"You resonate with what you see in front of you," one of my meditation teacher training classmates reflected. "You find belonging through observation."
In an exercise for class – ten minutes of witnessing and listening to me tell a story about what made me come alive – she gathered enough information to sum up my soul.
"You have a photographic memory," another student said. "It's obvious that you are a writer because you paint such a clear picture with your words."
Sometimes I don't even need to look at the photographs I've taken from my travels, because the images are sealed into my mind; the emotions I felt in those places, pressed into the memory like candle wax on a letter.
The longing I feel in my body to be back in that place again is as much evidence as the photographs that I've been there at all.
The unfortunate thing about the digital age is that we are approaching a time where the photographs will no longer be evidence. Amateur eyes will find traces of AI, until they can't distinguish between what's "real" and what's generated, and "pics or it didn't happen" becomes a relic of the past, a retired saying that gets printed on t-shirts and worn ironically by the generations to come while their parents try to understand the joke.
Yes, soon, the only proof that we'll have is emotion: the kind of bodily memory that can't be faked, but will be questioned, and dismissed. "Lived experience" is already a politicized term – we're not that far off.
AI will develop capabilities that can do your job, but it will never be able to do your life. You still have to live it. You still have to find meaning in it. You still have to work through the emotions that come with the experience of being alive.
And so there will be a premium on experience. People will seek out experiences that give them a feeling of aliveness and gratitude. They will tire of unearned wisdom and throwaway sentences like "everything changes." When every movie script follows the same tropes, when every product is marketed with the same manipulative copy, the technicolor hamster wheel we're living in that already sucks us dry of meaning and enjoyment will become monochrome. The more that everything becomes the same, the easier it is to see the patterns, and the more quickly the disillusioned become disruptive, demanding a life that is different – one that doesn't follow the movie script, but instead leaves room for creation and innovation.
In the act of creating our lives is where we find meaning and joy.
And ultimately, that is what I am doing when I "resonate" with what I see in front of me. I am seeking out experiences, allowing the experiences to move me, and weaving the emotions that I feel into the tapestry of my body. I am creating memories, and what is life, if not a series of moments floating by our awareness, some of which we choose to carry with us until we die?
In the last year I've played around with AI to help me with tasks I care nothing about so that I can focus on things that I do, like writing this newsletter, and living in the real world. I asked ChatGPT to help me distill what my book is about into something clean that I can tell people I meet. Here's what ChatGPT basically says:
After years of struggling with my health, I wanted to see the world before I died – and instead I healed along the journey. How? When I started to become aware of how it felt to be in my body, "everything changed," AI says.
Everything changed? If you haven't already, you'll start to see this meaningless language everywhere on the internet. I call it the mic drop without gravity. "Pseudo-profound bullshit."
I got that latter term from a friend of mine, actually, a psychologist and leadership coach who I'm soon launching an embodied transformation program with. She wrote her Master's dissertation on "pseudo-profound bullshit." This was years ago, before the advent of AI, but I've never heard a better phrase to describe the regurgitated "slop" that's clearly been generated by a computer trained on so much human thought, it can't distinguish the signal from the noise.
No, ChatGPT, "everything" did not change. What changed when I started to become aware of the chaos in my body is that I allowed myself to grieve the trauma of a life that left me on high alert. I studied meditation to cultivate awareness of my body throughout the day, so that I could soften the fight or flight response as it arose. I reflected on the relationships I "stomached" with people who didn't meet my needs, and left me believing I didn't deserve more. I committed to rebuilding a life where I felt safe.
The opposite of pseudo-profound bullshit is intensely lived wisdom.
And as capable as AI will become, it will never replace the earned wisdom of living. How can I say this with such certainty and confidence?
Because AI was created to shortcut the journey and get to the destination.
The destination is meaningless without the journey.
Swap in other points of reference. Death means nothing without life. A diploma means nothing without the education it represents. A wedding anniversary means nothing without the knowing of the work it took over the last year to resolve conflict and choose to be together.
All of this is to say...
The stock market may be bullish on AI, but I'm bullish on emotional intelligence.
There's never been a better time to cultivate a life well-lived.
Ready to start fresh in the new year? Meditation is a great way to get intentional and call in a new way of showing up in our lives.
I'm thrilled to be launching my new offerings as a RYT-200 certified meditation teacher! I'm officially open for private, 1:1 meditation coaching (guided meditations to help you meet whatever is arising in your daily life with clarity, peace and courage) and teaching (giving you the toolkit to build a more consistent meditation practice that you can do yourself). I am currently offering private sessions on a per-hour sliding scale, so reply to this email if that's something you're interested in and we can chat to see if it's a good fit!
In the new year, I will be offering a group How to Meditate class, that will teach the fundamentals of meditation and how to build a daily practice. This course will be accessible to beginners and seasoned meditators who are looking to spruce up their practice. If you're interested in being added to the waitlist for that class, reply to this email and let me know!
