We have hit a point where everything we do is in service to something else.
“I work out to ensure I live longer and am able to play with my kids.”
“I read business books to understand the way people made mistakes so I don’t make them.”
“I cold-plunge because to evidence to the rest of humanity that idiots still very much do exist.”
Everything, anything now, is in service to some other thing. We do not, any longer, do the thing for the pleasure of the thing itself. Does the renaissance happen if painting and sculpture were in service of something other than an almost unstoppable compulsion to create something beautiful? Canals, art, poetry, music. All of these things are, or rather were, done for the thing itself. For the pleasure it brings. For the sense of wonder and mastery and craft and beauty and call to God that flowed from the very act of bringing the thing into being. They were never done because of some other “good” thing that would result.
We have lost the script in that way. All actions are now either mundane (waking up at 4 am to meditate every day to check the thing off the list) or as part of some greater responsibility (100 burpees and a mile long run to destroy yourself) to be “better.” In this fog of productivity and effeciency, we have managed to overspecialize. We have managed to suffocate what makes us human. What makes us tender. What creates and fosters the individual in all of us.
We have yet to understand the unbelievable importance of cutting the cords of efficiency. We’ve yet to give ourselves permission to disavow. Disavow productivity. Disavow struggle without knowing for what we do so. How much art has the world lost because we’ve been so busy running on the hedonic treadmill? How many paintings haven’t been painted? Dreams dreamt. Worlds created?
The cure to the mundane world which we find ourselves sits in front of our faces. We need only open our relaxed eyes.