Line of sight

Choice is not about doing but about not doing. Minimalism is about unencumbering ourselves with generalised expectations.

In any given point of time one can choose to do one from a million tasks. Its a matter of taking away the things that do not serve us and focusing on the ones that do.

We often take long winded routes to reach the destination thats in line of sight. We end up doing things that we consider are expected of us. We fail to question our actions and fall prey to our procrastinations.

One doesn’t need to be able to draw realistically to create conceptual or abstract art. One doesn’t need to finish his graduation to create a business. One doesn’t need to be rich to be happy. All these constructs are conditioned into the vulnerable parts of our mind to serve capitalistic structures at each step and ultimately distract ourselves from the one thing we are passionate about. Every diversion we take away from our goal, we become weaker in pursuing it. We lose time and energy in pursuits that serve others.

The straight road is hard but shorter and there is lesser chance to get lost. In times of doubt its better to sit empty, in silence and strategize about the challenge ahead, than to expend our energy in pursuits that allow us momentary escapes.

Valuing a task mindfully

Often times we tend to categorize our tasks into priorities. This is good for attending to more important things first as an organization skill towards productivity. But somehow we also tend to categorize tasks mentally into priorities for their value. While this is great to choose what should and should not be pursued it can be detrimental to think of one task as less important than the other while you are in the act of executing it.

For example, if I know sketching daily is good for me and I have ascertained its value in my practice, then its important that I donot see it as less important than the other tasks in my day, like executing an illustration or a piece of animation.

While executing a task it helps to keep a frame of mind to do it to your best ability, mentally and physically. To do it lovingly. To not look at the task as lower or the time spent on it as imparting lesser value. To not judge it. To isolate yourself from everything else but the task. Making it a tool to meditate on.

I’ve felt and seen around me that when one cares deeply for the smallest tasks that one is to do, one is able to maximize the efficiency not only of that task but also the other tasks around them. The doing tunes the brain and sharpens it for focus and the same brain is thus more capable of doing other things.

Mind and actions

We commend some people for their achievements but we cannot agree with the entirety of their personality which has made them achieve them in the first place.

Actions and the mind are inter-twined. It is easy, from the outset, to separate the achiever from her/his achievement and diss the one and praise the other. It is easy to selectively say we desire a certain achievement and not consider what it takes to achieve it. Achievements are just by-products of a lived experience. When we cannot relate to the actions of a person that led to a particular result we are grasping at our own version of the achievement, which can be a dangerous thing to correlate with.

A man used to walking the highway will have a very different frame of mind than the one walking the woods and each‘s mental capability towards a future challenge would differ entirely even though they reach the same destination through their routes.