How to Escape the Chatter
Hey,
This week on my podcast I talked to my friend Amrit about the "chatter."
Podcast episode: https://anchor.fm/pranavsquestion/episodes/What-Can-Heidegger-Teach-us-About-Modern-Life-emh7qh
What's the chatter?
It's a phrase from the philosopher Martin Heidegger. It refers to the everyday distractions we use to escape our lives. It's what I (in past newsletters) called our existential band aids.
Every day you distract yourself. You do it through the news, social media, through Netflix, and through all sorts of stuff.
Imagine how much you could do if you sat with yourself quietly every day for a couple minutes?
Imagine who you could be if you everyday you let yourself have a couple pockets of aliveness?
Imagine a life that you actually lived rather than one you just managed?
We are afraid of sitting with ourselves. We are afraid of the awe of human-ness because it also reminds us of the terror.
We are remarkable weird things cast in a strange universe, we can't control much about our lives and we're hurtling towards you know where.
Instead of ignoring these facts, we must embrace them. We must let our fragile-ness inspire us.
Martin Heidegger was a complicated philosopher, a pretentious nostalgic, a Nazi (who then denounced Nazism)... basically he was equal parts a douche and a genius. His genius idea simply stated is this:
We have to wake up.
We cannot live zombie like lives of distraction. We must always remind ourselves that we are alive. It's this reminder that will make our lives meaningful.
Escaping the chatter and remind ourselves of our "being" of the fact that we exist is important. But don't take my word for it, here are quick, easy, lazy ways to try this out for yourself
Here are 3 easy daily experiments to try next week
Take 5 during your lunch break to take a walk, breathe quietly, or sit outside without your phone, laptop or any notifications
Take 1 minute every day to look at the beautiful colors of the sunset (or the gloomy colors of the clouds).
Right after work put your phone and laptop in another room. Time yourself, for 30 minutes do something without going to retrieve either.
Seriously try it and see how much you really are addicted to the chatter.
And once you realize that, maybe you'll take steps to escaping it.
Curious to see what you find,
Pranav