At Easter time in Finland, there is a weird tradition of planting seeds and almost literally, watching grass grow. It is weird, but isn't a bad tradition, because as the snows melt, it becomes a greyish dust bowl, that resembles more a desert than a land of 200,000 lakes. Having a few patches of green around the house is quite welcome.
The other thing that is welcome, is having four days off as a family.
I actually didn't realize that this isn't the case in the US, where apparently, it isn't a long weekend and colleagues will be working. Sucks to be them!
What sucks for us, is that Easter has crept up silently and we don't really have anything planned to take advantage of the mini-break, other than heading to the in-laws for lunch today. This doesn't "suck" suck, because we will find something to do, especially since the weather is looking relatively good and we might even be able to go for a walk somewhere in nature and grill some sausages. This is always nice to do and it also means I can take my camera with me.
And, it also gives me a chance to write in peace.
The other day someone was saying in a comment how they are a busy student, which was a reply to what value they are bringing to the community through their content. I see this as more of a deflection than anything else, as if being busy is an excuse to not bring value to, yet they also expect to get value from the community. That is okay, people do as people do.
But we are all busy, aren't we?
Busy-ness seems to be the general state of society now, no matter what people actually do. People without jobs are busy. Students are busy. House parents are busy. Children are busy. Everyone is busy. And it makes me wonder at times, busy doing what? What are we so busy doing that we don't have time to add value to the things that we believe is worth actually doing - whether that be time for a hobby, or going to exercise, or write a half decent post for Hive.
I believe that humans are genetically creative, yet so much of what people are "busy" doing is not creative at all, it is consumptive or administrative. We are like secretaries constantly doing the filing work in the office, but not producing anything ourselves. It is unhealthy.
For me over the last decade, making the shift to producing something has led to a major improvement in my life and then, moving into creating for a purpose on Hive, has ramped that up incredibly. And, since I have been consistently creating daily, it has become a habit for empowerment and mental health, as I get to shift that creative energy into the world, rather than leaving it pent up inside, losing its potential. And I wonder if a lack of creative outlet, is part of the reason that some people are so emotionally volatile, as that pent up creative energy is released as frustration and anger, rather than being converted into something useful.
Everything becomes a personal attack.
And, maybe this is also part of the reason why, because every little bit of experience gets creatively converted into something meaningful for the individual, so any negatively perceived event, gets turned from a molehill, into a mountain. It all becomes the worst version of events, which means that people end up spending a lot of their time internally ramping the situation up and externally combatting, using a massive amount of emotional energy in the process - leaving little time for much else.
I am busy too.
I work fulltime in a job, I have a separate business I run as a sole proprietor, I have an old house I am renovating, I spend many hours a day on Hive and of course, I have a family I look after too - yet, I think I have space to do more. However, one thing I am running out of space for, is spending time with people who are time vampires, those who are always too busy to learn, but never too busy to argue as to why they have been wronged, or don't have the time to learn.
The world is a vampire
Smashing Pumpkins
But the world in which we live as communities, societies and cultures, is built by humans - so by extension, it is us who are the vampires. And some are more vampiric than others, because all they do is suck, giving nothing back to the system, and they are insatiable, victimizing the time and energy of others, all the while believing they are the victim in the situation.
How much time and energy should they be given?
And this is the sad reality, because the more they act this way, the less there will be to feed them, as people like myself turn our attention to others, those who deserve our time and energy. This means that it creates a culture gap through individual behaviors, where there are those who want to creatively grow, building for those who want to creatively grow, closing off resources from those who want to creatively drain.
If the creatives "win", the vampires starve. If the vampires win, everyone starves.
Either way, it is a shame.
But, in a society where personal responsibility is being given up and immediate consequences removed from behaviors, more and more people seem to be falling into the vampire pool, believing that they deserve energy, even though they have put very little or nothing at all, into the system.
In the end, vampires don't get hunted, they just don't get access to veins of value and their world looks like after the snow melts - very dusty and grey - whilst the creatives are growing pockets of green.
Everyone wants value for themselves, in whatever form that might take. But, does being human come with the automatic rule that everyone deserves value, no matter how an individual behaves?
We are all busy doing what we do, how we do it; and time is a valuable and scarce resource. Mine is valuable to me, so I have to be discerning with where I spend it and with whom. What is interesting is that some people seem to believe that they are entitled to the time and energy of others, even that of strangers - The work they do, the value they create, the energy they have.
Vampires.
If all of those mythical vampires with their extended lives, rather than hiding in schools as teenagers and living in mansions of those they have killed, they could be working through the night curing illness, solving energy challenges and making the world a better place. If they added value to the lives of humanity - people would willingly feed them.
But that is not how the story goes.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
