In one of the drifts, when talking about finding my viscous essence, I mentioned purpose and defined it as: My purpose is to react, adapt, absorb and transform while keeping the movement alive at any cost. After two days of this phrase came back to me and doesn’t want to leave unnoticed. It is always such a fascinating thing to go back to what we wrote or said and revisit it from a different moment in time. Also curious to observe how something that was carrying supporting function in the earlier discourse now moves to the foreground. And how this supporting function is actually incomplete and lacks nuance. In my previous entry purpose was kind of dragged in towards the end of my train of thought about viscosity, a last sentence brought up the purpose. It didn’t feel right to leave it like that, especially that purpose doesn’t even feel right - purpose is a rather utilitarian concept and for me doesn’t feel appropriate to apply it to whatever I am driven by in my life. Following meaningfulness feels better.
For a while already I was thinking about what can become a good way to map out meaning in my life. And I found looking at it through the perspective of being, doing and becoming as the most suitable way to make sense out of it. You might ask, why I find it important to find a model to hold it? The answer is easy, being able to give nebulosity a pattern so I can get a better grip on it. Just have to make sure the pattern itself is nebulously flexible. For now, these three states that constitute meaning allow me to keep an eye on the processes so nothing is left behind. Being, doing and becoming are closely interconnected and each of them must be taken into account. I will go through them and hopefully it will become clear how essential the interconnectedness of these processes is.
The being mode is a pure appreciation of the beauty of existence. Being able to enjoy the moment, standing still while listening to the wind, looking at the face of your parents, holding the hand of your friend, dissolving in sadness and giving in to passion. Being, as a sublime relationship where meaningfulness, comes from the appreciation of reality. Participation in this mode requirers perceptual abilities and is based not on the subject-object relationship but on what happens in-between.
The doing mode is about adding beauty to the reality. Expanding it and creating more for others to delve in. It is a more expressive mode where I can open myself up and pour out whatever has been channeled through me. The more beauty is being appreciated the more this beauty wants to come out and the more diverse expression it becomes. Being and doing thus are both essential for appreciating and multiplying meaning.
And then there is becoming which is an evolution of our capacity to be and do. It is our responsibility to be in the process of becoming and enable expansion of the beauty in reality. The becoming part is very interesting to me. It includes movement that allows curiosity to flourish and play with reality. I think in my case the becoming part was always receiving more attention than the rest of the modes to complete meaningfulness. Especially, the being mode was always underrated, to stand still, enjoy and appreciate the beauty of reality. The beauty of creating (doing mode) or the beauty of transformation (becoming) are more difficult to enter and require additional focus. It can be explained through various angles, from external pressure put on us by the environment, designed to hijack our being, low self-esteem and insecurity, mixed with fear to face the present moment. There can be various reasons why we miss out on certain modes that contribute to the meaningfulness of our lives. That is one of the reasons why having the modes to hold it helps, it allows seeing the gaps and shed light on the missing bits that have to receive better care.