1. Variety/NoveltyӬӬ. This last Spring I graduated from college. After that time, I moved back to my home town of Danville, California. Most of my friends from high school are no longer around, and so I have made it a priority to explore the entire bay, get involved with new groups of people, and consistently reach out to strangers. Because of this, I have met so many new friends, and learned so many new ideas, these last three months. The world is such an unpredictable and beautiful place. There are few things that get me more excited than the fact that if I am open and friendly each time I leave my house, I can truly connect with a completely random new person. This is how some of the most terrific friendships and learning relationships are born.
2. Friendship. I have a core group of friends who are the foundations of my life, and who mean the world to me, but I constantly try and branch out. We are all so easily influenced, even on subtle subconscious levels, by our friend groups – psychological stasis and atrophy are inevitable if we don’t branch out. To consistently grow and improve, I believe it is necessary to meet new people and cultivate new friendships. This allows us to grow into new ideas, new interests, and see the world from different points of view. Few things bring me more joy than my old, and new, friends.
3. Love. is such an overwhelming, nebulous, and somewhat cliche value. In this situation, however, I am referring to romantic love. Many of my most cherished memories consist of the wild, maddening desire to meld into the person I love. I believe that it is this state of absolute desire to lose oneself, and fully identity with the other, that is the mystical experience spoken of by religious practicioners from around the world. Fully identifying with another as yourself, and wanting to sacrifice for them, is the most loving experience I believe that one can have. It is through love of our spouse that we can begin to cultivate this intense love for others, and the entire world. Nothing is as ecstatic as such self-forgetting love.
4. Art. For most of my life, I have been drawing and painting. It is exhilarating to have an intangible mental image come alive on paper. I tend to have a vague feeling or notion of what i want to draw, and then slowly mold it into life as it comes onto paper. Because of this, the process becomes king, and few things have better taught me how to appreciate the process, and the moment, than the painting/drawing process. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to have sharper and more clear mental images, but because of my somewhat muddy mental canvas, I have learned to fully envelop myself in the process. I don’t always know what the end will look like, but when the picture is complete, I am able to look back on that wispy mental shadow and marvel at what resulted from that initial inspiration.
5. Work”¨”¨. My parents instilled the value of work into me from a very young age. I love looking back on my day, or week, and seeing all of the different projects I brought to completion. I believe that each time I complete something, no matter how small or large, it reaffirms to me my power as a human. I am able to turn nebulous mental constructs into full-blown physical products! It’s absolutely amazing when you think about it. I love to think about a prolific person like Picasso. If you were to lay out his life’s work, it would fill up an absolutely gigantic warehouse. To think that it all came from a balding, four armed, 5’4” hunk of flesh is amazing. We are able to build worlds so much greater than ourselves, and it is this characteristic that continues to amaze me.
6. Growth. I noticed in middle/high school that when I sat around, watching TV, and “relaxing”, I would also be slightly depressed and frustrated. The problem with those summers was that I was not pushing myself in any way. I was not growing. I was, at best, staying the same and, at worst, atrophying. Few things make me happier than when I can see that I am constantly improving in various areas of my life. My basic philosophy of life is that it’s all about developing oneself, and becoming the best person one can be. When we have developed ourselves, and instilled certain qualities and values in our psyche, we will naturally go out into the world and make it a better place. A lack of growth brings with it depression, an abundance brings bliss.
7. Freedom”¨”¨. I have always been told that I should carefully plan out my days, my weeks, my months, my life. While I do believe that planning has an integral part in each person ‘s life, and I myself follow a comprehensive system, it is the spontinaety, and the ability to flow with it, that brings upon us the most energizing and exciting adventures.
8. Music”¨”¨. While I love to live ‘in the moment’, I also cherish my past and all of my memories. Few things push me back into my own head more than music. Whenever I turn on an old song, or record, free-association emotions and images from my past flood my mind. I have noticed that whenever I listen to a song at an emotional time in my life, the emotion and corresponding images get linked to the song itself. If I listen to the same song in the future, the same thing happens again and again. Now, at 22, many of the songs I have been listening to for years are stacked so deeply that each listen brings forth a slideshow of happiness, sadness, and beauty from my past school years. “¨”¨New music, however, pushes me into the present moment. I absolutely love going to concerts and letting the bass shake every cell in my body. When music is that intense, it automatically pushes me into the present moment, and causes me to dance along. I live for it.
9. Meditation. I tend to have a fairly overactive mind. This is great a lot of the time, but can also be incredibly stressful. I have been meditating for a few years now, and over that time I have slowly fained ?? more and more control over my thoughts. It is very enjoyable to have those moments of peace and mental stillness. I plan on practicing meditation throughout my life so that I can learn how to live with my mental chatterbox, and calm myself down enough so that I can reliably pick up on the nuances of life.
10. “¨”¨Ideas/Books”¨”¨. One of my passions has been the study of perception. I have studied this from many different points of view: psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, religion, literature, and art. While each of these disciplines were thought of as separate in the past, they all come from, and thus relate to, the human decision making and perceptual process. Because of this, I see each book I read, and each idea I encounter, as a reflection of the human mind. By studying as many things as I can, and connecting them together, seeing the relationships, I can slowly understand the human experience that much more. It may be mental masturbation, but it’s a lot of fun.