RISKY FLOWS INTO BRUCE"S LIFE
Before I try to resolve nuclear holocaust and the revenge of the K2
meteorite, I thought I would focus on everyday experience. At best perhaps I
can aim low and shoot high......
BRUCE WRITES:
<< Risky Rog -- I have been a "lurker" (terrible term, but...) in
moq_discuss for some time, and this is my favorite note yet.Thank you!
I haven't read MC's work, but I've read several other things that sound
like it. One of my favorites (beyond ZAMM/Lila) is "The Inner Game of
Tennis," which is a guide to "flow" in the tennis context, but which
presents flow-generating techniques applicable to all aspects of life.
RISKY:
I read that book as a teenager. It was around the time I read Jonathan
Livingston Seagull. (seriously). I wonder if I can find it again. But yeah,
the themes are similar.
BRUCE:
It seems to me that I was into "flow" and the pursuit of dynamic quality
much more when I was young -- say, in my late teens and early twenties.
Now I'm 41, married, with two kids and a job about to expire next year.
RISKY:
I am a 40 year old businessman with a wife and two older teens. I had a dog
too, but she ran away.
BRUCE:
For a while I've been much more focused on static quality --
security/money, etc.. Intellectually, I know I should keep pursuing
dynamic quality and "flow". But it seems like I'm drawn, increasingly,
to the static -- wanting to make sure I have my financial and other
basic foundations of life set, rather than going out and trying really
different, new things. For one thing, it seems that I'm so busy
working, paying bills, changing diapers and taking out the garbage, that
there just isn't time to worry about trying radically new things.
RISKY:
I am not sure I do that much new stuff now-a-days either. But then I am not
so sure the pursuit of the new isn't a static pattern itself. I do try to
stay flexible and resilient. For example, I have basically lived in three
different States and had four completely different jobs (at the same company)
since joining the Lila Squad a bit more than a year ago. I have enjoyed all
three sites and all the jobs immensely.
And I too stay very busy, though I always find time to do what I want to do
(though this may be that I like what I do...does this make sense?)
BRUCE:
My sense is that this is a typical pattern. And while, of course, many
older people are still doing new, exciting things (and we all probably
should continue to seek such experiences), it seems that people tend to
shift from a dynamic to a static focus as they age.
RISKY:
To me, DQ is not best represented by Nagasaki or school shootings, it is
best represented by Everyday Experience. Pirsig defines it as such, though I
think we would all agree that most of us filter out the basic dynamicness of
everyday life. The answer isn't more bungy jumping, it is more awareness to
the NOW. It is easy living in the now when jumping, that's why we do it...it
is much tougher to recreate that same sense of wonder and awe every morning
while dressing a child, driving to work, preparing a report or mowing the
lawn. But in my opinion, it is in the latter tasks that DQ must be found.
The key to DQ ,it seems to me, is to find DQ exactly where we least think
look for it.
BRUCE:
One manifestation
of this may be the apparent pattern of becoming more conservative
politically as we get older.
RISKY:
Try to read some of David B's writings....he can save your soul.
BRUCE:
My questions for the forum are whether this shift in focus from dynamic
to static quality as we age is 1) really a pattern and, if so, 2) good.
RISKY:
I hope not, but fear it may be so. What do you say we work together to ensure
it doesn't happen to us?
Risky Rog
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