the flow

Don't have a ton to add today but gotta get something in here, to stay in the flow as the title suggests. Just started listening to the Serial podcast, has got me thinking about accurate and persistent record-keeping when it comes to my personal life.

Jake's here, still feeling pretty out of it. He's going in and out of sleep right now, looks pretty flushed with fever still. Hoping he breaks it within a day or two so we can burn the city down as planned while he's here. We got Thai Patio for lunch today, I worked this morning and was done by about 3pm. We walked over there, ate, got some toilet paper on the way home.

We got intercepted by a guy with an iPad taking donations for kids in poverty—I'm an easy target for people trying to sell things on the street or peddle ideas, I feel, and so ended up donating. After talking to the guy for a while though, I was glad I did. It was kind of shocking to me how little money it took from me to apparently make such a huge difference in another person's life; I'm apparently going to get receipt and pictures of the kid that I helped, or at least a note from him that will be translated from whatever his native language is so I can see what his reaction to it was. He thanked me profusely but now that I'm looking back on my day, that was probably the most meaningful thing I did. I thanked him too but I think he took it as just a pleasantry.

I'm feeling better about flexing the writing muscles lately. I also was able to get in a five minute meditation today as well between going out to eat, while my brother was taking a shower, so I've got that streak still going as well. But I was thinking in light of what I wrote the other day about depression and meaning.

Some of those questions I was addressing are still relevant; no blog post I write will ever wrap them up nicely. Still, I'm glad I wrote about what I did now because it's made me hone in a little bit.

I had a thought come to me today, just now really, what I would say if someone asked me what I wanted to do with my life, or what kind of effect I want to have. I would say that I want to be remembered or at least "felt" by every person I come in contact with—meaning a conversation at least, of course.

I think that as you move through life, you swing into other people's fields and orbits and can sometimes see how their gravity has changed by your presence or effect. In the modern and information-saturated era we live in, Descartes "think therefore I am" postulate seems kind of outdated and unreliable as a way to prove one's own worth and existence. I've always been more interested in connection, and one could use that other logic to take a pretty solipsistic tack. I could think by myself in a dark cave somewhere and convince myself that "I exist" by that logic, but my gut tells me that existing doesn't really mean anything in that context.

While a lot of it starts with being present to the moment you're in, I think being true to the emotions you're feeling is what really crystalizes your "existence" so to speak, it's a kind of antidote to existential crisis. You have to make moments in your life, you're being pulled along a string but you can torque or yaw the string in different directions along the way I guess.

Linking into that post I wrote about sandcastles as well, I've long struggled with the idea not of "why create" but "why create more." But as I think about it now, I think it's because you could rephrase Descartes' old aphorism for our present moment as: I create, therefore I am.

That's always been true as well, but especially now when thinking has much less weight in a world where vast catalogues of thought are available without any effort expended. Creation is much riskier than thought.

In the same way, around others and in new places and spaces, shooting from the heart is the best way to shake other people at a tectonic level; whether that's for good or for bad, I honestly don't care. If I pushed someone into becoming a villain down the line, I would be ok with that if it were a result of something I did. You have to behave in a way that the world can react to, otherwise what are you doing?

Good and bad isn't really the point; it's not even really a factor in life at an elemental level. Not to get too Nietzscheian here, but I think morality and mediocrity are pretty closely related in a lot of ways. Ethics are different than morals, and like the last post I wrote, I don't think it's all that productive—"creative"—to postulate and muse about ethical principles.

Ethics are discovered through action, just as wisdom is discovered through experience. Sitting on the sidelines making deep observations that sound profound can not be called wisdom, because it doesn't arise from felt and lived experience. It's unintentionally corrupted, and sharing it with others can be dangerous if you're not savvy to the element of self-deception in what's being passed on.

Anyway—I like creating and being creative in its own right, but I feel doubly armed by the fact that I can use creativity to combat existential quandaries. Until next time,

Ryan