Agitate.
Agitate is an old word, and has fallen out of favor. But it is very useful for our purposes: finding what is hidden, so you can start dealing with it.
Agitating (my concept, my understanding of the word) is to shake up. To make the parts move, so they rearrange. So that what’s important but is in hiding comes to the open. Disgust, displeasure, discontent, disagreement, disobedience, anger, hate, even love come to the surface.
If you filled a container with sand, pebbles and rocks, agitating the container would bring the rocks to the surface.
So that is the meaning I have in this article: agitating so what’s hidden can surface.
Almost any problem can be solved by agitation.
Agitating is also what the washing machine does… It moves the clothes to the left then to the right. The dirt gets loose and at some point separates from the fabric.
Instead of agitating, which allows nature to show itself, it’s heart, most people go for forcing.
The French has this expression, ‘je ne sais quoi’ According to the dictionary it is ‘a quality that cannot be described or named easily’.
But it is more whimsical than that. It is that little something that makes one chocolate meh, and the other muah.
That je ne sais quoi for me is that agitating habit. That never ending gently poking the box. That ‘it’s not over until I say it’s over’ attitude.
That curiosity that dips deeper and deeper, millimeter by millimeter.
Progressive approximation in Mathematics.
In the movie I wrote about a little way back, about Billy the baseball manager, (movie Moneyball) when he changes the team’s hiring strategy, he uses exactly what I am talking about. He goes for the people who have shown a tendency to NOT try to hit a home run every time. He looks at on-base percentage… which means, I think: participating. Setting up wins.
Many people are bonjour madam, thank you madam… like sex in the rabbit world.
Anything as simple as that is at best on the level of sand that you fill your life with.
You don’t even know what your rocks would be if you wanted to have a life worth living.
But truth be told, to dislodge a rock, you need to go for little agitating of it… sand, pebbles, and that way you can dislodge it.
Some of those rocks are worldview rocks, and as long as they run your life, you can’t have a life you love. Those rocks hidden hold you hostage.
If you get my drift: the way to get ahead in life, the way to remove what holds you back requires agitation. Diligently, and gently.
Lots of tiny steps. Lots.
In everything.
Instead of thinking that going for a home run, hitting the ball out of the field, is the way to go.
My challenges are a method of agitating. What you need to see will come up. For example see that you talk too much. Or see that you have never even considered liking another. Or see that you think that being better than the other will give you a happy life.
Lots to see. But you can’t catch what you can’t see. But you can’t see what’s under several layers of protection.
So agitation comes to the rescue.
In the Reality Challenge I ask you to notice and document your daily shoulds… You can also add your have-tos, need-tos, want-tos… if you want.
Eventually you’ll see that you are never where you are. That A is not A for you, A is what it should be, need to be, etc.
Start there. Make it a spiritual practice.
It is a gentle rise, but keeping to it will take you to where you wanted to get to.
Start your journey with the Reality Challenge
