Once, when descending a mountain, I went down the wrong gully. I was shocked to suddenly find myself slipping and sinking on steep sand, headed downhill. Each rock I grabbed nearby would crumble and turn into more sand; I stopped myself by digging in my hands and feet. I learned then that even seemingly solid rock can be deceiving.
Knowing what to trust is a basic survival skill, and not just in the mountains. The chicken you're eating tastes fine, even though you don't quite remember when you cooked it. The driver hasn't stopped, but you made eye-contact, so you cross the street. More often, trust is less about survival than our quality of life. You feed your baby European formula, you drink bottled water, and you listen to the authorities; or not. We navigate life's decisions on the basis of trust.
While trust has many influences — family, peers, media — it's our vulnerable moments that etch it. I won't forget falling out of a tree. Nor will I forget when a philosophy professor made me feel silly in a full auditorium, for suggesting a vegetable can lead a fulfilling life. For better or worse, these moments changed how I perceive the risk of heights, speaking my opinions in public, and generally trying something out of my comfort zone. Each vulnerable moment is when our hands grab a solid rock, but it crumbles, revealing that what we once thought was safe, we cannot trust.
Inevitably, we'll be forced to test what we trust, and how we respond to that vulnerability defines us. If your response is to retreat and avoid discomfort, then what you trust becomes narrow and rigid, as will your life. Or you might rely entirely on others to decide what to trust (family, peers, media), but then you would live in someone else's reality. Vulnerability is the only way to form your own perspective on life, interact with it, and grow.
Although everyone goes through years of vulnerability during child- and teenagehood, as adults you see less change, meaning fewer chances to grow. So you would have to seek them. This is most obvious with our bodies. As a child, you need to learn to open doors, navigate streets, and get home alone. In the distant past survival kept adults fit. But now a desk job will not challenge our bodies to grow and we cannot trust them later in life without exercise. Similarly, we need to test the contents of our minds. If we keep our thoughts and emotions hidden, then we don't challenge them, but if we communicate, and make ourselves vulnerable, then we can continue to grow mentally. So the key to growth is to find avenues for self-expression.
You can express yourself in many ways, by drawing, painting, building, chatting, presenting, or programming. But writing is effective and simple. It's the mind's equivalent of running: nearly everyone can do it, it doesn't take much to get started, and it gives you a good workout. And the effect can be profound, if done honestly. If you've never tried it, next time you're overwhelmed and don't know what to do, pull up a "feelings inventory", write down what you're feeling, and what you would like to feel. It will untangle your knot.
And just like running, writing is not easy. But, by taking out your mind's contents and making it concrete, it becomes clear what survives the trip, and what crumbles and is best not to trust.
I've sometimes wondered how I would do in solitary confinement. As a child, I would make plans for how I would tackle it. I don't know why I would end up there — I imagined it would be for some unjust reason, maybe political persecution. Regardless, I was confident I would maintain my sanity. I would make sure to exercise, and read if possible. Continue to improve myself, and make the best of the situation. In fact, without the distractions of everyday life, I might accomplish something.
To be clear, I would fail miserably if I were there for any extended period of time.
But I like to think back to solitary confinement when I feel stuck. It takes "being stuck" to an extreme, by removing everything you can do in life except the basics. The simplicity reveals how I want to tackle life: life is worth living, you do what you can with what you have, and you try to be your best self.
You can also consider the other extreme where, instead of having no distractions, you are always distracted. It's a prison where you cannot pay attention to anything. You cannot keep track of what's happening, and you cannot make progress. You are overwhelmed, do not realize it, and cannot control it. Solitary confinement restricts what you can do physically; this prison restricts what you can do mentally.
Someone can force you into the physical prison, but only you can place yourself in the mental one. And we face this challenge on a daily basis: the world, with its endless possibility for distraction, entices us to imprison ourselves when faced with pain or discomfort, perhaps through substances, or social media.
The strategy I had in mind for physical imprisonment was to preserve myself by staying engaged, using whatever means available. With no access to equipment, I would do push-ups and squats. If I could, I would read and write and have ideas, and in the worst case, think about life. But, setting aside how realistic this strategy is, in the mental prison none of this works. You simply need to stay away from it.
And that's what I tried to do. When I studied mathematics in college, I removed all distractions by isolating myself in a library, and focused on studying. While that might work for some people, I failed. I came out of those library sessions feeling depleted, and a bit lost. So much for my childhood strategy to tackling solitary confinement.
Through trial and error over the years, I've found what works for me is doing the minimal, necessary amount to keep myself physically, mentally, socially, and financially healthy. I do enough to keep my life rich, but minimize what I do so I stay focused. I balance three things — family, work, and sports — and 95% of what I do should fall into one of those three categories, broadly interpreted. By consciously avoiding the mental prison, and maintaining a balanced life, I hope to create the space and mental clarity needed to pursue my goals.