Means, Plant Fish Tanks, and Concentric Circles

Nov 23, 2012 (Revised Oct 18, 2021)

Time is a valued commodity, and much of it is spent either under the bed covers or under the spell of the workplace. Where is it that we find the realm where high excitement supersedes the humdrum? Very often, the process is interchangeable with humdrum, and this sacrifice never seems worth the paycheck or others’ nods of approval.

Very often, we get fixated on an outside value, created out of others’ prizing. Attempting to attain this outside value, however, comes at the cost of often benumbing our creative being and smothering the notion that excitement is easily independent of familial-social constructs that shovel virus-like ideas of living standards into our mouths.

Purge.

Return to your notions of living standards and temporarily banish them. Envision what brings about, as Bashar would say, one’s highest excitement. If there were any point to living, living one’s personal high excitements responsibly may just be reasonable enough to adopt. Because this sort of thinking may be in a state of suppression, I’d advise pondering over this while undergoing a nice hot bath in the dark with candles or even while taking some form of psychotropic substance. Self-reflection such as this is an open doorway to one’s inner voice which the familial-social sphere inadvertently mutes by keeping our mouths full of distraction.

Purge.

The system we are often working with is a non-sustainable one. I am sure you have all heard of the fish bowls with plants in them. The fish are sustained by the plants and the plants by the fish. One’s byproduct is anothers’ sustainer. We don’t live like this. We live like fish whose byproduct (our sacrifice) does not sufficiently get used up (not worth the paycheck or others’ nods of approval). So we wind up swimming in our own waste which ends in indifference, despair, or regret.

We can change this though. It just takes a reevaluation of concepts of living standards and even pride.

Make the means the end.

In a self-sustaining system, the process sustains us. It is my conviction that discovering one’s highest excitement will breed a form of one’s own self-sustaining system. To give you an idea of how a self-sustaining system works in the human world, I will mention the self-sustaining system I have created for myself.

Fantasy? Challenge accepted.

It began in searching for my own highest excitement and discovering that it had to do with movement–dance in particular. Ten years of anticipating the weekend for the goth dance floor gave me a clue that I had to pursue dance further. That I did. I’ve now been in dance training at the college level for two years. Dancing sustains my highest excitement. To keep the fire of highest excitement going–advancing in dance–I must eat healthy and exercise. In being quite healthy, I can sit for many hours writing papers and improving my writing technique without getting afflictions such as a stiff back (which I used to get from all the writing I did). From the resulting health and positive attitude (due to actually enacting my highest excitement), all sorts of things and even further self-sustaining systems open up for me as if destiny had woken up from her slumber.

My unicycle use even plays into this. Because I must be warm before my early Ballet class in order to stretch correctly, I unicycle to school every school day. In turn, I better my riding skills as well as attain some great fresh air and the meditation-focus that occurs during unicycling.

This is some serious multitasking. Images of concentric circles are conjured. With a self-sustaining system, is it much easier to form concentric circles in one’s life–getting more quality out of time? Does quality grow on top of quality? Is this the reward of having a strong self-sustaining base to begin with?

What base are you starting from?