balance

Dynamics of change

I am 32 years of age. I am slowly coming into an understanding of what and how I can be a part of the change that I wish to see in this world. It has taken years. It has been a thorough, heart breaking and uplifting moral process of wanting to live my passion while at the same time giving back to the Earth System.

I do not believe in contributing to the society of today. I believe in contributing to the vision of the society of tomorrow.

I am grateful for what has been, but I see no point in being afraid of the dynamics of change. There are no static systems. Change is always a factor. I will not contribute my time to the up-keeping of a societal norm where we as a collective act on the assumption that we have reached perfection in certain parameters. I do not believe in perfection. Perfection might provide a goal for some minds, but I can only see it as a flaw if you can not understand that perfection can never be reached. It is an infinite goal. You will never get there. That’s the whole point of perfection. You repeat a task over and over again, in an infinite number of iterations, yet you will never reach an end. There will always be room for improvement. Deal with it. Rest, then try again. Draw back – and you fill falter. You will become a part of the past, no longer in line with what is happening in the moment.

We are a funny species. We have funny minds. We can think in so many layers, we can relate to so many different perspectives at the same time. If we challenge that skill we become better and better at comprehending complexity, and if we give in and drop down to a more linear way of thinking, we will loose our potential of a more thorough understanding of this world.

What I’m saying is this: Sure, if you want to limit yourself and your own mind, do so. I can not stop you. But be aware of the choice you have made. You are free to at any time change this choice, but as time passes and habits are set, this will become harder and harder. Much like for any organism, there are stages of our lives which are generic. Birth, growth, offspring, death. We can not affect our own birth. We can sometimes affect our physical growth. All of us can affect our mental growth. Many of us can choose to have or not to have any children. We will all die.

The most profound effect we can have on ourselves through these stages relate to our mental growth. Others can provide part of the conditions for your mental growth, but the lion part of the job is for you to undertake. Dismiss it, and you will never reach your full potential.

Why would you ever want to loose that opportunity?

A fulfilling, non-judgemental lifestyle

How hard can it be to find a fulfilling, non-judgemental lifestyle?

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An everlasting question, I suppose. It’s very hard.

Part of my answer is this, that every time I have devoted my time to a physically and mentally challenging objective, situated in nature, I have felt that I am doing e x a c t l y what I am meant to be doing. The question marks regarding the meaning of life still arise during the quest, but also fade swiftly and leave me content with what is.

I long for that feeling, cherish its simplicity.

In daily life, setting myself up with work related challenges where the scene is a man affected landscape such as a city, I seldom feel that I am fully at ease with what I’m doing. There are so many moral aspects of life in the presence of other human beings. I find it hard to step away from the fact that I am a privileged person with potential power, thus morally obliged to search for A Better Way Of Living and to share the multiple answers with others. I am doing my best to be here and now and at the same time allow myself to continuously zoom out further and further, to be able to se more clearly what values have been instilled in me and which of these values I can choose to reject. This seems important to me; a hobby philosopher, deeply entrenched by a moral and ethical code which I can sense is out of date and probably of target.

I do not wish to be part of a destructive society today at the age of 32 anymore then when I first started to formulate my own ideas and thoughts on the subject at the age of 14, but thankfully the time passed has given me a more humble attitude in relation to the definition of a Destructive Society. The world really isn’t nearly as fucked up as I thought it was in my late teens. The world has probably never been fucked up and will never be fucked up. Who could objectively judge in that matter? Yes, we have gazillions of problems in our human society, but we are most likely not moving backwards even if the conservative right wing movement is strong these days.

Understanding at an ever deeper level the effect of being an organism which lives in an unfolding, evolving cultural flow, my mind keeps reaching for simplicity. For the greater picture. For the underlying patterns. For liberation.

Liberation. Ha!

Yes. I’ve never thought of that before. I wish to find answers to all my questions, to become liberated, free at last.

Liberated from the human context? Hmm. No. More likely liberated from the cultural, historical context which pushes down on my mental sphere like a warm wool blanket, a muffling gray, made of thousands and thousands of separate strands of thoughts passed down by generations. A felted mess that I’m trying to untangle and rid myself of, because I can not stand n o t trying to do it. I aim for the stars, wish to have their far away perspective on this global society of ours.

The blissful here-and-now kind of mentality that I appreciate and can glide into when in nature, alone or with likeminded persons, can at other times make me furious when I’m interacting with random people. If they too are applying this mentality but in a way that displeases my moral self, my grand moral monster gets angry. If I have an underlying feeling that these persons are acting disrespectful towards the Earth and its ecosystems simply by not putting an effort into thinking new thoughts which allows them to widen their perception of life, of this magically interesting universe, I want to shake them and m a k e them think.

Come ON, think harder! Stop limiting yourself!

But I don’t do that. I can’t do that. I know the moral monster is not very good at judging others in an objective way. It’s so pumped up with fiery morally induced feelings that it itself is acting exactly like the persons in front of it, the persons it wants to shake. The moral monster is a rather stupid part of me. It does give me fire and strength to keep on looking for possible answers, but it also dumbs me down.

For now, one of my largest personal mental quests is to harness that part of myself, the moral monster, so that I peacefully can take another good look at society and the people creating it.

At the same time I’ll be enjoying the simplicity of freediving at an elite level for an extended period of time, attending the World Championships in a few weeks time. That’ll get me right into the flow of emptying the mind, so that afterwards I have made room for new philosophical endeavors.

As always, to be continued…

Sometimes I think that climbing and freediving are just two sides of the same coin, and that that’s why I’m so drawn to them. Both activities include close interaction with the elements (e.g. rock or water), a strong mental focus, physical strength, the need to perform and relax at the same time, mostly small scale equipment, an individual performance coupled with the need for a team, and the feeling of being free and one with nature.

But then, when I start to compare how these two activities makes me feel, in my mind and in my body, the differences are abundant.

Rock climbing, to me, is about the flow and repetition of a differentiated set of small details and small moves. Your hip turning ever so slightly towards the rock face, allowing you to reach that next crimper, then your momentum can be shifted over to your left foot by adjusting your balance on that tiniest of holds, just a small rocking movement and you’re there… You tie into the rope and narrow your world down to what is of the essence of right now – the features of the rock face measured against your bodily and mental capacity. The most beautiful climbs are set in a mental state of flow. You know that you do not know what awaits you up there, and you relish that feeling and succumb to it. Freedom is being fearless.

Freediving is an entirely different set of repetitive movements. They’re larger, more simplified. You are a wave. Punto y final. The pattern of freediving is less complex when it comes to what muscles you use and how you move your body, and so it calls for less mental activity. While practicing freediving, you get to know your own breath before and after a dive, and you familiarize yourself with its impact on your state of being. You get to know your own inner landscape, because during a breath-hold, that’s all there is to see. The only way to escape from meeting yourself is to surface again, and why would you want to do that? A freediver longs for the depth, for the intimacy it provides. Freediving is meditation and thoughtless contemplation. With this self awareness, you walk through everyday life a stronger person. It’s a simple and beautiful gift.

Freediving calms your mind, rock climbing activates it. They both lead to a state of flow, but for different reasons. I cherish them both.

The trick is to understand how to do both without constantly loosing your essential climbing calluses from swimming in the ocean for too long 😉