Callbacks - 032
Dear Friend,
When I was 8 years old, my quest of the summer was the diving board.
My friends were masters. Cannonball. Pencil. Catch a football mid-air.
They'd hit the water, swim as fast as they could to the ladder, climb out and get back in line.
I, on the other hand was terrified. I might touch the bottom and my foot would get stuck in the drain. Maybe there's monsters n the deep end. I'll hit my head on the board. Water could go up my nose!
I remember my first jump. I walked to the edge, looked down the thousand feet into the water (ok maybe 3).
My stomach is twisted, I'm shivering out of nerves and being cold.
I thought. I'm not ready. But I have to do this.
Then,
KERSPLASH!
And everything was easy from there.
I think about that a lot, KERSPLASH!
In my mind, it's come to mean "I'm not ready, but I have to do this."
30something Teenager
When Golda was born almost 3 years ago, we didn't have a car, so when it was time to go home, Lauren called her parents.
"Mom?
...
Uh could you come pick me up?
...
Yea. From the hospital.
...
Like, now-ish. If you can.
...
Oh and can you give Jake a ride?
Um, and our new baby?"
This was a big month for us. Our son Abraham was born on June 29th. There's a lot to say about having a newborn for the second time. I'll spare the cliched complaints about sleeplessness. But what doesn't change is the feeling that I'm just a kid. . . who just had a kid. Well, another kid.
After Abraham was born, I was filling out the birth certificate form.
Mother's name. Easy. Father's name. Ok.
Wait.
ohhhhhhhhHHH!
I'm the father they're asking for?
KERSPLASH!
My experience this month is full of callbacks. A callback, just to be clear, is comedic déjà vu. This month, I have reminders of being a new parent. I have feelings of still being teenager who's figuring out how to function in this world.
For many of us, our experience this month feels familiar. With world news like COVID resurgence, climate disasters, Olympics, political polarization and ongoing racial injustice. And personal déjà vu of feeling like "it's August already!?" or just the typical work stress.
Let's explore the familiar memories and the comedy in callbacks.
Hello?
Growing up, one of my closest friends used to answer the phone in a strange way.
His "hello?" would sound like he had already been on a thousand calls and was about to fall asleep.
It was drawn-out, bored, and tired. "hah-LOW?"
I started exaggerating my hellos when I picked up his calls. "hull-aaaaaaaa-OH?"
It has become this funny thing I look forward to hearing every time I call. It would immediately change my mood when I see him calling, as I'd switch into silly mode.
This stupid little greeting has brought us closer and has been a running joke for 25 years.
As I think more and more about jokes, they're mostly meaningless. Or at least they start out that way. "Hello" doesn't have inherent meaning.
Even famous jokes and catchphrases aren't funny on their own...
D'oh
Yada Yada Yada
You might be a redneck
That's what she said
I'll have what she's having
Oh My God, They Killed Kenny!
They're meaningless. But when they're repeated, when there are callbacks, when there are different contexts and usage, layers of meaning are added. We took something not funny and mutually agreed (even if not explicitly) that that it was funny.
That's what best friends do.
That's why I think jokes are so amazing.
Jokes inherently take something that has no meaning in our lives...like a special hello...and they give it meaning.
Think about your favorite inside jokes. They're dumb when written out. But something trivial, when it's shared with someone else that you love, suddenly has a new meaning.
And because of that, callbacks have the ability to build deeper friendships and relationships.
Repetitions give the nonsense in our lives meaning.
Jokes bring us closer.
Memory Mindtrick
In 2009 I was stupid enough to plan a Ferris Bueller day for a first date: two museums, 4 restaurants, a rooftop, short hike, and a beach. It was probably 10 hours long and surprisingly, we liked each other enough at the end to want to see each other again.
It's just that on the second date, she introduced me to her 3 closest friends, her brother, and parents.
Oh, I'm not ready for this.
Emotionally, it felt like we had been dating for months, while the calendar only said 10 days. I learned a valuable and interesting lesson.
Namely, that changing locations can increase intimacy. It can feel like we know someone better just by going out for tacos after leaving the bar.
Here’s how I think that works:
Each day is a box.
And our are brains like an attic, storing thousands of old boxes.
Over time, to save space in your mental attic, our brain has a few tricks.
If every box is filled with the same memories–commute, coffee, meetings, emails, commute– then our brain consolidates those into a single box. So when nothing new or remarkable happens, it can feel like a month or a season or a year can go by so quickly. It all goes in one box.
But when a lot of new activities happen, our brain makes more boxes. Which makes it feel like more time has passed.
Our memory is impressionable. When we try and callback to what happened, our perception of time is always subjective. So we can take advantage of that. My wife and I do it on vacation. We’ll stay at a second hotel in a new neighborhood or a night or two in a different city. Voila! It feels like a second vacation.
A lot of our time is non-memorable. (It's ok, I don't think our brain could handle it if every day was something wild and adventurous. Maybe that would even get monotonous, too). But that may make it easier to create a day or week that feels particularly special.
Try it this weekend: instead of the usual one thing you had planned today, do three or four activities. Stop for a drink. Go for a run. Meet with different groups of friends.
We each have the power and opportunity every day to fill our boxes in new ways. We can create more memories in less time than we think, just by moving around a bit more than usual.
I just wouldn't recommend it as a first date.
Finding Your Purpose
In 2015, it felt like everyone was talking about Purpose; as in, "what's your purpose?"
I obsessed over that question– wrote articles and led retreats exploring this question.
Purpose was the answer to getting unstuck.
So I hired a "Life Purpose Advisor" to solve all my purpose problems.
In my mind, the process was going to be simple: fill out a bunch of questions, do an interview, talk about myself. And at the end, I'd be handed an envelope that said that I was meant to help creative people find their voice. Or whatever.
"Or whatever" because I know now that's not how finding purpose works.
There is no survey or process that will magically reveal my purpose. The actual process I learned was all about callbacks.
It was a lot of digging into who I was at 8 years old. What did I like and do then? Who was I long before I needed to make choices about making money? How did I make decisions before social pressures shaped who I became?
8 years old.
With my coach, we looked at my life's timeline since then and the major decisions that changed the trajectories of my life. Why did I choose to go to this school? Who was I trying to impress by taking that class? What does it say about me that I chose this job over that one?
It's hard because there are no shortcuts. Learning about myself takes focus and intentional effort. I need to be willing to face some ugly and uncomfortable truths about who I really am and what I really want as compared to what society tells me I "should" be and want.
Maybe this is the work we all have to do as part of bring alive. To sort through and filter out the social pressures, money issues, relationship trauma, and other external factors in shaping who we are in order to uncover the untouched identity we had decades before.
As I've gotten older, I'm starting to enjoy that work. Diving deep into my past, recalling what it was like to be 8 years old again, I'm uncovering that I know more about myself than I thought.
We all do, if we're willing to go there.
"The Torrances" by Kirk Demarais
Is it a Trick?
Callbacks are tricks.
Writers, directors, and performers can trick our memory into believing that relationships and emotions are deeper than they are. Because when we hear something familiar, we're suddenly on the inside. We get it. We share a mutual, secret understanding of something.
Hull-OOOOAH?
Callbacks trick us into connection.
Wait. A trick implies some sort of evil intent and psychological manipulation. A trick is trying to make me look like a fool.
But a shared moment is how we connect with others. Callbacks are just the way that we form relationships. They're how our friendships get deeper and our partners grow to trust us. So maybe a callback is not a trick.
Instead, maybe we can think about a callback like a secret!
Behind deeper connection and intimacy is a callback. When we have a shared memory and an agreement that something otherwise meaningless is important to both of us, we are connected.
Even something as simple as this. An Email Refrigerator.
If you don't know what it is, well, then you just don't get it.
But if you know, you know.
And that means we're like best friends.
Thank You
I'm grateful for you being on the inside here with me, exploring new ideas every month. Thanks for reading this, and as always writing back with your thoughts. If you think someone in your life would appreciate being on the inside with us, please forward this. There's a link below where they can sign up.
Time to say goodbye.
KERSPLASH!
Your best friend,
Jake
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