From the Tropics to the Blender

With an inquisitive mindset is how I intend you, the reader and invited responder, to approach this post. As I left you with previously, a list of related sites intended solely to jumpstart your mind and prepare it for discussion. (Notice the use of discussion and not some form of one-way communication.) Now, let us continue... For some reason, I feel the need in my life to find meaning, purpose, or even an elaborate and satisfying definition of life. However, so many things in life also appear to be futile, allowing for fleeting pleasure or even brisk fulfilment. Perhaps an example would assist in the demonstration: the bowl of cereal I had this morning, will mean next to nothing a week from now. Without it, I would have been just fine, satisfying my hunger through snack or through a lunch later in the day. This is clearly futile and cannot purposely bring meaning and purpose to life. However, there are other more... alluring, if you will. While some may find food equally enticing, many tend to spend their lives in hot pursuit of strikingly different commodities. Monetary success, social status, or the classic, "just wanting to have fun" approach. Though some may share in relation while others seem to be polar opposites, all none the less are ways in which one spends parts of his or her life. Consider this, an olympic athlete training for the sport of basketball. In the future, he hopes to play on the US team and achieve great success. However, that is in the future, and for now he must train. Now, what does he practice. Does he spend all his time perfecting the lay-up. Six days a week he runs lay-up drills. Same side, both side, reverse lay-up, everything there is to a lay-up, he practices it. However, if he were to take such an approach, what would happen if he were given the ball outside the three point line and there were no open lane? Would he know how to pass? No, he had spent all his time on lay-ups. Would he know how to pull back for a fade-away jumper? Again, no 'expertise' in that either. So, in order to avoid such a terrifyingly ruinous (and not to mention awkward) presence on the court, he practices all aspects of the game, not only the lay-up. He spends a divided number of days in a week working on his jump shot, his lay-up, his passing, his dribbling, a significant amount of every aspect of the game until he is good at all options which he will have while the game will be in play. In this sense all things he is practicing now, are only being performed with intentions of being used at a later date. But of course! There are the in-betweens. The gatorade he drinks as he waits his turn in the drill line, the dinner he eats after a long days workout, etc... Such things cannot be made out as the main point though, because what is he thinking about during those minor activities? Basketball. What am I thinking about as I eat my cereal, perhaps with some fresh fruit, in the morning? The day's work: the classes, the exams, the studying that I need to do today or that I didn't do last night, that is what can dictate my thoughts (the majority of the time.) Such events set my schedule. Now if such aspects are what I do on the day to day level, then, in relation to the basketball metaphor, does that mean that that I am studying/training for what I want to do late in life? Could academic excellence be the goal? Or is it the hopes that such excellence would directly cause some other process, such as financial success? For now, let these ideas and thoughts marinate, and stay 'posted...'