There is a lot of text here. If you are in the springtime of youth, you'll get through it.I'm sick of apparently being unable to be totally in the springtime of youth. Sleep is my worst enemy; it requires a surrender of will to lose consciousness, and I wake up feeling a little tired or discouraged. From there on I seek basic pleasures as I slowly awaken, and it takes a mountain of will to get back into this guy's attitude:
On this Compendium, one of the legacies of the early days and the founding Compendiumites is an atmosphere of sincere exchange and discussion. I've tried to augment that by my explosive gestures of youth, and more recently, with the Your Dreams thread. Most people on earth aren't ready to refuse to accept circumstances and change fate, let alone talk about their innermost desires or dreams, and so I've also tried to make that untaboo and even encouraged (with my blase treatment, as Lord J pointed out!). And I wrote this today on Lord J's journal in reply to something:
If I had one trait I'd like to be at the front of my...what, image, charisma, dealings with people, etc., it'd be the springtime of youth. And I love that in other people, rare as it may be, because it creates positive feedback and encouragement. Still, it's hard to be the electrifying Zell Dincht in the room because of my own introversion and proneness to negativity in dealing with obstacles. I'm also not very good at pushing friends (mostly casual or good friends, but even the best sometimes) in regards to their problems. Sometimes I fear that probing into a friend's problems or struggles may be regarded as invasive, or that encouraging them (which often does benefit from the use of things like "are you so pathetic as to [fail]" and other taunts) may be construed as annoying or hostile.
I need to get over it. I've made a fun little hobby out of cleverly asking people their dreams or prime desires, and I helped resolve the A situation precisely because J harshly told me that I had become pathetic.
And communicating the springtime of youth is attractive to me because I believe the power of interpersonal exchanges is underestimated. In my adventures of casually asking people their most sacred ambitions, I'm sure I've caused a few men and women to think and analyze their desires. My refusal to accept and my presence outside the realm of another person's problems allows me to dispassionately (well, with the passion of youth) identify paths of potential free from that person's constricting limitations or frame of reference. Saying to someone, "there is another way," "it doesn't have to be like this," or "if you've got the will, you can make it happen" seems to be a pleasure I don't get enough of right now. It's more than just saying "yeah, what a pain" when hearing someone's problem; it's laying the groundwork for a new, better reality by issuing the challenge to improve; to see that trifles in life are only minor and impermanent. And every new experience I have is another chapter on which to draw in such an exchange. And influencing someone to be in the springtime of youth could start a chain reaction motivating others to become more aware.
I guess the only difficulty is that most people aren't ready to feel the passion of youth and channel it into practical action, let alone discuss important things like this with casual or good friends. So it's a tool I find hard to exercise. But that's why I started the Your Dreams thread at the Compendium; if anything, I'm reinforcing the atmosphere of freedom and youth on the forums. No topic is sacred, and no declaration is too grand. Every desire is a destiny on the road to serene awareness and illumination. And where we're going, we don't need...roads!
Now, I want to test that power of interpersonal communication. My plan is this:
- To form of a group of people in the springtime of youth on the forums here
- To encourage as a requirement the posting of daily goals (or their exchange) for the next day
- To...well, let's say someone doesn't meet his daily goals and has no real excuse. The public setting and the encouragement or youthul derision of the others would be a total catalyst to getting back in action again.
So I guess I'd create a new forum here without a post count. And each day, we would post our daily goals, thus declaring our passionate intent to fulfill them to the world at large. Upon meeting them, we would edit the post to say MET and post the ones for the next day.
If this is all not feasible, then by all means we can just maintain friendships on AIM or MSN or whatever instant messenger and do it that way.
This is all in the air right now, so discussion would help in actualizing this idea.
