Free Time

Two recent quotes have struck me recently. “We are living longer and thinking shorter” and “what we resist persists”. Both seem to me to talk to the way our society has changed, and how we as individuals feel more stressed in our day to day lives.

We currently for whatever reason feel the need to fit more and more into each day. How often have you sat and thought “I should be doing something with my free time”? The question is why do we feel that? What is wrong with having time doing nothing, or something we really enjoy. Perhaps this is a product of modern society. Imagine 200 years ago, winter, it turns dark and you have no electric lights. You sit by a fire, or in the dark, and talk to your sibling. You don’t read or exercise or accomplish anything in particular. You just do what you can (basically nothing) and enjoy the time in the dark.

Switch to the current day. Given technology we should be able to accomplish something every minute of every day. And if we don’t we wonder what we could be doing. Change is constant, and we constantly adapt, constantly reanalyze where we are at and what we are doing. When we are idle we need to fill in the time with something “productive”. We continually challenge ourselves, and question if we are doing all we can.

This creates a feeling of frustration. And if we believe “what we resist persists” the feeling never goes away, for we constantly create reasons for this. We resist the fact that we may feel best doing nothing. We are to busy, we have too much to do, there aren’t enough hours in a day, and we should be doing something. How about just saying “it’s okay to do nothing”? Don’t resist the fact that we enjoy relaxing, even though there is daylight left.

Once we accept this, the feeling of frustration won’t persist. Skip one day of exercise, don’t read if you don’t feel like it, don’t fill all your hours with activities just because you can. Accept the fact that all hours do not need to be filled.
And enjoy and be refreshed.

Inner Child?

Recently I have been reading the book Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. The book is phenomenal and I would suggest it to anyone, but there is one section that for some reason really resonated in me. I will write it here so I don’t defile it by my own paraphrasing.

"It is, I suppose, the common grief of children at having to protect their parents from reality. It is bitter for young to see what awful innocence adults grow into, that terrible vulnerability that must be sheltered from the rodent mire of childhood.

Can we blame the child for resenting the fantasy of largeness? Big, soft arms and deep voices in the dark saying, “Tell Papa, tell Mama, and we’ll make it right.” The child, screaming for refuge, senses how feeble a shelter the twig hut of grown-up awareness is. They claim strength, these parents, and complete sanctuary. The weeping earth itself knows how desperate is the child’s need for exactly that sanctuary. How deep and sticky is the darkness of childhood, how rigid the blades of infant evil, which is unadulterated, unrestrained by the convenient cushions of age and its civilizing anesthesia.

Grownups can deal with scraped knees, dropped ice-cream cones, and lost dollies, but if they suspected the real reasons we cry they would fling us out of their arms in horrified revulsion. Yet we are small and as terrified as we are terrifying in our ferocious appetites.

We need that warm adult stupidity. Even knowing the illusion, we cry and hide in their laps, speaking only of defiled lollipops or lost bears ,and getting a lollipop or a toy bear’s worth of comfort. We make do with it rather than face alone the cavernous reaches of our skulls for which there is no remedy, or safety, no comfort at all. We survive until, by sheer stamina, we escape into the dim innocence of our own adulthood and its forgetfulness."

I have no idea why this fascinates me so. Perhaps it speaks to my childhood fears that I never could really express to my parents. Maybe it is being a parent and knowing that somehow I really have no idea why my child is crying and feeling helpless to relieve the fears.

Whatever it is it makes me wonder if part of what I am experiencing now is that fear for which there is no remedy. My adulthood dulled the fear, but given time to think, it rears itself again. This begs the question of whether the innocence and forgetfulness of adulthood is better or worse than the raw awareness a child knows before they are taught to ignore.

After reading this, I wonder if being in touch with my inner child is really that good. It is easy to forget how scary the world was back then, how much we depended on others, and how little we knew. I think what this passage does is make me want to rediscover those things for which I just forgot because they were too hard to address.

Life is no longer a 9 to 5 job for 40 years, retirement, and death for me. There seems a need for me to be reborn to my youth, before this warm adult stupidity crept in, and scary or not look at things from childhood with a new awareness and be open to their possibilities.

Am I Charitable?

I struggle with the concept of charitable organizations. Often the portrayal of people in need tugs at my heart strings. But why? Do I feel guilty because I have a better situation? Do I feel remorse for the individual? The reason I wonder about this is because I want to understand my motivations for helping. I don’t want to be coerced out of guilt, nor do I want to ignore my own humanity.

Many situations are beyond my capability to comprehend without actually being there. The terrible genocide that takes place in many nations, drought, starvation, war, homelessness all are things that I really have no way of understanding. I can see the need for organizations to show me the worst of these, and the way their organization makes it better. But the long and short is that it is manipulation of my emotions. And I don’t appreciate being manipulated.

But without that manipulation would I even pay attention? Likely not. It would be easy to live in my little world and have that other side of life pass me by. So how can I resolve this within myself? The problems seem overwhelming, and my efforts feel small. I also doubt the ability of the organization to change anything. They seem only to bring some relief, like a cold compress put on a feverish child. It bring some relief, but does not cure the illness.

Is it too much to expect these organizations to cure the illness? Yes it is. Is it the humane thing to do to help support those organizations that bring some relief? Of course. But it seems to me that I need to also find those organizations that are trying to find a cure. Bringing awareness to the world of the problems that exist is one aspect. But how much should I hold our leaders and ourselves to change the way things work?

I sometimes think that the organizations that bring awareness to the issues also give us a moral way to check out. I can give our money, donate a few hours a week, and go on with my life knowing that the little I have done is at least something, and all I can do is what I can do. But there is so much more. What about politics? What about spending time understanding the issues, researching, challenging organizations and leaders to look at things differently? I need to challenge myself to determine how to be involved in a way that I can affect change, no matter how slight, in the system. I need to help “break the fever” instead of providing temporary relief.

How do I do this? I am not sure. I know that I will not see an end to anything that I choose to fight against in my lifetime. I can only hope to see movement. Perhaps I merely need to choose a cause to learn about, find an organization that wants to truly try and cure the underlying disease and work towards that goal. And work means more than just giving some money or some time. It means putting my heart and soul into it.

I guess in the long run I need to validate my humanity not by resolving my guilt about my own blessings but by choosing to celebrate them. I need to clarify my own values and beliefs, and bring my full effort into manifesting these into the work I do.

Impulse

I wrote this a while ago and just need to reiterate an ongoing theme in my thought.

I feel something inside that is compelling me to do something. Thing is I don't know what it is inside and what it is I am supposed to do. Why do I think about either? Because I am not sure if the thing inside is just me making something up, or some aspect of the Universe, or God, or spirit guides or whatever gets in touch with you trying to push me somewhere. This matters because if is my own compulsion, I certainly need to put a different perspective around it than if it comes externally.

Either way, the feeling it creates in me is one of anxiety. I continue to be open to things that come in front of me, to be observant of opportunities. But I just don't feel like the right thing has come there yet. So I continue to try and be patient, while inside my stomach churns with a mixture of excitement and frustration. The compulsion still is there and I am not sure where it will bring me.

Need to Start This Up Again

I realize I have taken a hiatus from writing for far to long. I have taken time off to see if I could discover something by taking an online class on Integral Enlightenment. I did discover something very important.

I contain a lot of philosophical thought that has piled up over the years. That thought has a lot of value, at least to me. I don't need more ideas. Thought alone does nothing to actually help me discover what the impulse I have inside is. I need to do something.

And so, I am starting with the simple act of writing. I have no idea of what that will bring me. But for years I have enjoyed writing and didn't do it because of fear of not being a good enough writer. Now I know that doesn't matter. I will do it for me and that is good enough.

Ethic of Service?

So in an AmeriCorp survey I took for my post experience interview, there was a question of What does the term "Ethic of Service" mean to you. This was an odd question. I think we all have been compelled to serve others, whether our boss, kids, spouse, or some sort of "social" service. But as I though about it, why is the reason behind a compulsion to serve.

My answer, as many of my answers for these kinds of questions are, is that we are taught that this is good, and that makes us good. But I don't think anyone doing something they don't want to simply because they feel it is the right thing doesn't make them feel good.

So my definition for this term came to this. Loving oneself such that service doesn't become a thing to do, but just a part of yourself that extends your understanding of the love that is in us all to everyone.

What do you think? Anyone reading this anymore? Would be interested in your opinion.

Modern Castles

I walk amongst parapets of steel and cement
Climbing and reaching to the sky
And between them corridors
That wind and bend
Sometimes emerging on a small shop
Sometimes emptying into a vast space
Often just meandering to seemingly nowhere
Until they emerge at a destination.

I may encounter a Christmas tree
Or a man playing guitar
All part of a downtown castle
A village of beggars and kings and waifs and merchants
Bound together by the corridors
And something else
That no one can really see
Or really wants to see.

For we are just part of a modern kingdom
And for all our fanciful toys
We are not really that advanced.