In the past several weeks I’ve been less engrossed with if I should open another bank account, and at what bank. I haven’t done the compulsive thing I often do where I weight what kind of car I should get by thinking about the financial impacts, the environmental impacts, and the love I’d have for it. I stopped spending much time deciding if I can get significantly more protein into my diet and how. There was nothing that necessarily caused this, but it’s helped me all the same. There’s a weight when you’re an internal quant. A weight that hangs heavy when you have to judge every decision on a number of factors that don’t mean much. It could simply be that whatever mirage surrounding longevity has passed me by for the moment. It could be that I’m more present or more tired (perhaps they’re not dissimilar.) Whatever it is, it’s nice. When you can walk down the street and not weigh if you’re giving enough to charity or if you’re spending your time wisely (these things are wonderful to weight, just not compulsively) you have more of an opportunity to weigh nothing at all. There’s a gap between being present and thinking about nothing. I think, recently, we’ve all been pushed into this direction of being present, which, in and of itself, is pressure. BE PRESENT ARE YOU PRESENT BE PRESENT. Much easier-much more natural-is the inclination to just be. To not solve problems. To not use walks as a way to rev up the brain. To not notice nature to tell yourself that you noticed nature. It’s simply being alive in all of its beautiful boredom. It’s nothingness. It’s shrug. I would often stare at sunsets as I do now, with inky puffy cloud skies surrounding me, and I would think “How absolutely beautiful this is.” And then I would think how lucky I was to see this. And then I would zoom out further until you hit nihilism. But whenever I did those things I did them as if someone was externally reminding me to remind myself to do them. Now, I’m just sitting outside and typing, and it’s quite nice. I’m not trying to leave a legacy with this post. Not trying to have my kids know me better. Not trying to outlast mortality. Just typing.
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