It seems that life always follow a curve in this world. Everything seem to be dependent on high energy in the beginning at the time of birth and then slowly decaying and finally dying.
Young people start with lots of energy and then as I have noticed today, around the age of 25, people start to settle down, find their place in the world and I don’t know if this is cultural, but it seems that a lot of people in this country that is fairly rich, people tend to get very comfortable very early. It might of course be like this in most countries only different in it’s expression, but from my own experience, friends in my own generation seem to be more comfortable, safe and caught by inertia than the generations before. All I have to do is to look at my own life a few years ago. At the age of 26, I had a safe job, a safe relationship in one of the safest and easiest countries on this planet, and even though nothing in a sense was wrong with my life, I was already practically dead.
This kind of curved-like process (or cyclical if you like) happens to all kinds of ”organisms”. Everything is born, develops and then gradually settles down until it dies and from it’s ashes, new life is born again.
It happens to companies and organisations which are full of life and radical in it’s ways and the more influence and power it accumulates it becomes reactionary, dull and looses it’s flexibility. Companies loose it’s innovative atmosphere, political parties start to protect it’s power by not causing too much problems, religion becomes a practicality. Men tend to resist change, whereas women, who mostly has less power and influence in the world stay more open to change and what it brings. They start to protect the status quo.
But is it really that this cyclical process of birth, full of energy and gradually becoming more and more dull until it eventually reaches death and then new life again is the natural way of life, how things really are?
Looking at a tree for instance, it seem to be the only way of being at first glance, but if you look closer, would you say that a tree is actually gradually dying? Or would you say that a tree grows faster in the beginning but then continues to grow and grow until it’s death? It reaches new heights every year.
Could it be that when you look at humans something else is actually taking place than this natural cyclical process of Life? When people grow older, it is not that they are following a ”natural” order, but rather they start to accumulate things and ideas to feel safe and comfortable and instead of a flow of life, they start to resist everything that is changing, everything new.
Often in religion this is referred to as vigilance. It means to stay vigil, alive. Instead of giving in to the easy path of security you do not resist life, but flow with it. Change becomes your way of being instead of becoming more and more dull, uncreative and eventually dead.
It doesn’t mean to be immature for the rest of your life, refusing to buy a house or marrying, it means to embrace all aspects of it without resisting it, looking at things with curiosity, creativity and excitement. For companies it means to stay innovative and flexible, for political parties it means to stay challenging and adjusting to the situation rather than to be stuck in it’s ideologies and for the scientist it means to face the facts instead of ignoring that which doesn’t seem to go along with the theories you already have.
It is the meaning of the phrase ”dying daily”. Waking up every morning and not holding on to the memories, images and ideas of the past and meeting every person, every situation with the same life and energy as a child.
This is the natural and cyclical way of life.
For me, who is still young but has seen the ugly face of dullness and death, this aliveness can take on a feeling of desperate frustrations at times, and even though it can be strange in it’s own sense, as long as there is frustration it at least means I haven’t settled down and died already. I will take that at any time rather than to be a living dead.
