Baseline
In the song of life, we sing the melody, but we dance to the rhythm. Beneath the lyrics, solos, and high notes is a foundation on which everything is built. This baseline is found all around us if we only stop to notice. Through a deep understanding of baseline, we can begin to know a place, ourselves, and others intimately. It is also how we come to understand patterns, anomalies, and changes in our lives. With mindful awareness we see that there isn’t one baseline but many woven together, changing with time, place, and the distance at which we are viewing them. In winter in a northern forest, deep snow blankets the ground and a profound stillness can fill the short-day, long-night world. Come back to this same forest in spring and you will be wrapped in birdsong and enveloped in green. Visit the desert and you will find a baseline all its own. In any environment, if you peer closely at a small section of hiking trail you’re likely to notice rocks of various colors and sizes or bare sandy soil. What do you see if you move over just a few feet off the beaten trail and zoom in once again? The baseline here is likely very different: flowers and bushes, or a layer of leaves strewn about.1
Without a firm awareness of baseline, the collective “we” of a society often forget even the recent past and begin to believe that what is always was, and always will be. This is called shifting baseline syndrome.2 When I came to Ithaca, New York, in 2001, there were no black bears here. There were no fishers, no porcupines, no black-legged ticks, no Lyme disease, no Asian jumping worms, no emerald ash borers, no giant hogweed, no spotted lanternflies. Now, just twenty years later, the baseline has shifted. For the students we take into the woods, seeing the tracks of a fisher or bear is exciting but also normal. Dealing with the threat of Lyme disease is a given. Seeing a healthy ash tree, not infected by the emerald ash borer, is rare, while dead or dying ash trees are the new norm. Interestingly though, long before there was an Ithaca, New York, this land had an abundance of black bears and fishers and many fewer ash trees. Nothing is permanent, but without deeply connecting to the baseline in such a way that we feel it, know it, and remember it, we have no ability to perceive the changes going on around us. Without that connection, we can’t know our role in these changes, and we lose our sense of agency and feel powerless to protect the nature that we love.
When we look to the baseline of our own lives, we find the same phenomenon. Over the years there are patterns, and we change: our bodies, our hair, even how we sound and carry ourselves. Day to day and week to week our energy shifts with health, mood, demands, pleasures, and illness. How we carry and conduct ourselves can vary even moment to moment as we get caught up in thoughts and emotions of joy or anger, pride or shame, confidence or fear. Becoming mindful of all these baselines is a beautiful tool for living more consciously in the present moment. What is happening right now? Where is my attention and focus? How does my perspective shift if I simply attend to what is unfolding just now? As we practice this awareness of baseline, we can bring our newfound skills of observation and inquiry to bear on all areas of our life.
Try: Take a short walk (10–15 minutes) along the same route every day for five days. After each walk, take some notes or reflect in a journal. What did you see today? At the end of five days, look over your notes. What “constants” did you start to notice? This is the beginning of you starting to see the baseline of the landscape and your own propensities of observation. What was unique or changed each day? These are the breaks in the baseline.
And just as we can do with the natural landscape, we can learn to see patterns and breaks in those patterns in ourselves. Choose a few days to bring mindful attention to your emotional landscape. Keep a journal, and at the end of the day note any strong emotions, reactions, or repeating thoughts you may have experienced. See if you can recall what made you smile or laugh or what frustrated or upset you. Do your best to be curious and nonjudgmental about anything you notice. The goal here is simply to see patterns and breaks in those patterns.
After a few days of journaling, take some time to reflect. What are you noticing? What comes up often, and what is associated with that? What things create breaks in that pattern? Would you like more or fewer of those? Does the way you respond to various situations feel like a choice you make, or does it feel more automatic? Are there other ways of responding that might serve you better or feel more in alignment with your desired way of showing up in life? Remember the baseline will always change. With awareness and intention we can learn to respond wisely.