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Mar. 5th, 2004 09:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jadegirlThere's an interesting process going on in my mind, and I think it has been happening for a while, it's just that the thought processes I started last night have begun to bring some of it up out of the back of my mind.
The problem with the whole idea of asking 'are you living up to your potential' is that for some reason its got a value judgement already attached to it in the negative. Nine times out of ten, whoever is doing the asking has an agenda, one they want you to follow. This can make monitoring ones own 'life progress' for lack of a better term, a chancy thing. Part of it is socialization - we're socialized, I think, to always be in motion, always be on our way to doing/being/becoming/getting something 'more', something just a little ways away, over the horizon.. We never quite get there, of course, lacking the tools, education, proper clothes, whathaveyou. Since we're always on our way though, we're never able to full stop and look at now, right now, and expand into now. Expanding into now is dangerous, because it might lead one to stop and reach in for the things that make now really expand, rather than buying/getting/doing.
"For I have been with you from the beginning, and I am That which is attained at the end of desire." It's a very Buddhist statement, really. Stop, look, see what is right here, and it has always been here. It's not about running towards something, it's about stopping and *seeing*.
Tangenting, I am as usual a bundle of contradictions. On one hand, I'm cerebral to a fault, going off into hyper-intellectual tangents when an emotional resonse would be more appropriate, distancing myself from everything with the coolness of the anthropologist, surveying all with what became known in college as my "Jane Goodall look". On the other hand I'm full of the energy of the Empress in the tarot, liking nothing better than the earthyness of kneading bread dough, or feeling the softness of the wool moving from my hands to my spinning wheel, building that which sustains from as close to the ground up as I can manage. The two seem to rarely marry, and only with great difficulty. At the same time, they are formed of the same stuff, a desire for shelter I can trust, a surround I know by instinct. I think I shall be musing on their similarities more....
Another, slighter tangent. I can't tell if this idea is impossibly beautiful or impossibly naive. Both, most likely. If you can expand a persons world in just a small way, a tiny way, like by giving them a delightfully lovely meal, or glass of wine, or cup of tea, perhaps, just perhaps, that small widening can lead to an expansion of a more definite sort? I want to believe that could be, because if it could, give me a kitchen and some time, and I will try and change the world.
The problem with the whole idea of asking 'are you living up to your potential' is that for some reason its got a value judgement already attached to it in the negative. Nine times out of ten, whoever is doing the asking has an agenda, one they want you to follow. This can make monitoring ones own 'life progress' for lack of a better term, a chancy thing. Part of it is socialization - we're socialized, I think, to always be in motion, always be on our way to doing/being/becoming/getting something 'more', something just a little ways away, over the horizon.. We never quite get there, of course, lacking the tools, education, proper clothes, whathaveyou. Since we're always on our way though, we're never able to full stop and look at now, right now, and expand into now. Expanding into now is dangerous, because it might lead one to stop and reach in for the things that make now really expand, rather than buying/getting/doing.
"For I have been with you from the beginning, and I am That which is attained at the end of desire." It's a very Buddhist statement, really. Stop, look, see what is right here, and it has always been here. It's not about running towards something, it's about stopping and *seeing*.
Tangenting, I am as usual a bundle of contradictions. On one hand, I'm cerebral to a fault, going off into hyper-intellectual tangents when an emotional resonse would be more appropriate, distancing myself from everything with the coolness of the anthropologist, surveying all with what became known in college as my "Jane Goodall look". On the other hand I'm full of the energy of the Empress in the tarot, liking nothing better than the earthyness of kneading bread dough, or feeling the softness of the wool moving from my hands to my spinning wheel, building that which sustains from as close to the ground up as I can manage. The two seem to rarely marry, and only with great difficulty. At the same time, they are formed of the same stuff, a desire for shelter I can trust, a surround I know by instinct. I think I shall be musing on their similarities more....
Another, slighter tangent. I can't tell if this idea is impossibly beautiful or impossibly naive. Both, most likely. If you can expand a persons world in just a small way, a tiny way, like by giving them a delightfully lovely meal, or glass of wine, or cup of tea, perhaps, just perhaps, that small widening can lead to an expansion of a more definite sort? I want to believe that could be, because if it could, give me a kitchen and some time, and I will try and change the world.
