I look to friends like they could be closer,
For I know little of what it is to be closer.
Divisions, however, are all I've known.
We are crops competing,
Weeds that are choking.
Are we actually fully grown?
I believe the apparent progression to perfect, though never perfect, is something which we oft find troubling, and allow regressing. For friendships particularly I have felt this, recently coming to recognize it when I had been most detached from its emotional and intuitive pressures. These pressures have arisen from certain things which either I found troubling in my interactions towards others, as well as their interactions towards me. Interactions include the understandings explicit and implicit in their or my language, and other ways of expression, like actions, in what they or I do. I take a large responsibility for how I express myself, because I hold myself to peaceful and genuinely beneficent motives that seek to reasonably translate these very motives from my mind to the world, so I will often not settle my movement towards a common understanding if I have made mediocre discourse, or if my actions are misinterpreted. This holds true for how one engages with me, insofar as I will see negative expressions as an indication of my failures, indeed, but ever the more enthusiastic they make me, because it gives me a new duty towards self-improvement and understanding. Movement towards those ends begins upon awareness of such criticism. The enthusiasm I receive from critique is synonymous to the pleasures a committed athlete or performer has when they work at length and/or intensity on a specific thing or set of things which others had illustrated they were lacking grace in. Additionally, when such an achievement of spiritual growth is made, your confidence in discourse is all the stronger, your faith in friends flowers.
Faith becomes important in context to the rarity and difficulties of friendship. Friendship in society is rare past the virtue of having shared goals and spaces, but can be recognized as potential in many places. For as I mentioned, it is a failure on either side to not open to a friend, even to a potential friend. This combined with the real possibility to form characteristically unlikely, unconventional friends. They may not be driven to all physical commitment, nor may you, but to treat them like a gentle creature of affection, one which can only give so much attention in reciprocation to you, we grow ourselves. Anything which is resultant from their affections towards us is delightful and may expand our creative awareness for good ways and feelings outwards (and inwards!) still. (This particular set of understanding of mine is largely credited to R.W. Emerson's own essay "Friendship")
However this unrequited love spreads, friendship seems to have more apparently (though it seems duly apparent above to me) pragmatic components as well, which keep our lives' work satisfied and concordant with those friendships which compliment our deepest individual passions. It first and foremost motivates us often from state of complacency relative to prosperous souls around us, into a mysterious, spontaneous realm of curious possibility. Think to the bold and wandering feelings with friends, liberty and time to do things unconcerned with the crude judgement of advisers! From the perseverance of these adventures, we do indeed swiftly pace our passions akin to eternal star-dance - acting, burning like they will never cease. But we see too often they do come down to ashes and stardust...
Friendships which can last past the periods of waxing and waning furies of passions contain seeking, yet satisfaction, between the friends or between them and the world. To build upon its pragmatic complexities, these friends are not limited to, and not quite necessitating, but might need sharing of the followong: of criticisms, of goals, of enjoyed or uncontrolled practices, of feelings, of emotions, of ideas, of creations. These things may become quenched or seem boring at times, but there is always a facet of Nature to bring people together if each looks closely enough!
I hope to my friends, family, and to strangers as well, that we can see this shared Nature and Mind within and without, for there is such grand possibility with open arms and hands held high.
I also encourage all into looking past the physical components of friendship and understand the componenets of the Minda for an easeful translation from a compassionate awareness of humans as potential friends, to a similar awareness towards pragmatic approaches in our lives to opportunities and difficulties too.
A note: Passions is actually a word coming from Aristotle and the Greeks essentially meaning "suffering", and so we often use it in a positive context, and even with such a concept as compassion, but I believe it should be understood more as an overpowering feeling, often uncontrollable but to different degrees, good or bad.
Your Friend,
Grant
Thursday, November 24, 2016
Thursday, November 3, 2016
Motivations
This morning went rather poorly. But for however I am here, motivated to share the following thoughts with you, I am grateful for this opportunity.
I do not absolutely believe I can be motivated by my own self, yet I often seem to be. It is difficult to recognize whether I have purely and solely pushed myself into motion or whether I simply follow the influences and forces acting upon myself. However, I still do absolutely believe in the potential for any and every human to become what we might call self-reliant, independent - these not meaning total self-reliance, but mentally wired to be so motivating of every stimulus, still depending on necessary external sustenance - and importantly, all-around aware. But is the credit for motivation to ourselves or to the experiences and ideas with which we are nourished with? I find myself to enjoy friends' company, yet be motivated to enjoy it only to the extent to which I can also enjoy my own - in nature's infinite adversity and blessings. There is a balance I must strike to be truly getting the most of my learning and the most of my doing.
We can all realize these truths within ourselves, because they are relational in the same way mathematics - most clearly, geometry - is. Any influence from another person can be the same within oneself if put into context: does this external action of another reflected on myself mean that I might use more or less of this in my own actions?
For instance, let's look at a physical relation. A female training for ninja warrior competitions (involving athletic abilities of immense body-weight strength, grip strength, agility, etc.) sees a male competitor who is excellent on upper body focused obstacles and poorly coordinated on balance obstacles, and can observe what training or even techniques themselves are required or not as important to develop for themselves. This female has a better sense of balance without much training because she has a lower center of mass (not true to every case, just this one, and this comparison) but she lacks the grip strength, not the upper body strength in comparison to this competitor, because they can do the same number of pullups, but she cannot hang with certain grips, whereas he can. One might attribute her failure to upper body strength, but this is more complex than that, involving an understanding of not just performance, but of training in every sense. Therefore, this female competitor should focus on those specific aspects to suit the direct failures - her grip strength and perhaps anything else mentally or physically involved in the obstacles. There is a weakest link(s) in every chain of actions.
In that example, a common misunderstanding of the failure/success can arise, but the solution is specific and measurable, and will show in relation to their competitions on the same course. The same holds true for relations of people's character, but in those cases, it is not as easily measurable because of very dynamic situations and the impacts are usually not physical, but mental, social, emotional and spiritual. People can observe their habits in relation to others however, but we must be wary of worthy and unworthy comparisons. The complexity of a person's character also mustn't be overlooked, and regardless of one decision on someone's character, it could always sway the other way if approached again. This calls for non-attachment to expecting a certain outcome all the time - fear or disgust - and that no human judgement is ever certain, even within the physical realm.
However, within the physical realm, there is a level of pragmatism we can have, and that is with regards to nature and its universal laws. What is surprisingly most educating (in terms of awareness) to people is their mental isolation in nature.
Nature gives us a direct sense of necessary and unnecessary. Read Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Discourse on the Origin of Inequality" and you will be led through how humans are naturally good but soon establish false needs which separate us from our initial tendency to be compassionate towards one another. But is virtue to be compassionate, always? Our world seems to put compassion to great use, with all of our human-caused issues.
Personally, I desire to shape myself into as compassionate a being as I can, because I believe that my only motivation lies without myself. My motivation is in tending to the world, however it calls. More often do I find myself an observer than a doer, and more often a lover than a warrior. But without the use of the destruction, there is no room for more creation. Finding a polar equivalency to both doing and not doing, to extreme maxes and minimums, there is harmony with nature and the social world to be found. The harmony lies in the allowing and flowing of the world around oneself, and doing all one can to change it for whatever outcome is most balanced, but at the same time, to never resist the forces (which are bigger than ourselves) at play. It is in this way of being observant and patient for the world to shift, that we seem to motivate ourselves best - if we try to resist nature, we are often left battered and less motivated to act as strongly or weakly, if at all, again. We can reasonably prepare for these things, and the adversity is what motivates us to start with, but I believe we must allow motivation to arise even from our blessings if we are to spread more compassion within a society of false needs. Motivation to let go of our blessings as everyone's, not with ourselves, but with all, our provider, nature. I see no property demarcations started by nature, just gill & lungs, water & land, and where we might find our providence, and our fellows.
Stay faithful, stay reasonable,
Grant
I do not absolutely believe I can be motivated by my own self, yet I often seem to be. It is difficult to recognize whether I have purely and solely pushed myself into motion or whether I simply follow the influences and forces acting upon myself. However, I still do absolutely believe in the potential for any and every human to become what we might call self-reliant, independent - these not meaning total self-reliance, but mentally wired to be so motivating of every stimulus, still depending on necessary external sustenance - and importantly, all-around aware. But is the credit for motivation to ourselves or to the experiences and ideas with which we are nourished with? I find myself to enjoy friends' company, yet be motivated to enjoy it only to the extent to which I can also enjoy my own - in nature's infinite adversity and blessings. There is a balance I must strike to be truly getting the most of my learning and the most of my doing.
We can all realize these truths within ourselves, because they are relational in the same way mathematics - most clearly, geometry - is. Any influence from another person can be the same within oneself if put into context: does this external action of another reflected on myself mean that I might use more or less of this in my own actions?
For instance, let's look at a physical relation. A female training for ninja warrior competitions (involving athletic abilities of immense body-weight strength, grip strength, agility, etc.) sees a male competitor who is excellent on upper body focused obstacles and poorly coordinated on balance obstacles, and can observe what training or even techniques themselves are required or not as important to develop for themselves. This female has a better sense of balance without much training because she has a lower center of mass (not true to every case, just this one, and this comparison) but she lacks the grip strength, not the upper body strength in comparison to this competitor, because they can do the same number of pullups, but she cannot hang with certain grips, whereas he can. One might attribute her failure to upper body strength, but this is more complex than that, involving an understanding of not just performance, but of training in every sense. Therefore, this female competitor should focus on those specific aspects to suit the direct failures - her grip strength and perhaps anything else mentally or physically involved in the obstacles. There is a weakest link(s) in every chain of actions.
In that example, a common misunderstanding of the failure/success can arise, but the solution is specific and measurable, and will show in relation to their competitions on the same course. The same holds true for relations of people's character, but in those cases, it is not as easily measurable because of very dynamic situations and the impacts are usually not physical, but mental, social, emotional and spiritual. People can observe their habits in relation to others however, but we must be wary of worthy and unworthy comparisons. The complexity of a person's character also mustn't be overlooked, and regardless of one decision on someone's character, it could always sway the other way if approached again. This calls for non-attachment to expecting a certain outcome all the time - fear or disgust - and that no human judgement is ever certain, even within the physical realm.
However, within the physical realm, there is a level of pragmatism we can have, and that is with regards to nature and its universal laws. What is surprisingly most educating (in terms of awareness) to people is their mental isolation in nature.
Nature gives us a direct sense of necessary and unnecessary. Read Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Discourse on the Origin of Inequality" and you will be led through how humans are naturally good but soon establish false needs which separate us from our initial tendency to be compassionate towards one another. But is virtue to be compassionate, always? Our world seems to put compassion to great use, with all of our human-caused issues.
Personally, I desire to shape myself into as compassionate a being as I can, because I believe that my only motivation lies without myself. My motivation is in tending to the world, however it calls. More often do I find myself an observer than a doer, and more often a lover than a warrior. But without the use of the destruction, there is no room for more creation. Finding a polar equivalency to both doing and not doing, to extreme maxes and minimums, there is harmony with nature and the social world to be found. The harmony lies in the allowing and flowing of the world around oneself, and doing all one can to change it for whatever outcome is most balanced, but at the same time, to never resist the forces (which are bigger than ourselves) at play. It is in this way of being observant and patient for the world to shift, that we seem to motivate ourselves best - if we try to resist nature, we are often left battered and less motivated to act as strongly or weakly, if at all, again. We can reasonably prepare for these things, and the adversity is what motivates us to start with, but I believe we must allow motivation to arise even from our blessings if we are to spread more compassion within a society of false needs. Motivation to let go of our blessings as everyone's, not with ourselves, but with all, our provider, nature. I see no property demarcations started by nature, just gill & lungs, water & land, and where we might find our providence, and our fellows.
Stay faithful, stay reasonable,
Grant
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