Each day for me is a positive in still being me and alive. And with family and loved ones intact. That and as many friends well and intact, too.
But each day for me is a tabula rasa of sorts as I start to fill it in from morning on. For me, the day is full with many possibilities that I can will and bring into being, beginning with myself. It is that base on which everything and everyone else in my life depends.
I am responsible for my day and the choices I make that day. Every day is a taking care of business, a moving forward with growth possibilities on a number of fronts, in a number of ‘worlds’.
Quite often I am reaching for a book, asking a question, or checking online for info of the moment I am looking for. It is important to stay that focused and mentally engaged all ways.
Each day I watch, read, or talk about something to satisfy my curiosity. Topics arise naturally in the flow of minutes. I am constantly putting in or putting back in. It is a constant drive to reinforce self, mind, heart, spirit, and soul. My responsibility and no one else’s. And if you don’t put in…well…. that’s a choice. True, the current age has become a great age of diminishment/s and a new Dark Ages, especially with schools, universities, and workplaces closing. Our personal worlds have all been shrunk by the virus and government action. We are all much less than we were even one week ago.
So, what about the mind? Does it do a number on itself with increased fears, paranoias, obsessions, and the beginnings of mental illness? Or do we fortify ourselves, our inner and external home-front resources by reading viewing, conversing, e-mailing, home-bonding, imagining, and increased positive growth thinking?
(Existentially, I made my choice a long time ago. I am responsible for my self and my life. No one else. If the world goes crazy and dangerous and diminishes into various shutdowns of free living, that key point is still true.)
Anyway, yesterday I walked about the house (still waiting for the sidewalks to clear though some places like the university can be walked most of the year) for my main exercise–over 6,000 steps. I did some other exercises, too. I read a fair bit and in the evening watched part 2 of the 2018 BBC Civilisations series, and expanded my imagination, love of art and history, and understanding of life and human nature considerably.
My head was pretty full by bedtime, but I put on the headphones and listened a while to readings of William Wordsworth’s great poems including “Tintern Abbey” and “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”. This only confirmed the importance of keeping one’s faculties, heart, spirits, and language up via great poetry, in this case. It was also a reconnection to my past self and high-school and university experience: even further ripples.
It was Walt Whitman who once said “I am large…I contain multitudes.” Many of the greatest possibilities are those realized by our personal consciousness of who we are and the depths of life and soul experience. We have worlds within us, said Whitman, regardless of the outside ‘noise, babble, and external limits or limitations. So very true, eh?
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ps/I will also put in good words for diet, movement, fresh air, and being out in Nature. And humor and wit–God bless Peter Sellers, Peter Ustinov, and Jonathan Winters.
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A Compendium of ‘Elevating’, Edifying, Spiritual Sources and Works
(complete works of Shakespeare and a fascinating word-related resource)
(complete works of Beethoven)
(the great art and architecture of Michelangelo)
(inspiring biographical stories from history/herstory such as those of Rachel Carson, Thomas Edison, Walt Disney, Joseph Campbell, Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi)
(great relevant fiction such as Orwell’s classic 1984)
(the best of jazz including Armstrong, Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, and Stan Getz)
(filmmakers like Ingmar Bergman, Alfred Hitchcock, David Lean, and Orson Welles who have large significant bodies of work)
(likewise, the great composers such as Tchaikovsky, Mozart, and Strauss that have large bodies of timeless classical works)
(the classic works of imaginative literature such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Ray Bradbury’s short stories, and the tales of Edgar Allan Poe)
(the great Impressionist art of van Gogh, Monet, and others)
(the profound women writers of the English and American literature)
(the large-catalogued poet-songwriters like Dylan, Cohen, Simon, and Joni Mitchell)
(the truly funny, witty humorists of the world like Ustinov, Sellers, Winters, Williams, and Chaplin)
(the genius designer-architects like Frank Lloyd Wright)
(the top indigenous artists)
(the many classic novels of all time including the above)
(the many great cultural thinkers and conscious thought-provokers such as those above)