Plato described creative people as a necessary source of chaos. Archimedes anticipated the terror of politics riddled with a lack of wonder. Socrates said ‘wisdom begins in imagination’ – and that’s just the ancient world we now live in talking to us from the distant past. It’s amazing how our destiny remains the same, really. It’s engrained into the souls of every human to explore, be it the country they live in, the world, or the Cosmos at the grandest of scales. Humanity has a childish sense of adventure – it’s what brought about the Roman Empire, the discovery of the Americas, and our species landing on the moon. We live for travel, it’s hardwired into us to survive. At a fundamental level we’re still nomads, moving onto the next planetary system after we’ve pillaged the last. The thought and immensity of what we’re capable of as a species is so vast it almost rivals the ordinance of the Universe itself. From time to time.
The limbic system and the amygdala of the human brain controls those ancient tools of endurance that determine those primitive emotions. It facilitates the ecstasy that’s conjured from being with our close friends, perhaps the stress of someone we miss, sex with someone you love, or the mechanisms that drive racism and the fear of minorities. At times it also controls that fight or flight methodology that keeps us safe. That archaic system of reactivity and how it interacts with what could simply be described as an innovation in our evolution, the cerebral cortex, defines our temperament and our commitment to change, ideas, and our individual willingness to dissolve into our own interpretation of what it means to be happy. The common pressure of modern society on us to be happy catalyses one of the biggest criminal operations of our existence.
We’ve manufactured this fairly precise vision of what it means to be ‘happy’, and it’s an unwarranted expectation that curbs our deeper progress as individuals. We’re over-saturated with social media, social anxiety, an emphasis on physical appearance, and fabricated fitness models that are orchestrated to ensure insecurity is somewhat alleviated. And sometimes, from perhaps no fault of our own if we’re an environmental byproduct, we forget what it means to explore our spirituality and our creativity. Even the word spirituality is incorporated so often it’s difficult to determine its context without finding a sense of comfort in the amusement of superficial circumstances.
Being over sensitive to the world we live in is better than terminating our sensory perception, and if the result of that characteristic expedites less desirable outcomes at times, then perhaps that’s the collateral security that’s forfeited upon investing your entire heart into something you believe in. Be it music, writing, your relationship or your family. It’s not so much a specific endeavour we should all pursue, but more so appreciating our place in the synergy of cosmic rapture. Our time and how we allocate it exists concurrently with our individual aspirations, of which none are any more prevalent than the combined interests of global unity.
Furthermore, it’s the energy that cuts through you as it narrates what you’ve already envisaged as your own legacy. The story of why we do the things we do and how they impact and inspire others, is the most stunning achievement of your universal consciousness. It will always rest passively on your mind as you move among other sentient beings.
It’s like this kind of spiritual electricity that rattles your judgement and keeps your fate on the path that your actions have constructed.
In its own way.
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Elliot Clarke, Friday January 23 2015