Restlessness, Interest, Choice

To feel the brightness of the sun, to taste salt in food, to laugh at a good joke. These are some of the small things that make up a life. And for every experience like those ones, there are countless ways to describe them. Recently, I’ve been thinking about three features, or qualities, of everyday life that I will try to capture. I wonder how we all experience and relate to them.

Restlessness seems inescapable. Upon waking up, we are called to action. We may want to stay in bed where it is soft and warm, but we are pulled to leave. Pulled by what, exactly? You tell me. I may feel the urgency of the day’s requirements. Or I have individual pursuits that I would like to attend to.

Either way, something is being asked of me. I am needed. I play a role in other people’s lives. To ignore that responsibility is certainly an option. And doing so would not imply a singular meaning. This feature inhibits us from staying still too long. Stillness eventually begins to feel uncomfortable. Even if it is simply getting up and pacing or walking about, that can be enough to quell the restlessness.

It matters less what the activity is and more that there is activity. Because perhaps to live is to act, whatever that action may be. It is to navigate an already existing maze-like environment before you, beginning in the sacredness of the early morning hour and extending until your head lays on the soft pillow. And then it all repeats.

If restlessness gets us up on our feet, interest directs us. It is implicit in my act of writing this text. Some things capture our attention and some things do not. When something captures our attention, it does so fully and completely. Nothing else distracts us from it. I feel drawn to this subject and not others, these particular words in this particular language. There are grooves in my mind, cognitive patterns that go in some directions and not others.

There probably are explanations for the way each person’s interest functions. I’m less interested in those details and more in the appearances of those details. They are only partially known to me. Despite not knowing the underlying processes completely, the feeling of importance is nonetheless daily. Certain things feel urgent and in need of my attention. Your age, culture, and experience surely influence the direction of our beam of focus. It seems to be a matter of how energy is expended. Conservation.

An interest is related to restlessness. It is one of the reasons that I am called to action. I may be interested in seeing a movie, for example. It is a motivator, but hardly the only one. A piece of it is the attentive scope. Field of view. When looking at scenery, some things stand out and others do not. They grab your attention.

Sometimes an interest is both a desire to understand and be understood. To understand is to know the limitations of your knowledge. For any kind of work, there is what you know and what you do not know. Most people are able to demonstrate the former and seek to learn the latter. Action aims to accomplish both through feedback from the environment. Turning on the stove. Buying a ticket. Fetching groceries. Composing a message. These interactions involve a desire for successful communication.

Yesterday I was merely looking at a flower. I looked at it for only so long until my attention waned and I looked around for something else to occupy my focus. Some things stood out, they are salient. Aberrations. Deviations. Surprises. Almost like a kind of vigilance system, making sure there are no threats. This phenomenology of daily life tends to be related to survival, no matter how far removed we are from satisfying our basic needs. Then attention drifts from basic needs to more complex needs in the same cyclic pattern.

And yet, interest does not determine our actions alone. In the end, it comes down to choices. Thousands each day. But while we may feel restless and drawn to our interests, we do not always inevitably choose to do so. The exact kind and the extent to which we can choose from a variety of options is debated of course. Again, the details are less pressing here, more their appearances. The way it is perceived. The feeling of choice is that of weighing options and ultimately deciding on one. One choice is to let go of restlessness. It may feel like resistance, fighting an urge to move. It may feel like a struggle. But it may also feel like catharsis.

Sometimes you scratch your head, but you wouldn’t say that you weighed the options before acting. Although, sometimes it does. Multiple urges happening at once. A fly lands on your head, you spill a glass of water, an alarm goes off. Itchiness, frustration, surprise. Pinning down a unified description of making choices seems always out of reach. Complete descriptiveness is elusive. So we’re left with incomplete explanations, but always continued activity. The matter remains open. As it should be.