Evolutionarily speaking, every part of us has developed for a specific purpose at one time or another in our history, and going into the future. Some parts do multiple tasks, and some are more singular, but everything pulls its weight, and when something doesn't it can cause a chain-reaction of problems, and if untreated, can shut the whole system down.
I am looking for my legs.
Not literally.
After what has been a very disruptive period in my life recently, I am trying to find myself again, but not be what I have been in the past. I have to evolve, be something different, but I am not yet sure what that could or should be. After having a stroke, I tried to get back to "normal" and I failed in some sense, even though from the outside looking in, it might be appear a success. The failure was in the "get back to it" idea, and I even rushed that, but it was never going to work, because what I was, was dead.
Literally.
Not my body, though there is a a strip of dead brain matter just sitting there dark in my head, but who I am as a person, my personality, and the way I think, feel and react to my experience. I was able to get back to who I was in some sense, because it laid in memory, but being that person wasn't optimal because the conditions had changed. I had changed. There were similarities of course, but it is perhaps more like the similarities between siblings. And as anyone with siblings know, there can also be a lot of differences.
Times of disruption are probably the best time to create new habits, because everything is already disrupted, so inserting something new into the mix, doesn't take as much effort, because it doesn't have to fight against ingrained habits. Moving house or school, country or job, anytime there are large disruptions that affect multiple aspects of usual life, is an opportunity. So, now I don't have to work at a job for a little while, even though everything has changed, there is an opportunity.
What do I do with it?
Everyone is telling me to take a little time off and just shill, and while it does sound tempting, I am not sure if it is going to provide me any value. Sure, there are times that chilling out is valuable and needed, but I don't think I am in that period at the moment. What I do know is that a few weeks from now, I don't want to look back and wish that I had done something else than I did. But, I think that there are always a lot of daily distractions that can steer us away from what we would look back on and say, I am glad I did that.
While I don't mindlessly scroll social media, I don't think there are many people who do who after an hour or two, feel like it was actually time well spent. Rather, it was just time spent, not having to do something else that perhaps was less attractive at the time. Similarly, I don't think anyone who drags themselves to the gym regrets doing so, even if the workout wasn't great. Doing something is better than doing nothing.
That scrolling might feel like "something", but I don't think it is something that we actually put much stock into. that we value in hindsight. It is a distraction that keeps us from doing other things. And I wonder, while it has been designed to engage parts of our body that have evolved to do certain tasks, what should our body being doing instead?
Legs are for running.
Brains are for thinking. It would be interesting to see the brain activity of a person engaged in creating something, and someone engaged in scrolling some feed. I would suspect that different parts of the brain are engaged in the activity, but perhaps some of the same feedback systems are firing to make the person want to continue. What I notice in myself when watching something mindless, is that I don't really think much at all. And I reckon that if I were to scroll those short clips like on TikTok, I wouldn't spend much time thinking at any depth either. It would be one shallow thought after another.
What should I be doing?
Well, there are many tasks on the list, but I wonder if I look at it from the perspective of what I consider the three main parts of myself, my body, my mind and my emotional being, I should be feeding each of them, engaging each of them, building each of them. And the tasks to do this might overlap or they might not, but valuable tasks should be part of the necessary diet.
Does it feed my body, brain, feelings?
And as you might realize, there is a balance required, because feeding one too much and others too little, will put us out of sync, and cause a range of chain-reaction problems. I think a lot of what people do now is designed to feed their emotions, and that is highly engaging and addictive, even as the body and brain suffer from neglect.
There are things I need to do for instance around the house, but these tasks also feed into those parts of who I am also, don't they? However, what I also need to do is find what I am going to do after I am finished doing nothing for a little while. And this means that the period of doing "nothing" is going to have to contain something. I just have to work out what that something is, because I am not yet sure. What I am sure about though, is avoidance isn't going to help discover it.
My Body and mind know it - my feelings are unsure.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
