The Art of Subtle Contentment

I wonder who I'd be if I stopped trying to be who I think I am

State of the Over Thinker

An update on my life and the thoughts I’ve been thinking

The weather is warming so I spend evenings with the windows open, listening to the sound of the wind chimes and the children playing (or dying, honestly it’s hard to tell the difference - and I know that sounds like a statement on society, but what I mean is to the untrained ear a child’s laugh and scream sound so similar floating through an open window, but I digress).

I spent a good portion of April digging in the dirt. I flattened out part of my backyard to extend my DIY rock “patio” and repotted plants until my arms were all scratched from the barbs on the aloe and the underside of my fingernails were packed full of soil. I wish I could say it had been a picturesque scene from an English garden - an ethereal woman floating amongst rose bushes and repotting peonies - but my gardening style is more reminiscent of a six-year-old boy caked in mud and a little bit of snot. (Just a little bit, of course, I’m still a lady).

Spring always brings with it a certain joie vivre; an excitement at the prospect of living and becoming. Every year, I spend time shedding the layers of dust and belongings and dusty belongings that accumulated through the winter months and making room for the versions of me I have always wanted to be. In the end, however, I will remain myself. If I am lucky, one tiny part of my potential personality will stick and I will remain myself, only slightly better.

The question this raises in the brain of an over-thinker is: why do I spend so much time trying to become, rather than learning to experience? I am reminded of the concept of the two selves; the experiencing self and the remembering self. The idea maintains there is the “you” that experiences life events and the “you” that tells the story of those life events. The problem being: the version of you that tells the story of your memories, only remembers the best and worst moments. It does not often take into account duration or repetition.

Each moment of the experiencing self, the version of us that is living rather than remembering and rationalizing, lasts about three seconds. A majority of those three-second moments vanish, unused by the remembering self. We are hardwired to remember the extremes, the highs and lows that dot our life rather than the prolonged periods of mundane contentment. Therefore the story we tell ourselves about our life and the decisions we make based on those stories do not use or take into account the more subtle moments of our experiences. I think there is something poetically dismaying about losing all of those in-between moments.

If we are wired to remember the excitement and pain, and can only make decisions as our remembering selves, how then do we get into our memory the more subtle moments that makeup so much of our experience?

Perhaps the trick lies in getting excited over the mundane. Celebrating the subtly content and rather uneventful moments. Sure, this involves a certain amount of mindfulness, though I bristle at that word because I think it’s been co-opted by the capitalistic self-help / toxically positive crowd, but a practice in recognizing the in-between moments and creating a celebration of them in order to trick our remembering brain into remembering where our happiness truly exists.

If you’re interested in this topic please see Daniel Kahneman’s 2010 TED Talk

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The Art of Overthinking

A creative writing piece based on the thoughts of the month

In Between The Stories We Tell Ourselves

This is how the story goes: Girl grows up, goes to college, starts a career, marries someone special, goes on vacation, maybe has a kid, goes on vacation, gets a promotion, goes on vacation, goes on another vacation.

What happens in between?

cut to: Somewhere on I-80 between West Sacramento and Ocean City:

The dust on the dashboard has been bothering me for the past three hundred miles, but I have done nothing to wipe it away.

The story continues: I’m driving east to start a new life. I don’t know where I’m going yet, but I’ll be better when I get there.

cut to: Somewhere between Beyonce’s “Lemonade” and The Mountain Goat’s “The Sunset Tree”:

The song on the radio is not important, it blends into the sounds of the highway against the rubber of my tires.

Most of life is the act of gathering dust.

The sun through this windshield is baking the idea into me.

The story continues: Everyone asks for a resume, they want to be entertained, and when you run out of highlights to list, you pack up your things and leave.

cut to: Somewhere between the rest stop with the surprisingly nice view and the dinner with the surprisingly bad coffee:

When I reach my destination and let the dust settle, I will think I need to leave again to keep the plot moving.

But life is not the story, it’s the moments in between.

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The Ingenuity of Overthinking

Turning all of these thoughts into creative inspiration

If you write or create something based on this prompt and you decide to post it on Instagram or TikTok, please tag @frietzke and use #promptsonthefritz so I can see what you’ve created.

Listen to the TED Talk (or don’t) and create something based on the idea of the two selves (the experiencing self and the remembering self).

Below are some quotes I found particularly interesting, feel free to use them as inspiration:

1:23 “… a confusion between experience and memory… between being happy in your life, and being happy about your life (or happy with your life).”

9:09 “We actually do not choose between experiences, we choose between memories of experiences”

9:18 “We don’t think of our future normally as experiences, we think of our future as anticipated memories.”

Thought experiment at 11:00 which vacation would you choose?

12:48 “The distinction between the happiness of the experiencing self and the satisfaction of the remembering self”

If you write or create something based on this prompt and you decide to post it on Instagram or TikTok, please tag “@frietzke” and use #promptsonthefritz so I can see what you’ve created.

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Thank you so much for reading (or listening). I truly appreciate each and every one of you. Feel free to leave a comment about any thoughts this made you think.