What do we strive for?
From Phil Huckleberry’s “Phthursday Musings”, Marmora and Giddings
I imagine that sense of peacefulness feels distant for most of us. We’re not back to normal, we’ve got little appreciable sense of when that will happen, we maybe don’t even know what we mean by that anymore. Oh, we reach out for facsimiles of normal, sure. But is normal even the point? Or instead is normal just a crib for something else we’re really trying to get to, which is peacefulness?
Of course normal and peacefulness aren’t the same thing. Sometimes what we mean by normal is a certain state of busyness. Maybe even freneticness, if that can at least feel comfortable. Call it rhythm, say. But I submit that part of any good rhythm is reaching that peaceful space.
What are we reaching for? Do we strive for normal? Or do we strive for peace? Is normal a state of busyness? Is normal a rhythm of reaching a peaceful space?
That notion of rhythm… as an art major at Illinois Wesleyan University, I explored rhythm in my art as a way of crossing the bridge from visual art to music to dance. Rhythms are so powerful, and I wanted my art to capture that power.
Rhythm being the very heartbeat of life. The rhythm of breathing keeps us alive. Rhythms in music encourage us to dance, to go with the flow. In visual compositions, repeated elements create a rhythm tha capture the eye and move us through the layout. Rhythms are so powerful.
And now Phil touches on another element of rhythm. That of our daily lives. The routines that keep us going. And the value of breaking that routine to enjoy the intrinsic qualities. Doing the sudoku for the love of the doing it. Not because we have to do it. Therhythm for what it is intrinsically.
That’s an interesting idea that the rhythm can become wearisome when we do it solely for that repeated aspect, forgetting what the actually rhythm is comprised of.
I’ve done the same thing with the digital baseball trading card app, “Topps Bunt.” Collect a certain card every day so I could get the “bonus” card at the end of the 10-day series. Log into that app and break open as many digital packs until I hit the daily needed card. It got stressful instead of enjoyable.