Potentiële Energie and Free Will
It is the end of summer. It was quite a summer from several perspectives and the events of my summer are generalizable to my life as a whole, maybe for you as well dearest reader!
The biggest experience I had this summer was traveling with my wife and four kids for twenty days. I had picked up several extra shifts in the hospital in preparation for taking this time away. It was almost too much work, and I was worried that I was putting too much pressure on the trip. I really enjoy travelling, even if it is with four kids between 2 and 10, especially with them actually. Our two-year-old son loves before, during, and after being on a train, which turns going anywhere into something exciting. I get to see new things from several different perspectives all at once. I think my affinity for travel is similar to my affinity to improv. Both are ways to make getting out of your comfort zone to discover new things an enjoyable process. Then those experiences and accompanying confidence stay with me as I encounter new experience in regular life.
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
The most striking moment of the trip in this regard came during a museum visit in Amsterdam. While my older two sons were at soccer camp, my wife and I went to NEMO museum with our younger two sons.
By Velvet - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27741330
There were two demonstrations that intertwined with how improv, travel, and new experiences have helped improve my life, personally and professionally. The first experience was a super elaborate Rube Goldberg machine. The man gave an excellent demonstration in Dutch and English. He asked the audience questions, and my wife volunteered my response.
The causes and effects went up 3 floors!
The leader of the experience asked if there was any energy in the system if it was not moving. He asked what it was called, and my wife raised my hand to tell the whole room that the answer was potential energy, or potentiële energie for the Dutch speakers among us. The leader had placed the potential energy in the system so that when there was a cause, the desired effect would occur. This is what happens when I get out of my comfort zone, I put potential energy in my system so that I can respond how I desire in the future. Improv has helped me understand how I respond under new, varied, and uncertain situations and then evaluate the patterns of behavior I have established over a lifetime of experiences. If I have an embarrassing response at work or in my personal life, it is not uncommon for me to take that opportunity to blame something or someone other than myself. If I have an embarrassing response at improv rehearsal or a show, it is treated as a gift and the laughter allows me to look at my response. There is an opportunity to change my response pattern almost immediately as well. Then I have the opportunity to rapidly test that pattern. Improv allows me to understand my own personal behavior causes and effects in a way that is fun, so improvement can occur and be ready for out in the world. Travel is similar in that I am constantly put in new situations but the experience of it makes getting out of my comfort zone worthwhile. I have to find a way in each new scenario to make the best of it, which is a skill that serves me well in the hospital helping patients and their families navigate what is often a new and challenging situation.
The other was a demonstration that asked me to think of a tool, then think of a color. I will ask you to do the same. Apparently, most people think of the picture at the bottom of this page. They used that as a demonstration that we have less “free will” than we think and even brought up that we might not actually have any free will (I had recently changed a diaper in a cramped bathroom and paid 75 euro for a cafeteria style lunch, so I was susceptible to the idea that my life was not even my own!). Well first, I did not think of the most common color and tool combo so it related to my thoughts on the Rube Goldberg machine several flights below. It is the case that our responses and initial thoughts are programmed based on a lifetime of experience and understanding. It also means that our experiences today can change our responses in the future. Just like I will think of a different tool and a different color the next time the question is posed to me. That would have been the case the first time if I had a more varied understanding of tools (I can handle basic home fix-it things, but am by no means Tim Taylor)
or if I routinely talked about colors other than the basic ones my two-year-old son is learning. Similarly, improv allows me the opportunity to consider a wider variety of stories, ideas, and emotions and play around with my response to each. At the very least, an understanding comes that I know less that I think I do. That leads to both more certainty and more uncertainty in my decisions. Certainty comes from the ability to commit to an idea without having all the information, because I never will have all of the information. Uncertainty comes from that same knowledge that I don’t have all the information and never will. I can always change to make the best of the situation. Improv has helped me develop free will. That is a powerful idea as I attempt to walk along side of people facing health issues in the hospital. I must be able to provide them with the belief that a more positive outcome can come of their current condition. Not necessarily the perfectly desired outcome, but ideally help them build a new reality rather than be at the whims of their health issues.
The decisions I make today help me in the future. Improv and travel are the most fun I have had embracing that idea, as well as improving how I move around in an uncertain, chaotic world
Is this what you thought of? I thought of a green screw driver