The Simple Deep

Somewhere, out in the North Atlantic, about 3 miles down below the surface, a shape hangs suspended in the coal black stillness. A thin long slice of black flesh trails upwards like a whip towards a vast, sharp angled pair of jaws. A gulper eel, gifted with a mouth so enormous it swallows prey whole - prey much larger than itself. A miracle of evolution, and a masterclass in simplicity.

Down here, in the abyss, things get specific. Things get ruthlessly efficient. The gulper eel, isn’t so much like other eels. It’s distinct not because of what it has, but because of what it lacks. It doesn’t have the pelvic fins, of other eels. Nor does it share a swim bladder to control its buoyancy like other fish. And somewhere, in the silent tumult of blackened-ocean aeons it shed its scales, gave them away to the sea as it no longer had use for them. Evolution has ruthlessly weeded out the non specific, those species not perfectly adapted to their changing environments.

To live down in the deep, things have to get simple.

I’ve been thinking a lot in recent years, about the growing urgency in our current cultural and economic climate for depth. For things of real value, of real meaning. In a world which is all surfaces and veneers - social media, fake news, fake politics - the shallows are what seem to be rewarded, what’s listened to, what’s pertinent. I think this preference for surface comes not necessarily from the way we consume media, but from the machination that we have to do it all, that we have to have it all. Media simply serves us what we already want to hear. As we spread ourselves too thin, all we are left with is the shallow surface, a lacquer which resembles a life well lived, but which isn’t adhered onto any substantial base material. What we trade for breadth, is inevitably always depth, and I sense from more and more people that it’s leaving us feeling hollow.

Depth is where we find meaning, where we find value. Surfaces are scratched easily, chipped, broken. They fade out fast and we can’t depend on them. I’m always reminded of Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness. So much of what we see in the book is surface; the impenetrable wall of vegetation on the banks of the Congo river, other people, tribes and cultures held at a firm, safe distance on the shores (a bit like a wall, if you will). The journey is one that takes the reader into the heart of the Congo, on an expedition to meet the mysterious and remarkable figure of Kurtz. And yet, the heart we find is an empty one, hollow because it has been only a journey of surfaces. The character of Kurtz has been built up to be a great man, and yet all we find in the end is his abuse and absolute corruption. Kurtz’ dying words, ‘The horror! The horror!’ seem particularly apt to me in the current environmental and political climate - full of empty figures and empty promises.

Perhaps the reason our lives become so concerned with surfaces, with busyness, with the outer details, is in order to cover over heart which aches- however slightly. A sense of things not quite being satisfactory, never quite living up to our expectations of ourselves and what we feel we ‘should’ be, what we should achieve, what we should look like. It’s always there and I feel this too, which is why sitting meditation practice is hard. We don’t want to be with the aching, even though it’s the only way to heal it. 

Ultimately it’s easier to post something vitriolic on twitter and provoke, or turn to instagram for likes. It’s easier not to get up and vote than it is to complain about the state of UK politics from an armchair (13 million people who didn’t vote on Brexit - it still takes my breath away). We have to eliminate the distractions, the busyness, the overcommitments and do the hard work of really being with ourselves to find deeper meaning.

This idea also extends out of the realm of personal and social wellbeing, and into that of the way we work. Author Cal Newport writes extensively on the idea that what our economy- what our culture- needs now more than ever, is people doing rare and valuable work. People working deeply, putting in the effort to cast off the distractions, and simplify. He argues that in order to produce things of real value to the world, in order to have success in an increasingly distracted market, we have to focus on producing things of quality, things which take a lot of effort and time to produce. His is a call for us to build harbour against the shallow waves of contemporary digital culture, to dive deep, to go down into the abyss and get simple and focused.

To reject the constant stream of distractions in our lives is not easy. To move away from living a life of busyness, of surfaces, we have to do the long, hard work of editing out the frills. We have to sit in our practice courageously and be with the slight ache of dissatisfaction beneath it all. We have to commit to the discipline of putting down the things which keep us in the shallows and instead get simple, get deep and choose a life of meaning and action.