Friction and Resistance at the Beginning

When I was a freshman in college, I made a few poor financial decisions. The week I got my first student loan refund, I shelled out a good chunk of change for a solid turntable, amplifier, and pair of speakers. This was not one of those poor financial decisions, because out of all the dumb things I bought in my twenties, this was the purchase that endured. Over the next decade or so I gathered a nice collection of vinyl and would mostly listen to music on my stereo system. This challenged me to sit down and listen, I mean really listen to music: flipping the record and listening until the very end, setting the needle back to rest, carefully removing the record from the turntable, returning it to its sleeve and back on the shelf, returning to the couch for some mindful daydreaming to follow.

Listening this way required a lot more work, effort, intention, and slowness – compared with just popping on headphones and shuffling a playlist on Spotify – but it also yielded so much more joy and satisfaction from the experience.

Then, a few years back I bought some wireless speakers so my records could play throughout my apartment instead of just one room. Over time, the convenience of just opening up Spotify and streaming music throughout the house replaced my devotion to intentionally sitting down and playing records.

From there, the convenience of putting on playlists or mixes I made took over my devotion to intentionally choosing albums. From there, music, instead of the intentional activity it once was, became background noise to a busy lifestyle devoted solely to 'getting things done' at the expense of rest, doing nothing, daydreaming, reflection, and opening up my senses to LP-length journeys of the likes of Air's Talkie Walkie or Brian Eno's Another Green World.

Wait, but what does this have to do with friction? I promise, it connects...

Bringing it back to the past year or so, I made an intention to carve out more space in my life to bring back an old joy: sitting down and listening to a full record, front to back. And as I engaged more and more with this practice, I was struck by the metaphor inherent in my choice. Playing more vinyl, getting in touch with the physicality of this fascinating and somewhat cumbersome wax disc, I was able to really tune in – pun absolutely intended – to what it was that made vinyl records so unique and able to reproduce music with such depth and fidelity.

The sound emanating from a vinyl record is due to what is carved away from the wax. These 'grooves' of negative space in a record represent the sound waves of the music's source. The needle, set in the groove, journeys through the groove's hills and valleys in a spiral towards the center, creating beautiful music along the way (which, of course, likely includes silence and noise, resonance as well as dissonance – it wouldn't be good music if it was all 'good vibes' would it?)

Watching the record spin, I couldn't help but realize that vinyl provides such a great metaphor for how to create sustainable habits in our lives. It's not about what we add on, but what we take away. Importantly, new habits have to be carved from 'moldable wax of our lives', not sprinkled on from the outside.

Practically, there is a huge difference between going to the gym because 'it's what people do, so it's what I should do' versus going to the gym or engaging in some form of movement because your body truly wants to move! The former is based on what Taoism sometimes refers to as the 'human mentality' which is more of a top-down, outside-in approach. The latter speaks to the 'Mind of Tao' – the truth and way of what our body and self is asking us to cultivate in our lives (which I see as more of a grassroots approach to habit cultivation).

I often think about this when I start running or exercising after long periods of inactivity. The first few weeks might be difficult, because I am actively doing the work of carving out that new groove. There is friction, there is resistance in that carving. But the more I stick with it, the deeper the groove becomes embedded, and the more it feels that we're just effortlessly falling into the habit, like gravity drawing us into the 'way' of the groove (of running, rollerskating, making nourishing meals for yourself, taking your tincture, having intentional and meaningful conversations with a friend or partner, etc...).

This also occurs in the practice of meditation. Many people think, "oh, meditation, it's going to be so nice and pleasant!". More often than not, this is not the case. In fact, Buddhists acknowledged this friction in the process of cultivating mindfulness by outlining the Three Stages of Mindfulness, which move from effortful, to effortless, to spontaneous mindfulness.

When it comes down to it, the habits we fall into have to do with grooves we intentionally carve out of our lives. There may be habits or grooves that aren't serving us that we've unconsciously carved over time which have become deeply embedded. In these cases, carving out new habits can be quite a challenge, but really it's all about showing up for your Self and what your body truly needs (not what the culture, or societal beauty standards say you should do)–in the end, these may look the same to someone else, and that's okay. It's our approach and mindset that makes it sustainable and true regardless of what others think.

For me, the habits that keep me away from my center are often habits that originate out of a path-of-least-resistance approach and feel something like comfort, convenience, or pleasure (like streaming a playlist over – gasp! – having to flip a record!). Of course, playlists have their place... and comfort, convenience, or pleasure are fully welcome on occasion, but if they become the only motivating forces – at the expense of say, intention, slowness, and challenge – we may find ourselves stuck in grooves that short-circuit like a record skipping, that don't allow us to fulfill our music and arrive fully at our center.

At the risk of wearing this metaphor thin, I'll call it here, but leave you with this: All of our habits taken together comprise the music of our lives as we journey toward our center. Some habits can keep us stuck in place, preventing us from finding our center. In the end, what kind of music do we want to share with the world?