The Tyranny of Outcome - Part II

In the first post of this series, we talked about how process focus and outcome focus jibe with Maslow's hierarchy, and how ego gets in the way of the flow state. But can you remember a time in your life when entering a flow state was as easy as pie?

I do. Christmas.

Memories of my childhood Christmas days merge together in a joyful composite:

I wake up to the bright light of a snowy, suburban Montreal morning, the smell of freshly baked bread, and the sound of the Salsoul Orchestra's holiday album blaring through the living room stereo. The clink clank of pot spoons and muffled voices from the kitchen fill me with the desperation of a late-to-the-party Ebenezer Scrooge. Was I the last to wake up? Did they start without me?!

Scrambling out of my bed and down the hall to the living room, I cast my expectant gaze upward toward the tree, relieved to find that it is indeed still there, twinkling with magic and mystery, promising to finally fulfill the impossible fantasies crafted by an entire season of my imagination.

Brimming with anticipation, I dive in headlong like a warden at a jailbreak, corralling packages labelled with my name under a virtual dome of protection. The living room floor next to the tree is where I'll make my stand for the remainder of the day.

"Can we open the gifts now?!" I plead insistently into the open air to anyone who would listen.

"Not until after breakfast!" comes the cursed reply. Oh, the inhumanity!

I usher my family to the table like a fire engine to a five-alarm blaze, gobbling down our traditional Guyanese Christmas morning brunch: garlic pork, fresh O.J., baked plait bread with butter, avocado, and papaya and mango to cool the palate. Having dispensed with that, we're finally ready for main course. The toys!

The magic of play

From that moment on, my brother and I would be laser focused on a singular goal until the end of the day: play, play, play.

We'd build, destroy, and rebuild the next architectural masterpiece with a big bucket of Lincoln Logs. We'd pit "Bug'em" and "Tough Tom" against each other in a marathon Smash Up Derby session, the only goal of which was to repeatedly rebuild, launch, and smash the cars into the other to see how many of the parts we could get to go flying.

"Total Control Racing" had us racing little electrified cars on a multi-lane racetrack, avoiding the Jam Car by switching lanes and cranking the juice at just the right moment. We were Mario Andrettis in Christmas miniature.

I imagine that my childhood Christmas experiences are typical of many middle-class kids, perhaps with different food. The YouTube comments sections in videos about these retro toys reveal a community bound together by the shared experience of hours upon hours spent playing with them, without a thought about school, our next meal, or even a bathroom break.

The sun would set on the day, but always failed to extinguish our curiosity and enthusiasm. The world around us disappeared completely as we faded into our merry flow, unaware that these joyful moments were the seeds of a nostalgic ache that would haunt us decades later.

Those Christmastime activities, and many others from that age, all had one very important thing in common: their complete lack of utility. No services were offered, and no money was earned. No boxes were ticked, nor prizes won. The GDP did not increase. And any improvement in our capabilities was completely a side effect of simply "doing it for fun."

Children have a superpower that most lose (or misplace) at some point on their journey to adulthood ― their ability to easily enter into the flow state of play. Kids naturally follow their curiosity into the dim recesses of discovery, guided only by a sense of wonder about the world around them, lingering as long as necessary to fully celebrate their participation in the moment, emerging just beyond the edge of satiety or exhaustion.

Outcome rears its ugly head

Reflecting on these memories now, I can't help but wonder when and how we lost this capacity for play. Well... not so much our capacity, but our affinity for it. Have we grown tired of the countless hours of playful repetition? Was it forced from our reluctant hands by the creep of responsibility? Or are we conforming to an unspoken expectation that we should simply "grow up?"

Whatever the case, as we age, "play" seems to wither beneath the shade of our lives, its lighthearted frame replaced by the relative seriousness of work, family, personal goals, and a seemingly never-ending list of to-dos. The simple act of "playing hockey at the neighborhood rink" becomes "registering for the cohort, buying the equipment, waking up early, packing the snack, driving to the practices, and trying to win the trophy."

Along the way we abandon the simple joy of the present moment, intentions notwithstanding, slowly hogtied by our own plans and expectations. We develop goals motivated by autonomy, mastery, and purpose. We salivate at the prospect of becoming wealthy, or at least well off. And we develop a need to show others that we are valuable. We leave behind our state of play, and turn our attention squarely to the future. Outcome, the antithesis of playful process, rears its ugly head.

I've been machinating for years over the "tyranny of outcome," hoping (I suppose) that my next win will finally be my deliverance.

On the one hand, achievement has made my life better in many ways, but ironically I usually don't experience my successes for very long ― I just make new goals. I've dug a decades-deep groove of goal-struggle-achieve (or fail), perniciously hypnotized by the prospect of the fleeting prize rather than immersed in the journey.

In my low moments I sometimes feel like I've mortgaged my entire life in this struggle, feeding the ego rather than the soul.

"A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving.

A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants.

A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is."

― Lao Tzu

Children are born the good travelers, artists, and scientists of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. But at some point or another, a parent or some other well-meaning adult arrives at the scene to give little Johnny some unsolicited coaching about what he should do to get ahead.

As the years pass, he's peppered with the torturous question "what do you want to be when you grow up?" as if to indicate that there was something wrong with his choice of pastimes to date. He's told that he may have to "try hard and make sacrifices if he wants to improve," inverting the horse and the cart. And Jenny ― once his effortless playmate and karmic doppelganger ― grows into the girl he, for some strange reason, wants to impress. Maybe that's why he tries to get better at hockey.

Johnny begins to works to bring about one or more outcomes, the first of which is to finally dispense with the question "what will you do when you graduate?" The second is to become independent and afford the things he wants.

A little further down the line, a conveniently linear set of goals and expectations are laid in front of him, one after the next. Life becomes school. School becomes work. And work becomes "a career," that unending ladder of effort and advancement in service of escalating status and reward.

As he accumulates capabilities and successes, employers reward him for his efforts with titles and higher salaries. Society hands him a liberal dose of positive feedback, opening more opportunities and placing him on ever-higher pedestals. He become increasingly intoxicated by all this, creating the underlying pattern for his life.

He must of course juggle this with the hunt for a spouse, the promise of family, and getting his savings working too, to support a comfortable retirement. On that fateful day, assuming he's navigated deftly enough, he's promised he will finally return to a life of play.

As he ages, though, it's a sure bet that he'll need to refocus himself on health for a time, owing to the aches and pains of a life "well-lived" arriving seemingly all at once. Post retirement, he'll have to contend with an abrupt and confusing shift in the source of his reason for being. And he'll have to remember to make that all-important "final plan," to unburden his loved ones during that inevitably difficult time.

Throughout this era, no-one seems to want talk to Johnny about "Total Control Racing" (or it's adult equivalent) anymore. His former playmates are all busy on similar paths of their own.

Life, once a merry-go-round of joyful, playful sentences, has been fully inhabited by striving ― a set of lengthy passages of focused effort punctuated by momentary celebration, but quickly followed by the reformulations of better dreams that will, at long last, get Johnny where he needs to be. He's now a part of the machine.

Welcome to the machine

Welcome my son

Welcome to the machine

What did you dream?

It's all right, we told you what to dream

You dreamed of a big star

He played a mean guitar

He always ate in the Steak Bar

He loved to drive in his Jaguar

― Pink Floyd

Part III in this series will take a look at how “accomplishment” isn’t the same as “success,” and indeed is often accompanied by dissatisfaction and unhappiness.

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Background music for voiceover, from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):

https://uppbeat.io/t/needmospace/afternoon-nap

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