Continuing the path of those before me, I put myself first and through that, I make my land a better place. ❤️ xA.

FOCUS, part 3

POWER

 “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” Mark Twain

Everyone remembers the day they were born. Not through standard mnemonic constructs, but its image is in our brains, nonetheless. It is artificially planted in our memory by the many stories, the photos, the videos, the family recalls shared at the holiday dinner tables.

Induced like this from childhood, the memory of that day is our first tool on a quest for power. It is the first instance when we had that power and used it to break through into this world, to make that leap into somethingness, and here we are.

The second jolt of power comes with the assertions of self when a youthful teenager breaks away from parents and home and becomes a sponge of possibilities and adventure. The kind of power that this gives is un-censorable.

Many follow.

As you start on your winding path, it is really up to you where you put your focus, your energy, how much of what you do is actually for you, and how much for others. The more you live, the more power you can get if you avoid slaving yourself away to the will and needs of others or to the preconceived ideas of what could and should be done. Sharping yourself like a tool to carve the rock of the mountain when that mountain falls on your path does not only give you the force to brave through tough times but incites your mind and keeps it alert, challenged and fulfilled. That is the real power. The more you have, the more life you have left.

SELF-CARE

“Much learning does not teach understanding.” Heraclitus

The realization that we’re truly alone in this world comes much later in life than it should. In fact, for some, it does not come at all. Some think of this as a bad thing when in fact, there is nothing bad about it. Too much reliance on parents, extended family, friends and support groups is detrimental to an individual’s life on many levels. On the other hand self-sufficiency, at least to a certain extent, is extremely useful.

The social and familial ties can then be perceived not only as controllable and balanced as opposed to dependency markers, but positive enhancements of yourself.

And then, the texture of your skin, your eyesight, the increasingly rapid beat of your jogging heart, the blob of happiness forming in your chest at the sight of your loved one, the ears of your friends a phone-call away, the hand of your family reaching out when needed, the pleasure of all things you’ve done yourself – for yourself and for others, are all healthily, and equally, yours. Nourishing them all means nourishing yourself.

SIMPLICITY

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” Leonardo da Vinci

In philosophical thought, elegance and parsimony are the two facets of simplicity. Simply put: you can experience simplicity either in the form of simple hypotheses, referred to as elegance or, in the form of methods, referred to as parsimony.

As if that were not sufficiently entangled, here is a logical paragraph explaining the parsimony of ontological simplicity:

“The basic notion of ontological parsimony is quite straightforward […] A theory, T, is ontologically committed to Fs if and only if T entails that F‘s exist. If two theories, T₁ and T₂, have the same ontological commitments except that T₂ is ontologically committed to Fs and T₁ is not, then T₁ is more parsimonious than T₂. ” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

I never understood why mathematical logic was taught in school. But now I know; it was to teach simplicity.

Because the road to simplicity is always passing through the thorny forest of complex thought.