Posts tagged with "self-improvement"

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.

The Cracking Sky

I already knew that I had a lot to learn, but it’s only now that I’m feel­ing a lit­tle over­whelmed. Sometimes it feels like I can’t keep track of every­thing, because there are so many things to think, talk, write about.

I have to keep in mind the fact that every­thing should be approached slow­ly. Rushing caus­es con­fu­sion, mix-ups of emo­tion. As much as I’d like to jump head-first into things, I have to pace myself. Learning is an invest­ment, and as long as I can pic­ture what I’m work­ing towards, this should­n’t be too hard. After all, I have the rest of my life, and the only lim­it is myself.

This will be a test.

But, most of all, this will be fun.

Church And State

I want­ed to thank you for chang­ing my life.

Then I real­ized that you did­n’t do any­thing. You were com­plete­ly self­ish, com­plete­ly incon­sid­er­ate. I picked myself up and made the best of what you left me as. Loving you was the impor­tant part, not any­thing that you had ever done.

I real­ized that it was­n’t you who changed my life. It was the expe­ri­ence. It was the con­scious effort to turn my life around.

It was me.

The Zarathustra Sessions, Part 3: Saint Salieri

I know the hatred and envy of your hearts. You are not great enough to not know hatred and envy. So be great enough not to be ashamed of them!

—Of War and Warriors, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Ah, back into this again. I was­n’t plan­ning on writ­ing this tonight, but some­thing set me off.

I like how Nietzsche believes that two human “flaws”, which some view as sins no less, should be embraced instead of shunned. Most like­ly, he’s attack­ing Christianity, and it’s view of hatred and envy as sins (he goes on to attack oth­er beliefs in sweep­ing sub­ject dances). Personally, I think that he’s point­ing out the fact that humans are, in fact, human, and prone to err. After all, who is good enough to not feel such base emo­tions, even if only once-in-a-while?

It’s made me real­ize that some­times I should­n’t be so hard on myself. I should­n’t blame myself for feel­ing a cer­tain way, or hav­ing a cer­tain flaw. It does­n’t even mat­ter if painful emo­tions don’t gen­er­ate some­thing ben­e­fi­cial, like self-improve­ment.

Of course, if my base assump­tion is wrong, then I’m read­ing too deeply into this. Such things are always a haz­ard of read­ing trans­lat­ed mate­r­i­al, and all that real­ly mat­ters is whether or not it helps.

It’s tak­en me this long to real­ize that the best that one can do is try, not suc­ceed. That does­n’t mean that I’m going to set­tle for a life with­out self-improve­ment, it just means that I should learn to for­give myself before I learn to for­give oth­ers.

Because the for­mer has always been hard­er than the lat­ter.