Metcognition: watching our own brains at work.
That amazing quality we have, not just to react instinctively as when infants we cried out when we experienced discomfort, and suckled when presented with a food source -- fear and want being our most basic instincts -- this still somewhat mysterious process of metacognition allows us to anticipate the future so we can attempt to optimize our response to it -- the root, if you will, of all agriculture. Metacognition allows us to be aware in the present of the dynamic between what we anticipated and what is activating now so we can better optimize the present moment.
And metacognition allows us to remember and reflect on what we planned, what showed up, and how we judge the success of our plans and actions.
Reflection is hard.
First, we have more stuff to plan and more stuff to do. Let's just move on. I don't have time for this.
Second, reflection nearly always requires us to lean into some pain. Even our most successful activations, achieved after careful planning, rarely work out exactly as planned. Often at least a bit of unearned opportunity -- luck? -- showed up for which we can't take credit. I may have done something powerfully successful, but I don't feel I deserve the credit. The current epidemic of imposter syndrome shows up here. Then, what's most profound about reflection is grief. Our activations fall short of our hopes and dreams. Anticipation is a myth we create about the future. Reflection might force us to confront our shortcomings.
It's the story of the Garden of Eden. Eden begins with Adam and Eve purely in a state of activation. The serpent introduces anticipation: eat of the fruit and you'll be like God. God then introduced reflection to their human condition. T. S. Eliot described his own experience of reflection as including, "the rending pain of reenactment, of deeds done and done to others' harm, which once you understood as exercise of virtue."
Ouch.
Reflection makes us better. Developing the skill of accurate reflection allows us to learn. Accurate reflection allows us to anticipate more realistically and to respond in the next moment of activation more powerfully.
What can I learn from this?
Standing in the way of learning is grief. Right now, on reflection, I can't do a better description of the impact of grief on our cognition than I did here.
Denial, anger, bargaining, depression keep us from learning.
Don't fight grief. Ask "What can I learn from this experience of grief?" Then "what can I learn from that thing that caused me to feel grief."
As forcefully as I'm making the case for the difficult work of metacognition, practice it myself, and train others in the skill, integrity requires me to note the case for not trying so hard. There's lots of evidence that people who accept good enough are in general happier than those of us who keep striving.
I'll leave you with 18th century scholar, Thomas Gray's, warning about people like me.
His bottom line:
"where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise."
Warm regards,
Francis Sopper
REFERENCED IN THIS LETTER:
here: https://www.kairoscognition.com/blog/df2b73cdacba3f55
warning: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44301/ode-on-a-distant-prospect-of-eton-college