Friday, May 10, 2019

Life lessons I learned from my favorite pastimes

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Outside of blogging and making art, I spend a lot of time doing my hobbies when I feel able. Most of my free time I spend talking to friends through text or Discord, sometimes playing Stardew Valley or other things multiplayer. Other times I feel like sitting back on the couch with my cats snuggled up onto me and reading a book- to view a post about my book collection, read here- https://weearthboundstars.blogspot.com/2018/11/my-bookshelf.html

These are some life lessons I've gleaned from my hobbies and how I spend my spare time. I hope you enjoy!



Practice secondary belief- 
"On Fairy-Stories", an essay by J. R. R. Tolkien

 

 I'm a big LOTR fan ever since I read The Hobbit in 6th grade (and got in trouble for using the word paraphernalia on a vocab test because I'd seen it in there), fell in love with Tolkien's works and set about trying to understand them as I got older. Every time I read them I understand them more, having gotten a little older, experienced more, and just had room to forget the words verbatim so I could read them new again. In an essay regarding Andrew Lang's work in compiling fairy tales in to the classic colored Fairy book range, Tolkien wrote about the notion of fairy tales taking place in a separate realm often referred to as Fae or Faerie realm. He argued that these tales shouldn't be put with things like moral fables or animal origin stories because they describe events that take place in a separate realm, a realm that is very real as long as it exists in fiction and therefore, people's minds.

As an example, the children's book The Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton. I hope you've read it or had it read to you at least once, but if you haven't it's pretty easy to sum up. Three children move to a house in the country and to occupy their time, they go exploring in the forest and discover a magical tree whose branches reach so high that the tops of them break through the clouds and touch different and strange lands that can be traveled to by climbing the tree, as long as those who do are mindful to come back before the tree branches shift and are no longer touching that land.
Every time the children go up the tree, there is a different land to go to and each land has unique and bizarre features like the ground constantly spinning under their feet or rolling like the sea, and the children must learn to accept and navigate the quirks of each world to explore it. When they enter a new world, it's there for them physically and they don't do much questioning or disbelieving that the ground rolls or animals talk, because that's just how it is there as the rules of that land.

When we open a book, it's a portal to a world another person has already created. In his essay, Tolkien says that when you write a book, you create that realm somewhere in existence, and it's real as long as at least one person holds it in their mind. Those who read the book are allowed to visit that realm, to experience its history through the creator's account and then to explore the world at their leisure through imagination, once the idea of that realm has been established in their heads.

When I struggle to become invested in a book because I can't suspend disbelief, it's often because the rules of that world don't make sense in my comparison to the world we live in. The idea of suspending disbelief works to a point, because the practice is telling yourself "It's okay that this doesn't make sense, it doesn't exist in my world." It's a method that brushes putting aside the content you're trying to get into as a separate universe from ours, but it misses the vital part of investing yourself in this new world with different rules.


Talking about Blyton, my fairy tale fascination, and reimagined fairy tales is a great segue into my next example-


Getting over the fear of starting/ being afraid of your potential-
The Magic World- E. Nesbit
Book 5- "SEPTIMUS SEPTIMUSSON"
 

Another fantastic classic Children's writers is Edith Nesbit. One of her books, The Magic World, is a collection of short stories about magic happenings. The 5th story follows the classic pattern of a young man who must go out and seek his fortune, and because he has a kind heart, he helps people and animals along the way who show up later on when he's in need.  
The message I take away from it is that making progress towards a goal is often less daunting when you begin it for other people, and find a purpose in it for yourself along the way. Even if it's scary, the only thing you can do it just start anyways because you'll never truly be prepared. Here's the part that was most meaningful for me-












" ‘I can’t speak to the wind, I won’t,’ said Sep, and almost at the same moment he heard himself call out, ‘Oh wind, please come and blow up the waves to save the poor mussels.’
The wind answered with a boisterous shout—
‘All right, my boy,’ it shrieked, ‘I’m coming.’ And come it did. And when it had attended to the mussels it came and whispered to Sep in his attic. And to his great surprise, instead of covering his head with the bed-clothes, as usual, and trying not to listen, he found himself sitting up in bed and talking to the wind, man to man.
‘Why,’ he said, ‘I’m not afraid of you any more.’
‘Of course not, we’re friends now,’ said the wind. ‘That’s because we joined together to do a kindness to some one. There’s nothing like that for making people friends.’
‘Oh,’ said Sep.
‘Yes,’ said the wind, ‘and now, old chap, when will you go out and seek your fortune? Remember how poor your father is, and the fortune, if you find it, won’t be just for you, but for your father and mother and the others.’
‘Oh,’ said Sep, ‘I didn’t think of that.’
‘Yes,’ said the wind, ‘really, my dear fellow, I do hate to bother you, but it’s better to fix a time. Now when shall we start?’
‘We?’ said Sep. ‘Are you going with me?’
‘I’ll see you a bit of the way,’ said the wind. ‘What do you say now? Shall we start to-night? There’s no time like the present.’
‘I do hate going,’ said Sep.
‘Of course you do!’ said the wind, cordially. ‘Come along. Get into your things, and we’ll make a beginning.’"



Discovering your true potential by facing your fears and insecurities-
  Bleach vol. 13 ch. 111 "Black and White" / ep. 39 "The Immortal Man"



Bleach is one that I started watching as a teenager but didn't really get into, and recently re-watched it up to the end of the rescue arc (where it ends like a good anime should. Right? Right.)

In this episode, the main character Ichigo is fighting to retake his sword from a manifestation of the corrupt version of himself that wants and threatens to take control if Ichigo slips up.


He has to fight that part of himself to retake the sword, and his dark self laughs at him that he hadn't taken the time to try and understand his sword's true power.



Your true self, as much as it seems like some future goal, starts with the potential within you, and it's what you're afraid because you recognize your future but for some reason from and fight. 
There are moments in life that you can put yourself in that will either be enjoyable experiences or learning experiences. This episode reminded me of a really poignant experience I'd had, where I'd spent a while doing some soul searching staring in the mirror.  I saw in my features the kind of features I'd til then disliked or thought intimidating in other people, and I realized I'd felt that way because I saw them in myself but denied it. What also struck me was that the kind of features I'm so often drawing and see as loving and maternal were also there in my expression, like a shadow of a person I might become in the future.
 







Dedication and patience, aka Slow and Steady Wins the Race-

Zen and the Art of Knitting- Bernadette Murphy


I love to knit, especially so I can make things for my fiance (or often our cats so I can put them in silly hats or every now and then make them a new felt mouse to roll in catnip and surprise them with). My grandma taught me to knit and sew when I was around 10, and I did it as a hobby making scarves and small blankets from then til I was about 19, which is when I started branching out and trying new techniques like making lace, fair isle knitting, more complicated designs like socks and sweaters, etc. A couple years ago I picked up this book at the library, and it got me thinking about the positive effects of knitting and how it applies to life.

In order to reach a big goal you don't have to be fast, you have to be consistent and not stop in order to reach your goals, so have patience- if you rush the quality will suffer.

It will always be a process, and you can either be mindful of it and use it as a meditative process, or allow it to become a mechanical habit that you do while seeking other distractions. Like anything in life that causes us to want to rush through it or daydream to take us away from the monotony, there's that choice to do it fully and mindfully or to distract yourself until it's done. You'll never get that time back and if it's working or studying it's what you'll return to the next day and the next. If you spend all of it wishing you could be doing something else, getting through it so you can spend a small amount of time doing something better, you'll have spent years in denial doing what you hate.

Sometimes, to get better at it, you have to do it wrong to figure out how to do it right. If you can't understand the pattern or directions fully no matter how many times you hear or read them, sometimes you have to start the project knowing it won't be right, so that you can look it over and see the problem and try it again.




Communication is important, and difficult for everyone indiscriminately-
Frasier



Frasier is one of my all time fave comfort shows to marathon, for all its faults and parts where it hasn't aged well. Kelsey Grammer and
David Hyde Pierce are so fun together.



What I really love is how it shows that even when you know how to communicate well- meaning what the pitfalls of communication are, how to avoid mood swings, etc, knowing that is way different than being able to put it in practice. 


Many times you know what you should do but aren't able to make the decision to do it, other times you are able, but stubborn and it's more cathartic to react negatively. It takes more energy to put what you know into practice, and even those (especially those, in this case of a family of psychiatrists getting into communication breakdowns constantly) who should know the most about it struggle doing this.



_______

So what's our conclusion?


The great thing about blogging sometimes is that although I may start writing a post not intending for it to have a theme, as I go along putting it together and reading over it I see themes within the things that I thought were scattered and mostly unrelated. 

You're free to take away whatever message you like from these little anecdotes, but the theme that I feel is presenting itself to me and why all these moments were so meaningful to me lately is this-



it takes time, nurture, and practice to become your true self and you have to allow the person inside you to talk, to voice their personality through preferences and morals. although that journey is frightening and is something you want to be prepared for and do properly or not at all, there's no way of knowing which way is 100% right til the end when you look back, so at some point you have to just make up your mind and begin







Take care of yourselves, friends. Til next Friday-

























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