It starts with a prompt: What is my relationship to discipline?
It is a guideline. I follow it throughout the day, the week, and even the month when I go as far as adding a theme for the latter and declining goals and habits to try to embody it.
It starts the preceding month, noticing dissatisfying parameters in my Everyday, wandering around virtual alleys of things to try. I take notes of it all, here, there, in my mind, on notebooks ‑ drafting promising contours to my next phase.
[So. Am gonna add one hour of painting every Wednesday evening. I can’t keep saying yeah am both an artist and a researcher and then paint only on the weekends. Do u see me as an artist like, when u think about me in your head? I think I can really do better with those empty blocks in my calendar, coz they are just sitting there white open for me to fill don’t u think. I could also run more, coz I really like the athlete persona. It’s clean. 24h in a day anyway. 24h to grow!!!]
Give colors to the grey zones of uncertainty, blow novelty into Emptiness to keep Idleness at bay. Isn’t that the idea?
Verbal notifiers that human nature is not to be let run unchecked:
[hacking, trackers, optimize, implement, supplement, plan, tweak, keep track, bulletproof, optimal, not optimal, morning routine, evening rituals, goals]
What is my relationship to discipline?
It is a perspective. One whereby I analyse the Self, what I am not, my potential(s). I look at my flaws, the unruly, ce qui déborde. It is an acknowledgement, that requires dissociation (to see what is), and desire (of what could be).
It is also Control, at the scale of my tiny world and less than that, at the scale of what in that world can be controlled.
Do I use discipline because I am afraid of Being?
- Yes, and I am glad I do.
- Yes, and I am glad I do, but I want to experiment with no-discipline (call it no-dis).
- Yes, and it is too bad because Being is probably wonderful.
- No, I use discipline because it is my way of Being as a human.
Follow-ups:
- How has discipline emerged as a human behavior, and is it uniquely human?
- What is the language of discipline, and how has it evolved? [I hypothesize that it has been shaped by the language of new technologies, such as computers].
How does this technological language influence people’s relationship with discipline?
- Should Emptiness be considered a necessary aspect of healthy discipline?
