My daughter, Smallsteps, started "dance" classes a couple of weeks ago and she loves them. They are mostly just movements to get the kids used to using their body with intention, yet my daughter seems to take them seriously. We were a little surprised, as she knows no one there and we aren't allowed to go in and watch due to Covid rules, she enters into without even a look over her shoulder to us.
Tonight, she wanted to wear a dance outfit, a hand-me-down Frozen tutu that she puts on when she wants to be a princess - but now, she wants to dance and dance and dance. She has always loved dancing, which is why we found her the class to join and I am glad that at leas in the classes, she seems to get over her shyness and dance like no one else is watching.
I wish I could be a fly on the wall.
There is definitely something to be said about the power of flow, the immersion into an activity to the point that the entire world drops away except for the task at hand. It allows us to lose ourselves while simultaneously finding the best version of who we are in that moment. Detached yet still sensitive.
this is often found in sport as it offers an environment for flow to build - skills and the challenge to test them - but the skills have to be high enough to reach out toward the challenge and the challenge high enough to make the arm stretch to the point where both the outcome of failure and success can be tasted. It is about knowing there is hope, but not knowing if one is able to win.
There need not be a reward. and it is addictive still.
People say they love to learn, but I do not believe anyone who has told me this, as their actions and reactions speak differently. The learning part is just a prerequisite to the payoff from learning, whether it be the satisfaction of meeting the challenge of committing something to memory, the application of skill to prove oneself to another, or to use it to earn upon it.
There is always a pay off to learning and one of those value streams is the feeling one gets when being able to apply what one has invested into knowing to meet a challenge. We are problem solvers, each of us, even if the problems that we turn our attention to are unimportant, irrelevant or not problems at all. We create problems to test our skills. There is no need in this world for a person to run 42 kilometers - yet there are millions out there trying and when they do, they want to try again to try and go faster. It is a useless exercise - but many are addicts.
But, it isn't just physical challenge, it can be mental too, or spiritual - it doesn't matter, it is all a test. While we can condemn the practices of others and where they turn their attention, the process of turning our energy toward something is the same, regardless of what it is. As one person spends their time absorbed in the practice of exercising their body, another spends their absorbed in digital arguments online - each can hold the same level of intent, each can feel that what they are doing is of utmost important, yet - is it?
They say time is the most valuable resource we have, but I believe that attention is, as it is our attention that will dictate our intention and therefore, how we spend that time. Time itself is a construct that traces movement, just a tokenized representation of what we do and observe, but we do not see time pass unless we are paying attention.
For billions of years this world has moved with none of us seeing it, yet move it did and when we are in the zone, the world continues to move around us, though we do not witness it. In that zone, there is only the moment at hand, no past, no future - no time.
How we spend it matters as time flows through our fingers like sand, but for short periods, we can join the flow and become part of time itself. When we are traveling at the same speed as time, everything stands still and only in reflection, can we see how far we've travelled.
Some travel far, many never leave the comfort of what they know.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]