The limitations of restless tinkering

The dotted line between The Sound of Metal and Star Wars' message on control

In quiet moments I know exactly what I dislike most about myself. It’s that I am always trying to create noise. Silence….stillness…is a battle for me. My wife and daughter rightly make fun of me for this on occasion. It’ll be the weekend, a rainy day and the perfect time to sit down and read a book or play a board game — but instead I’ll find something to fix. A way I can tinker. Distract myself and be immersed in a project. I think this is the kind of complex that has seen me juggling: a podcast, a TV show, a book deal, a Substack newsletter, 2 jobs + community activism which I can’t seem to stop myself from engaging in.

It feels at times like the life I’ve built is intentional white noise, and I do it because I’m afraid of the quiet. I want to change that about myself. Even now at 6AM, sitting with my coffee…I want to be working on my day job. Clocking hours. Getting “ahead” of some tasks with entirely arbitrary deadlines that no one cares about as much as I do. But I’ve chosen to sip my coffee and blurb about this instead. Why? Because last night I finally sat down to watch THE SOUND OF METAL on Amazon Prime.

This movie racked up 6 Academy Award nominations, stars Riz Ahmed and starts off with the premise of a heavy metal drummer on tour….who then rapidly goes deaf in the first act of the film. It’s devastating. Ahmed’s character, Ruben, lives for playing drums. Drums are his escape from a few things, among them the fact that he’s a recovering heroin addict, 4-years clean. Then there’s the part of it where he can’t sleep in. Ruben gets up before dawn every day — ready to go, ready to tinker with devices in his RV, ready to drive or do something with his hands.

Every day is a battle for him to stay clean. Being busy is part of the solution. I know this well. My own demons are always there, always looming and there’s nothing that repels them better than being too busy to talk to them right now.

I’m sorry, Stephen can’t come to the phone right now as he's in five other meetings simultaneously. Please leave a message and he’ll call you back, or maybe not.

When Ruben goes deaf, he has to learn a number of things…but chief among them is to be okay sitting in silence, alone with his thoughts, and able to find beauty, not in walls of orchestral sound…but in nothingness…in stillness.

Ruben is a good guy, but he’s a little selfish. Playing music, being on tour and drumming like there’s no tomorrow is the thing keeping away from the needle. Therefore, he doesn’t have much to give other people. He’s kind, but quite emotionally occupied if you really needed something from him. He's a good boyfriend, but the relationship is steeped in co-dependency…not selfless love and service.

Because I’m thinking a lot about my book these days, How The Force Can Fix The World (now live for pre-order btw) I couldn’t help but see the dotted line between this element of THE SOUND OF METAL and my chapter on Empathy. The characteristic of being empathetic is a gift to mankind. It’s part of what makes us human. It’s also being shredded by modernity.

You can find some studies to support the claim that Empathy is in decline in our modern world. The reason some experts think that’s happening actually surprised me. Let me share an excerpt of the book with you to explain:

A popular scapegoat for this decline (in empathy) is often technology. If you’d asked me before researching this issue, I too probably would have also pointed to phones and social media for this unfortunate trend. You see it every day if you’re online. Friends and family acting toward one another in ways you couldn’t imagine them doing in person. Complete strangers making frightening or even threatening remarks in the comments section. Politics is almost always the inciting factor. We tend to think that the barrier social media puts between us and another person brings out this behavior, but the truth is more complicated. In fact, a 2016 study out of Denmark was able to show slight increases in empathy among adolescents who used social media. What Konrath at the University of Michigan points to as driving the decline in empathy more than anything, is simply the distraction factor, both as it relates to technology and cultural attitudes around things like work-life balance. To make this more concrete, what it means is that we have finite emotional bandwidth, we can only focus on so much. Being bombarded throughout the day by news alerts, comment notifications and texts from Mom about her arthritis...really take it out of you. Then when you’re faced with something simple like making eye contact with a homeless person on the street, or something difficult, like withholding judgment on a family friend posting nasty QAnon theories online, you’re just plum wiped out. 

There are a handful of useful studies on distraction and empathy that have shown that when two people sit down to have a cup of coffee, just the presence of a cell phone on the table suppresses the substance of the conversation. “Out of sight, out of mind” applies nicely here. Shalini Misra of Virginia Tech looked at this in a 2014 study, and was able to show that participants got to more personal and weighty topics if their cell phones were not visible. Connection was made that goes beyond talking about the weather and simple pleasantries. The phone isn’t really the problem, it’s everything on the phone that takes you out of the moment, directing your mind to the future instead. 

“Keep your concentration here and now where it belongs,” says Master Qui-Gon Jinn to a young Obi-Wan Kenobi at the start of Episode I: The Phantom Menace. 

“But Master Yoda said I should be mindful of the future,” Obi-Wan responds. 

“Not at the expense of the moment” says Jinn. 

Ruben finally accepts refuge from restlessness in The Sound Of Metal

Think to the future, but not at the expense of the moment. This is some tough information to take in. Because it hits home every time I dwell on it, and I instantly feel badly for how unfocused I can be on matters of the here & now. Work work work work work work….that’s what I think about — a lot.

Because work = money and more money = more choices in life…but at what cost?

Americans (like me!) love to work, and while that’s a noble trait as far as I’m concerned, there’s no doubt that work and the constant pursuit of financial gain dampens empathy overtime. The reason isn’t that complex. Humans most basic instinct is to seek security, and money in the bank equals security. While the average American lives a comfortable life in comparison to other parts of the world thanks to cheap consumer goods and a market that thrives on competition, 70 percent of Americans also don’t have more than $1,000 in savings. Living like that makes every cough your child or spouse gets feel more like an existential crisis than perhaps just a common cold. “What if?” you think restlessly. “Could be something else, something awful.” Your mind wanders to the bank account and you realize just how vulnerable your situation really is. It takes a particularly empathetic person to then wake up the next day, with all this swirling around in your head, and drive to the soup kitchen in service of others… instead of heading straight to work to log some extra hours for a few more dollars. 

Fixings things feels proactive. It gives you a sense of control and mastery.

“Life seems so much simpler when you're fixing things” is what Anakin Skywalker says to Padme in the hours after his mother’s untimely death. Anakin is tinkering. Restlessly trying to fix things to take his mind off his mother, and off his guilt regarding her passing. But just cause life seems simpler when you’re fixing things, doesn’t mean it is actually is becoming simpler. Anakin didn’t want to work on himself, he only ever wanted to work on projects that gave him more control and mastery over his surroundings. He was a control freak. A busy body. Anakin didn’t like being alone with his thoughts long enough to reflect on what it was about himself he needed to work on. Neither did Ruben in THE SOUND OF METAL.

Anakin in Episode II: Attack of the Clones

I’m on my last sip of coffee from this morning's dose. So let’s leave it here. Doing things is great. Being busy is a good thing, and it can be helpful — especially if you’re trying to outrun some demons. But they’ll catch up when you run out of steam, eventually. If you’re not prepared to sit in silence, to be still, to listen, and to feel in all its messiness…you’ll be consumed by that thing you’re running from.

Noise and distraction have their limits. Tranquility is eternal. It’s a bottomless well. Learn to draw from it. As one of the mentor characters in THE SOUND OF METAL so perfectly puts it, “Stillness…that’s the Kingdom of God".”

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I hope you enjoyed this blurb! Go watch THE SOUND OF THE METAL on Amazon Prime. It’s well worth it. And PRE-ORDER my book, How The Force Can Fix The World…for more lessons exactly like this.