I am in the living room. The TV is going. Regular Show is playing. It's underrated. Caitlin loves it. I love it. I hope an academic acknowledges its brilliance someday, if they haven't already.
A thought came to mind that I felt the need to share. Hopefully I can catch it.
So, there's this idea that if you're doing the right thing in the right way, then you're so busy being "good" (that is, good at something) that you don't notice how bad the world is. This phenomenon is better accurately described by psychologists when they describe flow.
I think the opposite of flow is the Heideggerian idea of present-at-hand—when we encounter an object/habit/something that is no longer working, it forces us to sit and contemplate the theoretical nature of the object. If we're at our keyboard, in the middle of trying to post something to reddit and the internet stops working, then we're no longer on a reddit-machine; we're trying to diagnose a problem; we're in problem solving mode, trying to figure out what it really means. The computer stops being a tool, and it becomes a series of puzzles.
I feel like over the past two years I have been coming out of a present-at-hand mindset—a fog. It as if my being—what I am—has been in a state of constant-maintenance, like a motorcycle that spends too much time in the garage. But now I feel like I am a more reliable machine, worthy of long-distance travel.
This is good. When I was younger, if I would have been in flow I would have been "flowing" in the wrong direction—better to be (self-aware and) neurotic and set my-self in order.
That being said, it's not that I don't find myself in the garage often. Rather, I feel that I have the confidence to ride—to do and be—onward, however long the journey may be, I can plan for it. (Well, within one or two lifetimes; eternity is another matter, for the opus magnum is seldom completed in one lifetime.)
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