6 Month Lesson #3 - Moving in Place

In ways the 100 Thing Challenge is an attempt to figure out my restlessness, especially why my wandering so often involves consumption. I don’t just get fidgety, pick up my things, and move on. I fidget, pick up, buy something else, and move.

Reading history or cultural trends, I could interpret my restlessness-consumerism-mix as an effect of growing up in the West (i.e. the “frontier”) or as an effect of the nurturing love of baby boomer parents. A strong argument could be made that, taken together, those two forces, which have impacted me considerably, were the cause that made my character inevitable.

But just this morning I was lecturing my daughter about how I vehemently resist determinism. Possibility is always present for us human beings. Not every possibility. Not necessarily the most comfortable or most beneficial possibility. But always the possibility to not be dragged through what we’d rightfully like to avoid.

Call me wild-brained, but I believe I’m justified in wanting to steer clear of a restless life that goes nowhere.

I am not quite ready to give up my fidgetiness. So I need to think of a solution. How to journey without going nowhere. Today the zen-like phrase moving in place came to my mind.

Grow. Progress. Journey. Mature. Move...without losing our place.

I’ll need to consider this possibility more.

The point, I suppose, of this 6-month reflection on the 100 Thing Challenge, is that in my life consumerism has often been an accomplice to my feelings of restlessness. It will offer me sympathy, take my hand, and lead me nowhere, though with more stuff in tow. I like the idea of movement. More and more, I long for settlement.

Is there fundamental incongruity between these two forces? Or can they be harmonized?

Comments

[William Burrell]

I share this fidgetiness and the extreme need to simplify life and battling the compulsion to acquire more. But when I get more it is never enough and it is a burden in itself. I look to evolutionary demands(tribal, if you don't believe in evolution) as the source of this character variation. As a tribal being the characteristics would be desirable as fidgetiness is a valuable defense mechanism, simplification means flexibility and the need to acquire fills the need that promotes "hunter/gatherer" tendencies. Also I am often bored, which provides fuel to power all of the above.
Just a thought, bill b.