Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Boundaries & reflection.

After some asian enlightenment stuff i've been talking with a good friend about why some people seem to get somewhere in life, where others seem to lack the faculties to get there.

I get the feeling that the ability to get ahead in life partially relies on the ability to reflect upon whath appens to you.

And I remembered something about boundaries. We put a boundary between ourself and the rest of the world, isolating ourselves from the world outside and vice versa, isolating the world from ourselves inside. Alan Watts has some nice points about this.


Though classifying people is a bad, bad thing to do, as it is mirrored in the way you look at yourself, I do wonder if looking at this boundary between yourself and the world leads to different types of people.

It should be easy to divide people into four categories:

Non-reflexives, or those that do not look at themselves or the world.
World-reflexives, or those that reflect upon the world but not themselves.
Self-reflexives, that reflect upon themselves but not on the world around them.
Full-reflexives, (Bi-reflexives just sounded..bad) that reflect on themselves ánd the world around them, applying the reflections from the world on themselves and vice versa.

I'm going to look at this for a while, and update later.



cynism

In every cynic, there's an optimist who is afraid that they might be wrong.

Elements of personality

There seems to be a transition in my thinking. More and more, it's simply doing what I want and less trying to appear like something I feel I should be.

In my theatre classes, we used something called the theory of elements to determine our playstyle. Fire, water, earth, wind. All of these were explained in terms of a cowboy walking into a saloon.

Fire walks in with zest and flamboyance. He's not afraid of anything because he's faster on the trigger than anyone. Anyone shoot at him, he'll just shoot them first. Balls first, loud, full and sure of himself.

Water walks in like a cyclone that embraces the entire saloon. If he gets shot, he shows and shares the pain with those around him, so they can see that shooting him is a bad thing. He's like a little vortex drawing out the emotion in people.

Earth, ah. The stoic. Earth would simply stand quietly. Walk inside without saying anything. Earth would get shot and look at the gunshots and think "Hm. I appear to have been shot" without changing his demeanor. He's unshakeable but within the confines of himself, where fire is so outside himself.

Wind is the neurotic. His eyes dart from point to point, always looking for dangers, threats, planning, adapting. If someone goes for their gun, he'd outsmart them by always being prepared. Hands fidget, thoughts jump from point to point. Always prepared and always reacting to everything.


These are characters you use on stage, but they have their merit in knowing yourself. I used to be water with a lot of earth and air mixed in. Now I'm starting to become more earth. More grounded in my own choices and less reliant on the outside world to determine my behaviour.

I've got a girl whom allows me to simply be, instead of proving myself all the time. I'm choosing my own path and starting to plan the rest of my career or at least my life path. It's not a sudden epihany, but a slow change creeping in your every day behaviour. I'm not sure if it was actions or thoughts that made me change first. But they're both aligned more now.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a superman, but something is changing. I like this.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Love

And for the first time, it feels completely relaxed and natural. She gives me that feeling in my stomach when she does something nice and I notice I want to make her happy. But it's not as frantic as I'm used to. It's great to talk but the rest of the world is still there, instead of head-over-heels insanity.

Am I finally growing up? I sure hope so. I think she's healthy for me. I'm showing more of myself, consciously trying to drop barriers. It's scary at first, but so great afterwards. It makes me feel a strange calm. Everything will be allright.

I hope I can give her what she needs too.


Friday, June 8, 2012

The moment you start telling the world how it really works and should be is the moment you are so disconnected you need to get out of your mind and just experience again. It's so easy to just sit back and just think, instead of taking part.

Thursday, June 7, 2012

With inmalafide quitting, I've been reading up on his blog. Then I found this little bit of poetry by Rudyard Kipling:

“If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man my son!”

Friday, June 1, 2012

Growth

With the premiére of the musical I play in I've noticed something new. I feel some stage fright and tension building up to the big show. Normally, I'd get stressed or try to focus, but now, for the first time in ages, I've been enjoying the excitement. Instead of feeling a negative emotion, actively try to value and enjoy the sense of adrenalin running through your body, your mind racing to make sure you did everything. It's much nicer to sit back and enjoy the fear and anxiety, instead of being a victim of it. It feels like growing.