Chris Evans doesn't have all the answers, nor does he pretend to. That said, the Captain America: Civil War star seems to know a thing or two about how to make sense of a world that doesn't often make sense. Oprah Winfrey would be proud.
Evans recently did a video Q&A forYoung and the Restless star Lindsey McKeon's blog. "Chris is the kind of person that looks at life with a bliss filled intrigue, wowed by the way the entire universe works and constantly blown away by the beauty of nature. His energy and enthusiasm are infectious," wrote McKeon, who befriended a 17-year-old Evans in the late '90s. "One of the things I find most alluring about being in his presence is getting to have really incredible, deep conversations."
That's the understatement of the year!
In one video, Evans recalled having "a noisy brain" before reading books by Eckhart Tolle, including The Power of Now and A New Earth. "I had certain beliefs and desires and I wanted to be a certain type of person but a lot of my thoughts were kind of rooted in the ego. When I say the ego, I don't necessary mean arrogance, I just meant the part of your brain that says 'I'. It's the thinker. That part of your brain is very self-serving and it lives in a world of comparisons and time, and none of these things are helpful. It just kind of would consistently take me out of a positive place...All that thinking is based on time. You're basing who you are and what you should be on who you'll be tomorrow and who you were yesterday," he said. "For me, the most effective tool I've adopted is just trying to stay present."
So many aha moments!
In another video, McKeon asked Evans what terrifies him.
"What terrifies me?" he asked with a laugh. "This could be a long one."
"That's tricky. This is tough because I think 10 years ago I would have said, 'I don't want to be scared by anything.' The whole notion of being scared obviously means that I'm not fully present, because if I were fully present then I wouldn't be scared. I would end up getting lost in this spiral of disappointment because I do have fears, and that obviously means I haven't achieved what I want to achieve because my brain still operates from egoic manner. The brain noise would get the best of me."
What changed?
"I think I'm a little more confident now saying that I'm scared of stuff. That's OK. I'm scared that I won't get where I want to get. I'm scared that I won't know true happiness. I'm scared that I won't know true beauty or love. I'm OK having those fears, but I also know at the same time that those aren't real fears," he explained. "I really, really believe that that's the ego talking, and that's OK, because my ego has been trained to speak for 34 years. I can't expect to all of a sudden delete it from the map today. All I gotta do is...recognize that those are ego-based fears."
He added, "I guess I have plenty of fears, but I don't think any of 'em are real."
McKeon's Q&A with Evans went even deeper when she asked if there is any piece of wisdom he has managed to fully integrate into his life. "'Shh,'" the Avengers: Age of Ultron actor said. "It's my favorite." Evans then recalled how he and McKeon once traveled to India together, where they met a "brilliant" guru.
"He would lecture every day. There were so many times where I had questions and I kept raising my hand, and he just kept telling me, 'Shh.' It was so frustrating because I felt I had good questions. 'If you just give me an answer I'll be quiet.' He kept telling me to be quiet and it really bothered me, and it made me doubt. It was a very effective tool because the truth is the part of my brain that needed that answer, that wanted that answer, is the part of the brain that I don't need."
"There's a great quote I read: 'You need the boat to cross the river, but once you cross the river, you don't need the boat.' I needed my confusion and my ego and my struggle to wake me up to the fact that I don't need it. I think the part of my brain that wanted all those answers in India was the part of my brain that he was telling me just to be quiet with, just be present," the What's Your Number? star told McKeon. "For me, it's just a very noisy brain. Shh. That's not quitting, that's not giving up, that's not forfeiting—it's surrendering, which I like. When you use the word surrender you remember that there was a fight going on. There was a fight in my brain, an unnecessary battle, that I'm fighting with myself."
To see more from McKeon and Evan's video Q&A, click here.