The Pursuit of Effortless Ease
This is an attempt to throw words around an experience that I had months ago and I still struggle to articulate what it was and what it meant. But it was incredible.
I hit a realisation (which I’ll get to in a moment) during the Christmas break of 2024. Christmas, to me, is the peak of the year. It’s what every month has been building towards, and it’s a time to just unwind with friends and family, and as I tend to do each year: reflect. Unfortunately, last Christmas I got sick from Christmas Eve through to New Year’s Day and it sucked me immediately out of the Christmas spirit into a really sluggish, yucky feeling that persisted for too long during my break.
It was at its worst during Christmas dinner where I was trying to put my best face on for the kids. This is the dinner that we all eat copious amounts of delicious home cooked turkey, ham, roast potatoes, and a whole bunch of other tasty items including a hearty dessert. I was struggling after the first bite which was so out of character. I could barely hold a conversation, and by the time it came to clearing up at the end of the dinner, even my own thoughts sounded like they were someone else’s.
It was like listening to someone else’s thoughts — all of the non-duality and Eastern philosophy of “you are not your thoughts”, “thoughts just happen” etc was unmistakably observable because I felt like a third party in my own experience. It wasn’t liberating, it was terrifying.
As the days rolled by, I wondered when I’d feel like “me” again. It got to a point where I accepted that “Jordan” was unreachable and I couldn’t get him back. I’m aware that this sounds crazy, but that’s how it unfolded.
About a week later I was curled up on the sofa falling into and out of sleep. The kids were getting along with Christmas around me so I was half thinking about if I was ever going to feel normal and connected back into reality again and half thinking about the guilt of being present but not there for them.
And then, as if I was letting something finally slip off the last remaining bit of grip on the tips of my fingers: I let go of trying to get Jordan back. “It’s been over a week now, what’s the point? This is the new mode, I guess.”
Then the realisation happened over a very short period of time. I fell asleep and upon reawakening I felt completely empty in terms of my own identity. The labels of “Jordan Moore, company director, designer, husband, father, son, brother” were entirely foreign, but things started falling back into place.
The feeling of presence I had in observing the room around me was as alive as it felt as a child looking around the living room I grew up in. I recognised childhood Jordan and it was like meeting an old friend again as if he was here. The boy returned before he accumulated too much learning about the world around him, which made it not as special as just seeing things as they were. That sense was completely back in full working order, and everything ordinary seemed extraordinary to me.
There was a joy in mundane things. The same sort of every-moment joy that childhood Jordan would have got from something like opening up a VHS case and running his finger round the shape of the object and getting to know it by direct experience. Whatever that was came back.
Everything was at ease, and effortless. There was no need to be anything, nothing that needed doing, and (to paraphrase Loch Kelly) there was nothing to attend to. Just peace and reacquaintance with the deepest, truest “me”.
The best I can describe it is that there was a disassociation event where all labels fell away and slowly started to rebuild from scratch. This brought about a purer existence that I deeply felt in childhood and haven’t felt as vividly as I have got older, learned more things, accumulated more labels and descriptions of the world around me as tools to experience versus experience itself.
That was the primary operating mode of childhood where the world felt wondrous by default because of the underdeveloped labelling function of one’s mind, and everything felt more alive because everything was novel. It’s like observing magic before you know how the trick is performed.
There was no wishing it to be good, or fear of it being bad, there was just how it is with no need to steer it towards something better or away from something worse. That is the effortless ease of childhood being, and I have been spending much of my time looking to return to that way ever since, even though the act of pursuing it is to get in the way of it.