I saw photos of a friend in India. She moved there for this past year and studied yoga and traveled. This idea of getting up and going, independent of possessions and free of anchors really appeals to me. I appreciate some of the courage involved to leave your comfort zone by entering a different culture, alone, with the associated risks to safety and well-being.
It's that time of life; I've been in one spot well too long. I see people as concepts recycled across people as physical realities. I mean, new friends have become old friends and many have left my daily life (still friends, though!) and new new friends have replaced them, but despite being different people physically, it's all very much the same conceptually; the people themselves are interchangeable. I'm resisting routines now. I've moved twice in a year. The only thing really keeping me is just finishing my prolonged Masters (mere months) and ... iaido and jodo.
I've been managing stress in my life well, to the point of it being typically absent, but I've started building too many commitments, a dangerous creator of stress. At least this time I've been good about curating them; giving up old ones (pulling back from GSETA, leaving a GRA, etc) to make room for new or more important ones (iaido!). It would be welcome to release all the specific obligations I have from my mind and move freely again.
I'm not sure whether my friend's adventure will be my adventure, but I do want to visit India and I do like yoga. I haven't practised it much recently; the last time being two years ago when I picked it back up after 5 years. Why yoga? Functionally, I find the stretching useful. I've become a big fan of stretching since I started cycling regularly last year. (Finally put my bicycle inside this morning!) For many people, it's apparently spiritual. I don't generally identify with spirituality at all, which I think sometimes creates an unfortunate chasm between myself and some of my friends. It's unfortunate because I think we share similar experiences but I identify them differently. It's unfortunate that the words we use to describe things can also limit our ability to engage in a thing. That we can be easily put off from something because of associations that aren't fundamental to the thing. I think I used to put off by yoga for that reason, though the act itself is productive.
I try to present my interests in a generally palatable way. As a vegetarian and now as a vegan, I want to be able to present myself, the diet, and the life style in a way that won't alienate others. That means not being adversarial, and not using exclusionary language, jargon that others can't relate to, or fixating on ideas that others can't readily subscribe to. When I do something like yoga or tarot, I try to do the same thing; highlight the elements that people can readily accept in a palatable presentation. You don't need to believe in harder-to-swallow spiritual beliefs to find them interesting and useful, to find meaning in them.
I've started finding meaning in everything, for the past few years. Even bands that I once criticised or dismissed. I used to look at things and judge them whether they were relevant or worthwhile or "missing the point" (which was quite a narrow-minded perspective as to what the "point" in life is). Now, though, that's almost impossible to do. Almost anything that is done has meaning, its act or existence is the result of something, of a motivation or an intent, which is based in a belief or a value, which is the result of an application of logic or the product of a feeling or of a complex combination of interacting factors. And those are interesting.
I'm not a very articulate person. I don't spend enough time or I'm not capable of composing my thoughts meaningfully. Especially for blog posts. But country music has meaning I can find. Kung fu has meaning I can find. (I just watched the new Karate Kid with my father and suddenly kung fu was awesome.) Yoga has meaning I can find. This connects with a belief I've carried for longer than I've followed it, but that when I dislike something, that's a "failure of appreciation". It's not that the thing has nothing to appreciate about it, but that I have failed to appreciate it. I used to use that phrase usefully with others, to sometimes persuade them that there could be a worthwhile aspect to something they disliked (like drinking tea or eating olives!) and I sometimes wondered at my hypocrisy when I would dismiss others' ideas or interests.
So, like finding a "silver lining", I like to find meaning and benefit in things, in inconvenient situations, in compromises, in strange and weird things, in things foreign to me, outside of my interests. "Oh, you do ninjutsu? What's it like?" rather than laughing at people for playing at being ninjas. (Aren't I just playing at being a samurai? :D)e's
I expressed to a friend the other day that it felt like my identity becomes diluted the more prejudices I surrender. I'm a less sharply defined person. I'm less of a person. It makes having excitable conversations over interests more challenging, I think. I can't simply advocate for my own interests above others. That's probably for the best.
So, the summation of my late night rambling:
- I need to get a move on
- I am compelled to journey freely through the world
- I should resume yoga (so many things to do in life already; but can be efficiently integrated?)
- I find it sad that words and perspectives separate people who have the same interests
- Communication is important to share ideas and activities without alienating others
- I think everything that is might be meaningful and interesting, at the very least because existence of something represents some information and consequences that are at least curious
- I'm always a recovering hypocrit
- My identity is dissolving
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| a wandering tomcat |
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