395 sats \ 4 replies \ @SilkyNinja 26 May \ on: Bubbles to live in mostly_harmless
Have you ever read The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up? A few years ago I did the Konmari method by the book and allowed me to let go of who I thought I was (or who I thought I needed to be) in such a viscerally physical way. This might be a little woo, but I also think of it as a form of intuition training. I still like to revisit it (although I've been procrastinating this year's!); it's like a ritual way of cultivating your material life.
A book I'm slowly working through, Thespis, argues a perspective that early religious drama preoccupied itself with the seasonal ritual via the concepts of kenosis and plerosis, "emptying" and "filling" - fasting and then feasting. I think it's an interesting framework to consider the curation of the self.
I really liked your post. I really liked this section:
When you think about it, if we all had so much regard for ourselves that we honored and cultivated our own gardens, our dealings with others might change dramatically. I say "might" - this topic is something that preoccupies me a lot, but I get smacked with the reality that I'm still a jerk (even to myself) way more often than I'd like. Maybe I need to work on my garden more.
Have you ever read The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up?
I've heard of it but never read it, but after your comment, I'm going to. I never really made the connection between [what I understood] that book/ideology to be about, and this idea that I'm moving toward. Now that you say it, though, the relationship seems clear and obvious. Thanks for the suggestion!
I think [framework of fasting and feasting is] an interesting framework to consider the curation of the self.
Years ago the idea of cycles was one of the first big, weird ideas that captured my mind. It works at so many levels - there's the seasons, as you say. Then there's the foundational rhythms that have been annihilated by modern life, the most obvious being sleep / wake with the sun; and fast and breaking-of-fast. A ton of physiological processes assume these exist, we have giant cascading chains that depend on them being there. And now they're mostly absent, and weird when they do exist.
if we all had so much regard for ourselves that we honored and cultivated our own gardens, our dealings with others might change dramatically.
I think you're onto something big with that one. I'm seasoned enough to know that all problems don't just melt away if people are generally healthy (in all reasonable senses of that) and have enough (in all reasonable senses of that) but man, 90% of it melts away. Miserable bastards cause more misery, that's a consistent truth in my experience.
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Just started it because of your advice. Thanks for the recommendation. So far it’s really good. I tentatively second the recommendation.
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I should have followed up to say that I've read like a third of it, and got so energized that I discarded a ton of shit. Worth reading, just for that.
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When you discard “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” because you don’t need it anymore
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