Hooked from the first sentence and thought provoking all the way through. You have done justice to your child-self, who so desperately wanted to create but had nothing new to say yet. You’ve taken beautiful passages and ideas from inspired people and woven them together with your own ideas to create something moving and alive, something greater than the sum of its parts.
A few of my pendulums:
1. Creation vs. Consumption - I seek out inspiring YouTube videos, well-designed games, transformational movies, and other experiences that expand the boundaries of my mind. Eventually I begin to feel restless, with thoughts like “why couldn’t I make this” or “I crave the feeling of inspiring others with something that I myself have created”, and I spring into creation mode, drawing from the inspirations I’ve collected over the days, weeks, or months to create something new and true to me.
2. Learning vs. Teaching, or Sponge vs. Fountain - I’ve noticed this primarily with poetry and speakers like Alan Watts and Jordan Peterson, but also recently at work. Whenever I start to experience periods of intermittent conflicting thoughts, I look for places to learn new things to spark new insights, like becoming a sponge soaking up as much water as it can. With poetry, finding pieces that so perfectly capture an emotion, behavior, thought pattern, etc., swings the pendulum to the teaching or “fountain” side where I feel compelled to encourage others to “feel the same thing I just felt”. At work, there is a pendulum that swings between soaking up as much information about a new industry and learning as much as possible from my experienced superiors, and becoming a manager, a delegator, someone to turn to who has the experience and problem solving to meaningfully help other people. Ahh the joys of being at a startup. For the first 5 months, I was in full sponge mode. However, over that time, the size of the company has more than doubled, and I’ve suddenly become one of the more “senior” employees in a sense. I’ve felt the sponge vs. fountain pendulum slowly starting to swing, and it’s only been the last 2 weeks that I believe I’ve swung to the other side, becoming a fountain of the information I’ve soaked up in the last 5 months, confident in managing and delegating, and more extroverted than I’ve ever felt before.
3. Travel vs. Home, Old Friends vs. New Friends, Partner vs. Alone, Intimacy vs. Distance, and New Data vs. Synthesizing all hit home for me.
Critique: I like the ideas behind self vs. others, but the pendulum analogy was not as strong for me as the others. Maybe this is because swinging from structure to serendipity implies that you will be willingly leaving structure behind temporarily as you swap between binary states, whereas swinging from self to others could be misinterpreted as “leaving yourself behind” as you pursue caring for others, eliminating the unidirectional interdependence that I think gives power to the self vs. others concept, yet is difficult to capture in the language of the pendulum.
Perhaps some kind of “ground-up” analogy would be interesting to explore, where certain “foundations” (self-care in this case) are prerequisites for higher-order needs or structures (caring for others).
A reason I love the east side of Cleveland is how the beautiful lakes and parks feel untouched by humans. I get this same feeling in northern Michigan, at State and National Parks, and even in certain areas of France. These places make time feel irrelevant, completely detached from the rat race of human progression and expectations. However, I also vividly remember telling my parents, after having been in London for a month, that I wanted to move to a big city and live in the very heart of it. As nice as a life of retreat into nature sounds, humans are also capable of cultivating beautiful places and experiences. Denver, nestled in the mountains and cold as hell, offers a vibrant, warm culture that makes you completely forget about the harsh environment. New York, Chicago, London, just to name a few, feature some of the greatest feats of engineering and architecture, as well as the ability to do basically anything you could ever dream of within walking distance. It’s only in the last few years that I’ve come to realize that both sides are vital to keep in touch with, and that maybe it shouldn’t be a “choice” between spending the rest of your life in only one environment. And it’s with the pendulum analogy that I can find real peace in embracing connection with both human achievement and natural beauty.
Hooked from the first sentence and thought provoking all the way through. You have done justice to your child-self, who so desperately wanted to create but had nothing new to say yet. You’ve taken beautiful passages and ideas from inspired people and woven them together with your own ideas to create something moving and alive, something greater than the sum of its parts.
A few of my pendulums:
1. Creation vs. Consumption - I seek out inspiring YouTube videos, well-designed games, transformational movies, and other experiences that expand the boundaries of my mind. Eventually I begin to feel restless, with thoughts like “why couldn’t I make this” or “I crave the feeling of inspiring others with something that I myself have created”, and I spring into creation mode, drawing from the inspirations I’ve collected over the days, weeks, or months to create something new and true to me.
2. Learning vs. Teaching, or Sponge vs. Fountain - I’ve noticed this primarily with poetry and speakers like Alan Watts and Jordan Peterson, but also recently at work. Whenever I start to experience periods of intermittent conflicting thoughts, I look for places to learn new things to spark new insights, like becoming a sponge soaking up as much water as it can. With poetry, finding pieces that so perfectly capture an emotion, behavior, thought pattern, etc., swings the pendulum to the teaching or “fountain” side where I feel compelled to encourage others to “feel the same thing I just felt”. At work, there is a pendulum that swings between soaking up as much information about a new industry and learning as much as possible from my experienced superiors, and becoming a manager, a delegator, someone to turn to who has the experience and problem solving to meaningfully help other people. Ahh the joys of being at a startup. For the first 5 months, I was in full sponge mode. However, over that time, the size of the company has more than doubled, and I’ve suddenly become one of the more “senior” employees in a sense. I’ve felt the sponge vs. fountain pendulum slowly starting to swing, and it’s only been the last 2 weeks that I believe I’ve swung to the other side, becoming a fountain of the information I’ve soaked up in the last 5 months, confident in managing and delegating, and more extroverted than I’ve ever felt before.
3. Travel vs. Home, Old Friends vs. New Friends, Partner vs. Alone, Intimacy vs. Distance, and New Data vs. Synthesizing all hit home for me.
Critique: I like the ideas behind self vs. others, but the pendulum analogy was not as strong for me as the others. Maybe this is because swinging from structure to serendipity implies that you will be willingly leaving structure behind temporarily as you swap between binary states, whereas swinging from self to others could be misinterpreted as “leaving yourself behind” as you pursue caring for others, eliminating the unidirectional interdependence that I think gives power to the self vs. others concept, yet is difficult to capture in the language of the pendulum.
Perhaps some kind of “ground-up” analogy would be interesting to explore, where certain “foundations” (self-care in this case) are prerequisites for higher-order needs or structures (caring for others).
"Honor winter and trust that summer will return" !!!
The prevalence of dualities in the human existence has always amazed me. I appreciate your thoughts 🤞
Another pendulum: Nature vs. Human
A reason I love the east side of Cleveland is how the beautiful lakes and parks feel untouched by humans. I get this same feeling in northern Michigan, at State and National Parks, and even in certain areas of France. These places make time feel irrelevant, completely detached from the rat race of human progression and expectations. However, I also vividly remember telling my parents, after having been in London for a month, that I wanted to move to a big city and live in the very heart of it. As nice as a life of retreat into nature sounds, humans are also capable of cultivating beautiful places and experiences. Denver, nestled in the mountains and cold as hell, offers a vibrant, warm culture that makes you completely forget about the harsh environment. New York, Chicago, London, just to name a few, feature some of the greatest feats of engineering and architecture, as well as the ability to do basically anything you could ever dream of within walking distance. It’s only in the last few years that I’ve come to realize that both sides are vital to keep in touch with, and that maybe it shouldn’t be a “choice” between spending the rest of your life in only one environment. And it’s with the pendulum analogy that I can find real peace in embracing connection with both human achievement and natural beauty.
Insightful piece