Peace, Consciousness, and Homeostasis?

The journal prompt was, "What in my life am I still doing because it once mattered to me, rather than because it matters to me now?"

It was an interesting question that had me stumped at first. So, as I often do with such prompts, I rambled along, waiting for the seed of an answer to appear.

The first word that came to mind was structure.

I wrote about how I like structure. I like things organized. I like knowing where things are and, preferably, where they're going.

It's also how I learn. Give me a collection of seemingly unrelated facts and my instinct is to start arranging them until they make sense. I'm not someone who can look at a pile of puzzle pieces and suddenly see the picture. I can't even imagine how someone can do that. I imagine there are some, but that isn't me.

Why is that, I wondered?

Organizing the pieces reduces the uncertainty. And uncertainty is uncomfortable.

As I wandered around on the page in my journal, my thoughts drifted to a book I am listening to right now, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness by Michael Pollan.

In one researcher's definition Pollan shares, consciousness is "felt uncertainty." When everything in our world is certain, we are on automatic. As I heard him explain it, the theory is that uncertainty makes us uncomfortable. To us, it feels like a loss of homeostasis. And, as in the second law of thermodynamics, systems tend toward entropy, so the loss of homeostasis would be disruptive to our system. We are, like all organisms, driven to survive. That forces our brains to search for a solution, giving rise to increased consciousness.

Homeostasis?

The second law of thermodynamics?

Entropy?

Consciousness?

I laughed. Clearly, I had drifted.

This is what happens when I try to answer a simple question these days. Maybe that's the blessing and the curse of retirement. Too much time on my hands.

Yet the question was a good one for just that reason. My world is different these days.

I have no idea if consciousness is truly felt uncertainty, but I do know that uncertainty is uncomfortable for me, and it does produce an emotional response. Less uncertainty feels more peaceful.

Yet there's an interesting contradiction in that.

I enjoy learning, and it seems there is so much more to learn in the discomfort of uncertainty.

I am certainly not arguing that finding peace in our lives is anything but a worthwhile endeavor, but the only way we can find peace is through the discomfort of not having it. In effect, the definition of peace seems to imply a state of homeostasis, which the second law of thermodynamics suggests cannot be maintained.

Shoot. I'm back there again.

Maybe the thing I'm avoiding in all of this is that for much of my life, the things that mattered most to me were the things I could measure. Things that filled a résumé or a bank account.

Not my heart.

Maybe that's what I've been circling around.

For much of my life, I confused striving with growth. I was always working toward something. The next job. The next promotion. The next number in the bank account. There was always another mountain to climb, and reaching the top mostly meant looking around for the next one.

I don't want to live that way anymore.

But I'm not ready to sit quietly until the end either.

I still want to learn. I want to be challenged. I want to understand things I don't understand today. I want to keep growing. And all of that requires some willingness to leave the comfort of what I know and step into uncertainty.

Maybe peace and uncertainty aren't opposites after all.

Maybe the challenge of this next part of my life is learning how to make room for both. To be curious without always searching. To grow without always striving. To rest without becoming stagnant. To sit quietly when it's time to sit quietly, and still get up occasionally and see what's around the next corner.

Maybe the answer to the journal prompt isn't something that once mattered to me and no longer does.

Maybe it's something that never mattered quite as much as I thought it did.

Achievement isn't the same thing as growth.

And peace isn't the absence of it. Both can, and should, exist together. The key is finding the balance.

In fact, maybe the bigger truth is that peace requires growth. And real growth requires a measure of peace. Of acceptance. Of being willing to let go and open my mind and heart to what's next.

So maybe John Lennon answered my journal prompt back in 1969.

"Give peace a chance."