn’t surprise those of you who have been reading this blog consistently. Awareness feels like an all encompassing term that can be applied to anything because a step above every moment of existence and every thing is awareness. In this case, being aware of this feeling and being able to take a step back and realize it is just my mind craving a habit that I am trying to kick. That I feel uncomfy because I do not have that dopamine that I am so used to. The power of awareness is being able to gain control of yourself and your mental space. Instead of feeling weird but not actively thinking about why, I just feel weird and then reach for my phone or anything to take away this weird feeling. The same thing as being addicted to nicotine, sugar, alcohol, or anything. It is being aware that the feeling isn’t you. You do not need that glass of alcohol to wind down. It is your brain craving a dopamine rush and because it isn’t getting it, it is making you feel like something is wrong, or anxious, or any other term you want to use to describe that slightly yucky feeling. But our brain also knows that if we just take a sip or have one drink, or scroll for 10 minutes, that this yucky feeling will go away. That is why it is so hard to quit addictions, because it is so easy to rationalize falling back onto the thing that makes us feel good, literally on a neurochemical level. This is where awareness shines with all its beauty, because as soon as you are aware that your mind trying to justify “one more” is just your mind trying to feel comfortable again, and you are aware of the yucky feeling in the first place, you can sit more comfortably in that space of anxiety or craving. I am not saying it is going to be easy. But being aware and understanding it is okay to sit in an uncomfortable place, that you are retraining your mind to not need that unhealthy dopamine rush, is half the battle in my eyes.

As I say almost every single day, I have no idea where that thought process of addiction and awareness came from, but it seems to make sense to me and is applicable to my state of feeling. Again, these blogs are just as much written to me as they are to you, my writing is just a way for me to think out scenarios and better understand my mind, my awareness, and everything else in between. For example, in my notes app I had a note saying, “Chill day, but how you’re a bit uneasy feeling.” And that is it. So, I see that note from yesterday and start to write about that uneasy feeling, the direction it takes is completely unplanned. The fact that I wrote about addiction and dopamine is just where my mind happened to take me as I am writing, it is a way for me to realize these feelings for myself. To better understand why I was feeling uneasy in that situation. It is almost like I start writing about a problem or situation and the answer comes to me on the page. This is just me sharing these lessons that I am learning and realizing in real time. I hope this makes sense to you. It is also part of the reason why I continually say “I have no idea where that thought came from” because I honestly do not, I have no intention about writing about most of the things I do, they just flow out of me and it is without a doubt my absolute favorite part about writing. But I also want you to understand that this writing about addiction, dopamine, and awareness isn’t something I am preaching to you, but relating how I am learning it myself in real time, and maybe you can hear these stories and relate it to your own life, challenging your own growth as well.

I do eventually start writing, maybe after twenty minutes or so of staring off into the distance thinking about life stuff. Mostly that little anxiety continually creeping in about what I am going to do to make money when I am done traveling. Not immediately, but eventually get to the reminder that it is okay not to know, to just keep surrendering to it. I am not sure how many times I am going to have to learn this lesson, but it seems to be something that challenges me almost daily. The actual practice of surrendering, of giving up the control of not knowing, of trusting that it will work out optimally. That I will know when to go after something and when to be patient and keep letting it flow. This wasn’t the only reoccurring lesson from today, as after I was halfway into writing I realized my fingers couldn’t keep up with my stream of consciousness and I was actively so engaged in writing that I didn’t realize I had already written three single-spaced pages. This seems to be a common theme when I sit down to write, it just flows out of me and I never realize how long it is until I finish as I rarely stop. The lesson—or reminder might be more appropriate—is that action eradicates fear. That I didn’t start writing for a while, unsure of what to say for my opening line, but eventually did and next thing I know two hours have passed and I am basically done with the blog for the day. Just start! I have to give a shoutout to Mark Dowdle at some point in my blog because this dude is one of my biggest motivators and favorite follows on social media. If you do not know him, he is doing a running challenge where he runs the amount of miles of whatever day it is. So, January 1st he ran 1 mile. January 2nd he ran 2 miles, and so on until the end of the month and then he resets the next month. He started in May 2023 and is almost done with a full year. In February for some reason he is doubling the day: February 10 is 20 miles, February 25 is 50 miles. Yeah, absolute madman. Anyway, he also shares insights he has throughout the process. Multiple times he talks about just starting, that it is the single most important thing to do to set yourself up for success. Just start, because when you do you find yourself already in it, in the middle of actively doing the thing! But not to let fear take over, because it just builds if we wait before starting. Anyway, this was all from Mark’s recent post about just starting, his words not mine. Highly recommend the follow as this guy follows his own path and calling and just sends it. Back to the writing, well it was another valuable reminder that starting is half the battle, just start. I was originally going to go meet my friend again, but I just wasn’t feeling it. Part of me was telling myself to go anyway, you said you would be free and this is what traveling is all about. This is something I struggle with a bit, the idea of letting somebody down for going after what I feel I want. I didn’t want to let him down by canceling, even if I wasn’t feeling social at all. These types of conversations are things I want to get better at as well. So, without thinking about it too much I picked up my phone and called him, and said I am not feeling very social and might just hangout at my place tonight, but that I would love to hang tomorrow if it works. He says no problem whatsoever, just let me know what you want. I have realized over having some of these difficult conversations over the last few years that it always ends up being fine. The conversation that I dreaded telling my business partner that I was going to quit and leave him on his own. The conversation with my old roommate and one of my best friends, telling him I wasn’t going to sign the lease as planned but instead leave and travel full time for a while. These conversations are NOT easy and oftentimes are emotional. But they always end up going better than I anticipated. I hate the thought of letting somebody down, or inconveniencing somebody because of my own personal focus. I am learning that this is a positive thing to do, as it always works out, and we cannot live our life doing things only to appease others, while putting our own life on the sidelines. Anyway, I felt a lot better after the phone call, and knew I could spend my evening how I wanted.

First step was venturing out to find more food and take some pictures. Even though I felt good after writing and accomplishing something, I still wasn’t feeling social at all. I started by walking the streets with my headphones in, just wanting to be in my own world as I watched the world around me. I didn’t have my camera out, just strolled some streets and walked. I again wasn’t really feeling like taking photos, probably because of the mood I was in and doing street photography in India quickly becomes a very social phenomenon. The same lesson as before kept pestering the back of my mind. Just start. So, I take out my camera and just hold it in my hand, walking the street but not taking any pictures yet, thinking about what I want to capture. I decide not to think too much about it, just shoot wide angle shots of the street. I realize I haven’t shared that many photos where you get an entire scene taking place, giving an idea of what the feeling is to walk the streets. I didn’t even pick out subjects, just clicked at certain times to showcase a full scene. There is so much happening in the streets that the photos can almost seem like not much is going on. You have to take your time with them, notice how crowded the street is, or how there is a car parked in the middle of it for no reason, or the kids playing less than a foot from a car driving by, or the men sitting in groups sipping tea and talking, or the women buying fruit from a cart on the street, or the piles of garbage, or the rats nest of wires with twenty kites stuck in it. I could go on but I think you get the point. There is SO much going on in these photos. Even the simple ones of two men sitting on a curb with a wall behind them. Do you realize how dirty the wall is? Do you feel something when you place yourself in that frame? What would you feel if you were there? In a perfect world these photographs would be massive prints blown up in an art gallery where people could study them with the curiosity that people look at art. Not just a handful of people swiping through them on instagram. I want people to soak in the feelings from these photographs, to imagine what it is like to live here, to walk these streets everyday, to hear the honking and yelling. That is the goal of photography for me, for people to feel the scene in the pictures that I am sharing. Feel the emotions that I am feeling as a group of kids runs up to me from across the street, all screaming “hiiiii” and shaking my hand before running off, or looking at my camera with interest before I offer to take their picture. Or the feelings of men calling out to me from their shop to take a picture of them, to showing them, and then them asking where I am from, as it is the first thing they always ask. Going forward I am going to focus on this aspect a bit, really being intentional with the photographs I share in showcasing the feelings of being here. Maybe some use of video as well to get a bit of a behind the scenes look at it all. It was a beautiful outing taking pictures, as it always is. Every time I take out my camera and take pictures I kick myself a bit for waiting, or not taking more pictures on previous days. I never regret taking the photo, but I do when I do not take the photo.

I grabbed a bite and a chai from a restaurant on my walk home. Something really funny happened while I was eating my dinner that told me I was fully adapted to the environment that I am living in. As I am actively chewing I see a rat run across the floor of the restaurant, about maybe 4 or 5 feet away from me. It scurries inches from an employees foot who jumps a bit out of the way. It ran underneath this cabinet thing and then poked its head back out. You know how I reacted? I took another bite of food and thought about something else. It wasn’t until later that I realized I actively watched a rat run through a restaurant I was eating at and nothing about it phased me or felt weird. To the point that I took a bite of food while watching it poke its head out from under the cabinet. Imagine eating at a restaurant in the U.S. and a rat runs across the floor where all the tables are, it would NOT be a calm event for the passerby who witnessed it. I am quite desensitized to seeing rats, garbage everywhere, poop on the streets, cows, goats, and just about anything else. This was just a realization that I am actually to that point now. To be fair, cows freak me out a bit. They just roam the streets and have little horns and could absolutely fuck me up so fast if they wanted to. Especially when we are on a moped whipping past a cow and the horns miss my leg by inches. I have seen too many videos of matadors getting speared by a raging bull not to fear these creatures just a little bit.

After getting back to my hostel I edit the reel I posted and wrap up the blogging stuff. Finally, around 9:15 I sit down with the intention of watching a movie. I am pretty excited and chose to watch, A Beautiful Mind, because it has been years since I have seen it and I do not remember much. About 20 minutes into the movie my friend calls me, telling me he is outside my hostel… I put away my stuff and go out front to see him, he says to hop on so I do, and we drive a few blocks away where he takes out a Tupperware and hands me some chicken biriyani that his wife made for dinner. Fine by me. I eat it as we just hangout on this side street, order some tea, and talk to local guys he knows as they come up and say hello. It was the same two guys who came and picked me up again. I am refraining from using names just because. We sat outside for an hour and a half, and just watched as groups of men hung out and drank their tea. We had some good conversation as well, discussing a wide range of topics from politics to religion. And more so what life is like here, how it is normal to see this every night: Groups of guys sitting around drinking tea and smoking, catching up with their friends for a few hours. Either sitting on mopeds, the curb, standing, or finding a stray chair. The vibe is peaceful and you hear a lot of soft laughter, nothing too crazy. Nobody drinks alcohol here, especially because I am hanging out with muslim men, so they find their vices in tea and smoking instead. At 11:00 I say I am wiped out and head back, still craving that movie that I just started. I get back and get through the movie, (SPOILER) a movie about a brilliant mathematician who is a schizophrenic and how he manages that. The theme at the end? That love is the strongest and most sure thing out there, even to a mathematic minded man who only sees the world through numbers. Of course, I believe love is at the center of all things, it is the core of existence and the strongest power or energy out there. But I also took it as a reminder to keep going after love in your life. Not just the people who you love, but the things as well. Allow love to be a guide in what you pursue. Allow love to be a guide in everything. A passion for something is typically just a love for the craft. A love for a person or family members is what makes us want to be with them or live close to them when we “settle down.” Just keep allowing love to be a guide as I go through these next few steps in life. Not to settle for anything that doesn’t ignite me inside and make me fall for it.