Something you engage in…and the act alone leaves you satisfied. It truly is the journey in this case. The experience of diving in and fully embracing whatever activity it might be. The activity you could do for hours on end as a child and never tire of (making mud pies in the backyard with my best friend, swimming with my brother and neighborhood friends, jumping on the trampoline, laughing with my cousin until I begged for mercy).
It’s also reading something of profound interest, not noticing you’ve finished an entire chapter (if you’re me) or an entire book (if you’re my mom).
For me, the state of flow is how I selected my college major. I went to Santa Clara University with the vague idea that I wanted to be a teacher. I knew I wanted to work with kids or help people, but how this would materialize, I was uncertain. As a result of having to take one general education class my Freshman Year Fall quarter in Cultural Anthropology, I was exposed to a new language, a way of thinking and writing I’d previously not know. At the same time, the history classes I took left me longing for something more, something more open-minded, from various cultural perspectives, and as it turns out, more anthropological. I’d also enjoyed Geography, and now I could learn about geographical insights in every class I took. This was a bit of a magical feeling to me. Passing hours reading and highlighting in the dark purple chairs at Starbucks, or closing down the library, reading in our tank tops on the lawn underneath the palm trees. The location, while important, was not the fascinating part of this state of flow I was in. I was mesmerized. From then on, I dropped every class that didn’t delight or excite me within the first week, and switched to another topic. More often than not it was something in the Anthropology world. If not, it was a Spanish class, or world religions, anything to do with cultures and spirituality. The incredible thing about it all, I didn’t feel guilty for indulging myself in these passions. Maybe because it was academic, I gave myself the freedom to explore however I wanted. As I learned after this, I may have been onto something.
Many years later, I heard an interview with a woman by the name of Suzy Batiz. She is an entrepreneur, but what stood out to me in her interview was her remarkable strategy for making business and life decisions, both. She described a feeling, I suppose you could say an intuition, that she gets when something is right for her, and a different feeling, or an absence of that first feeling, when something is not. She described this as being in “flow” and it sounded scientific. She said when you resonate with something, or someone, it just works, and you’re easily moving in the same directions. There’s a complementing of passions and ideas, for while the two people might be quite different, they meet in a very important middle in order to form a sweet spot of symbiosis. I could immediately put this into context of dating. When you’re with someone and you are friends, but not so much romantic companions. Or when you’re in a career field where you’re constantly tweaking yourself to fit in to some place you’re not even sure is such a prize. When you’re in flow, all of these squeezing and tweaking is avoided because it just works. Is simply is.
Musings and Flow 