Uncontrollable Environments
Tim Ferris suggested intentionally fucking up in uncontrolled environments. The idea being that placing yourself in a space you can’t control might bring about a useful something, and get rid of a less than useful something. Environmental factors are generally not controllable. To some extent you can familiarise the space to a point of optimal functioning for your personality. But the environment has its own weather, plus it doesn’t know it is owned. This means the environment is always beyond our control, we just prefer to imagine it is to make life seem more cordial.
If the politeness of life is dropped then the unruly character which is latent, can come to light. Letting the factors that can’t be controlled live, is a beautiful precedent. It is also a different way of allowing for experimentation. Unlike usual scientific analysis which thrives in what can be predicted and repeated – necessitating a set of controllable measurables – this kind of life experimentation is all about what cannot be predicted or repeated. It thrives on the life soil of seeking who you are and what you make of things when life gets a little wild. The easiest way to go there is to go nomad – meaning change your familiar environment. You don’t have to travel far to find shaky ground. And when you do, strive to make mistakes, because the quicker you turn to error, the faster you can reiterate and build another approach. Plus embracing failure is a signature of happiness (Iceland a case in point).
But there are risks to this way of being. You win some and you lose some. Recently, over Christmas, my partner, his son and I were staying at a place in the Marin, California, which went sour. We picked up his son from the airport, arrived at the place and I spent the next three days dealing with food poisoning – an omen, at least in my mind. Four days into the stay the gas went out, which meant no heat, hot water or stove. Conditions were unlivable. So we called the innkeeper. In a nutshell she didn’t deal very well with the situation. After a cold night we waited until four on Christmas eve to be given the go ahead to leave which prompted three nights in a hotel before finding a lovely cottage for the remaining time we needed.
When the not so good places roll up the pressure is on, it isn’t comfortable. Being pregnant in this situation made me ever more grumpy. But it is really in those moments that the nomadicism gives you a chance to shape yourself a little differently. You get to see yourself without the usual anchors. Sometimes you pull together – which we did – and the relationship becomes the anchor.
Out of this grit the magic places become oasis’s of a different kind. You realise your internal formations (as my lover so aptly articulates) are being landscaped by the place.That place is not a fixed construct or ever truly controllable – even the most polished home in the heart of cement world is precarious. You can’t intentionally alter place without some losses, like you can’t expand without some risk. And if failure becomes something good, a necessary part of the equation, then the score card is not tallied by how many great places you landed in, but how you navigate the inevitable unpredictable elements.
And you have to know when the risk outweighs real needs, when establishing order or getting some comfort is needed. With a baby in my belly and nine year old by our side, creating security fast was necessary. We exercised control by adapting and forming a new plan. Maybe that is really the only control we have. And it worked out, with all new amenities duly appreciated with added grace.
