Posts tagged with "growth"

Cornus Canadensis

Many things to say, but this is the most rel­e­vant right now. This also hap­pens to touch on almost every aspect of my life, and I find myself con­sid­er­ing things from a gigan­tic range of angles. Unfortunately, I can only briefly touch on each of them, in an effort to stave digres­sion.

The first and most impor­tant goal I’ve ever had was to gain a healthy amount of con­fi­dence by the time I was mid­dle-age. This was so that I could enjoy at least half of my life as a strong indi­vid­ual. I set this goal because I real­ized that I had an unhealthy amount of self-doubt, which con­tributed to a depress­ing life and lifestyle, as well as unre­al­ized poten­tial.

This meant fight­ing off the inse­cu­ri­ties that were bred into me, which amount­ed to most of my child­hood. It has­n’t been easy in the last cou­ple of years, but it’s worked. Every six months, I’d real­ize how much I grew. This time, I real­ize that I’m there.

I final­ly feel like I’m in con­trol of my life. I speak to peo­ple dif­fer­ent­ly. I think dif­fer­ent­ly. Instead of avoid­ing con­flict, I can meet it head on. For me, this was prob­a­bly the most dif­fi­cult thing to do ever imag­ine doing. I would plan my life around such an avoid­ance, from my friends to my rela­tion­ships. I had a con­flict pho­bia, an illog­i­cal fear of a spe­cif­ic sit­u­a­tion, but I fought against it and won. In psy­chol­o­gy, peo­ple over­come their pho­bias by remain­ing relaxed in the face of their fears (because one can­not men­tal­ly be relaxed and scared at the same time). I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to do this, by plac­ing myself in uncom­fort­able sit­u­a­tions over the last four months, and approach­ing them cere­bral­ly at the same time.

I also have to say that a major con­tribut­ing fac­tor to the suc­cess has been going through the D/s lifestyle with Loo. Having a sub­mis­sive as expe­ri­enced as she was, plac­ing her trust in me, gave me a sig­nif­i­cant boost in con­fi­dence. She once point­ed out to me while watch­ing Secretary, that Edward Grey’s con­fes­sion to Lee Holloway about pre­vi­ous­ly being shy was a very accu­rate detail. In Loo’s expe­ri­ence, many put in a dom­i­nant posi­tion are able to break out of their shells, and I nev­er under­stood or believed her until now.

So now that I’m here, where do I go? I’ve accom­plished the biggest goal in my life, some­thing I’d planned on work­ing on for the next ten years, and it feels like I’ve lost a major part of my rea­son for liv­ing. I feel like an astro­naut who dreamed of land­ing on the moon as a child, only to accom­plish the goal and real­ize that he had nev­er dreamed of any­thing else.

I sup­pose I still have the rest of my life to decide.

Weightless Notebook

I’m at the point now where I don’t need to car­ry around a note­book to keep track of the sub­jects and ideas I want to write about lat­er. There are so many things to say that I only end up remem­ber­ing the impor­tant ones any­way. It’s like a sub­con­scious way of fil­ter­ing out the things that aren’t worth men­tion­ing.

A good feel­ing. As if life nev­er ceas­es to be inter­est­ing, and there’s always some­thing to expe­ri­ence, to learn, and to tell.

Relevant Renaissance, Part 2

it’s dif­fi­cult to be upright and per­verse, emo­tion­al and intel­lec­tu­al, impen­e­tra­ble and vul­ner­a­ble, with­out sac­ri­fic­ing the integri­ty and val­ue of all of them.

—corus aqui­lo

This is the first time that a com­ment has been so good, it spawned anoth­er entry (although I fail to see how being a well-round­ed indi­vid­ual has any­thing to do with per­son­al iden­ti­ty, so I cut that part out).

In P.E. dur­ing high school, I learned that there’s no such thing as the per­fect ath­lete. If some­one builds up their speed, they lose endurance. If some­one works on their strength, they lose flex­i­bil­i­ty. To be a per­fect ath­lete is impos­si­ble, because there’s a very strict phys­i­cal lim­i­ta­tion involved.

To be well round­ed in a much more gen­er­al sense, to be a mod­ern day (non-ped­a­gog­i­cal­ly rel­e­vant) Renaissance Man, on the oth­er hand, is only lim­it­ed by the mind. This means that many qual­i­ties do not oppose each oth­er the way phys­i­cal qual­i­ties do. One can be cere­bral, intel­lec­tu­al, yet emo­tion­al at the same time. One can be firm and opin­ion­at­ed about recy­cling, yet open-mind­ed about god and reli­gion, all at once. One can appre­ci­ate fuck­ing hard and fuck­ing gen­tly, because one does not take away from the oth­er.

The key to this is a sep­a­ra­tion of self from bias. One has to be able to appre­ci­ate any­thing from any oth­er point of view. To do this requires an almost pure­ly sub­jec­tive mind­set, tear­ing one­self away of ones own bias. Only then can one improve in any aspect. The hard­est thing, as not­ed by corus aqui­lo, is keep­ing the integri­ty and val­ue of both, because appre­ci­a­tion, not enjoy­ment, is the true mea­sure of being round­ed. They may go hand-in-hand, as appre­ci­a­tion often leads to enjoy­ment, but it’s the basis of such that becomes impor­tant. There’s a fine line between those who enjoy a box of Kraft Dinner as much as 20 oz. New York steak, and those who can appre­ci­ate the two. The for­mer is con­sid­ered a per­son with no taste, the lat­ter can be con­sid­ered a cos­mopo­lite.

The Olympic decathlon record hold­er often holds the title of “the Worlds Greatest Athlete”. It’s the only objec­tive test of all around ath­let­ic abil­i­ty, mea­sured in speed, spring, strength, and sta­mi­na. To be a bet­ter per­son in the gen­er­al sense, is to be a round­ed in much the same man­ner. The mea­sure is any­thing from con­ver­sa­tion­al skills, to gen­eros­i­ty, to golf hand­i­cap, to patience, to aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ments.

The only objec­tive test is life.

Relevant Renaissance

For over a decade, my life has been a strug­gle towards becom­ing a bet­ter per­son. I’m not sure why I start­ed to live this way, although I sus­pect that it was the result of a con­fused child­hood, grow­ing up with an almost com­plete­ly unre­strained guid­ance. There was no sense of moral­i­ty, per­spec­tive, and most impor­tant­ly, pur­pose. I start­ed feel­ing out my own world­view with­out being con­scious­ly aware of it at the time, and the result of all of this was a col­lec­tive yearn­ing for self-improve­ment as an effort to define myself and the things around me.

A few years ago, I real­ized that self-improve­ment is the high­est form of liv­ing, that the best some­one can do for him or her­self is to be a bet­ter per­son. No oth­er belief has become as impor­tant in my life. It sets learn­ing as the great­est good, no mat­ter what the means. Pain, lone­li­ness, and hard­ship become ben­e­fi­cial. For years, my strug­gle for self-improve­ment was almost tan­gi­bly man­i­fest­ed. I could under­stand exact­ly the parts of myself that I want­ed to change and make bet­ter, so I would slow­ly turn my life in that direc­tion. As much as all of this helped me, it was still a strug­gle.

But even past this “use­ful” world­view or atti­tude is a more abstract goal (I refrain from using the word “pos­i­tive”, because I feel that my under­stand­ing is more of what I con­sid­er a sim­ple sub­jec­tive real­ism, than the con­no­ta­tion of bias asso­ci­at­ed with “pos­i­tive”). Whereas a poly­math is some­one with a rel­a­tive­ly aca­d­e­m­ic breadth of knowl­edge, I try to be round­ed in a more gen­er­al sense. This means an under­stand­ing and appre­ci­a­tion of any­thing, from humour, to wine, to music, to con­ver­sa­tion, to nar­cotics, to rela­tion­ships.

Simply put, I strive to be a bet­ter per­son in as many aspects as pos­si­ble. I strive to be a dynam­ic per­son, who will nev­er stop learn­ing. I want to be able to have a con­ver­sa­tion with any per­son I meet, no mat­ter how dif­fer­ent his walk of life is from mine. I want peo­ple I’ve known for years to be sur­prised by some­thing I may do or say tomor­row, such as Trolley with my orgasm the­o­ries, or Pita with my grow­ing secu­ri­ties. I want to be equal­ly intel­lec­tu­al­ly and emo­tion­al­ly pow­er­ful. To not have any weak­ness­es. To nev­er stop improv­ing.

To be tru­ly uni­ver­sal.

One Of Those Days

I’m hav­ing one of those days, actu­al­ly, one of those weeks where I can’t seem to write any­thing down. I have all these ideas float­ing around in my head with­out the words to fol­low through. Maybe it’s because I don’t exact­ly know what I’m feel­ing, like a bit­ter­sweet mix in the palate, or an indis­tin­guish­able taste. For once I’ve start­ed to take con­trol of things, start­ed to be pro-active instead of reac­tive. Started lis­ten­ing to hope­ful, inspir­ing, ener­getic music. I’ve real­ized that I have the abil­i­ty to point my life in the direc­tion I want to go, that I can’t rely on oth­ers to make me hap­py, that I can start liv­ing for myself now.

And it’s all new to me.