Newminimalists all discover a place within them which is calming.
Recently I was seated in my doctor's office as he took down my medical history. Pavel is our new family doctor so there was much to prod and probe about me beyond establishing a full record of my physical measurements. Suddenly he asked me the question: "are you afraid of dying from this Coronavirus?"
I took a deep breath. I reflected for a moment on his question because it was the one I had asked myself just a few days earlier. With less than perfect composure I answered. "No I am not afraid of dying or more precisely being dead as a result of it. But. I am afraid of the way I might die if I am captured by this thing."
Not being able to breath is a frightening experience which I have encountered more than a few times while body surfing. You are tumbling pell mell in a soup of sand with no possible way of knowing which way is up and which way is down. You are frantically fighting against the forces of the sea because you are afraid of death or worse of living with a lifelong injury.
Fear of the present is your overwhelming feeling as the past and the future lose all relevance and meaning. This swirling sand dims your vision and you know that you are completely helpless in this moment. Eventually you cease fighting against such an elusive devil. Suddenly you are breathing again with your face planted in the sand as the sea retreats all around you. At that moment life has no meaning because you have become obsessed with your need to take a deep and long-lasting breath of air. When you finally stop gulping in air: you feel hollow, fragile, empty and yet more alive than you can ever remember being before.
Today is the 21st of May 2020 and the sun is shinning outside my home. As I write this I am once again in that moment when I feel hollow, fragile, and empty yet more alive than ever before. I am feeling this way for two reasons. First I am surrounded by the threat of the Coronavirus which lingers just beyond my front door. Second I am now a living breathing Newminimalist.
The external threat of the Coronavirus was the external change that I needed to fully embrace Newminimalism. In systems theory this effect is called "completion from without". I remember teaching this concept to a room full of befuddled graduate students back in the day. I think I can now claim that none of them ever got it. And. That is because their teacher never got it. To him it was no more than an elegant notion, a theory, and an excuse to extrapolate upon a whole array of confusing ideas that may not have ever been relevant to life on this planet. However. Today I get it. I get it because over the past 3 months I have lived with the unique transformation process that comes with the imposition of radical change from the outside while one is imposing a radical change from the inside.
I can assure you that one ends up feeling hollow, fragile, empty and yet more alive than ever before [see photo].
Richard
You can contact me either by direct messaging or email at minimal-you.com
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