Festina Lente
Tomorrow’s events:
Collective Journaling w/ Peter Limberg. Daily @ 8:00 AM ET. Patreon event. 90 mins.
Collective Presencing w/ Ria Baeck and Co-Hosts. Every Friday @ 8:00 AM ET. RSVP here. 90 mins.
Collective Presencing w/ Ria Baeck and Co-Hosts. Every Friday @ 12:00 PM ET. RSVP here. 90 mins.
Newly posted events:
Getting Right With Technology: Flourishing in the Age of Antisocial Media w/ Luke Raskopf. June 29th @ 6:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
The POP-UP School: A Self Organised Learning Environment for Transformation at Scale w/ Bonnitta Roy. July 5th @ 12:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
Parenting During the Meta-Crisis w/ Miriam Mason Martineau. July 22nd @ 12:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
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June 24th, 2021
Festina lente, or “make haste slowly,” is the oxymoronic adage that encourages us to bring acting with urgency and acting with care into the right relationship with one another. The tension point between the two ways of acting is the point where flow comes online, and this is the existential balance I am trying to get right.
I am overflowing with so much thumos right now. I am ready to fucking burst. Sure, I can just latch this thumos onto the daemon right now, and write entry after entry, or invite tons of people to The Stoa, or take on all these cool projects that are seducing me.
My body is pulsing with this energy. I want to create. I want to go, go, go. I want to steal this fucking culture. I need to breathe into this though. Operating with this, whatever this is, needs prudence. I am called to create, and I can create, but one can create in a foolish way, and I do not want to create in that way anymore.
There is a pattern that happens: my bias for action puts me in positions where I just do cool stuff, and then I have this backlog of boring stuff to do. I rebel against the boring stuff, then I stop doing cool stuff. As I have written before: I just like listening to the daemon, not doing his admin work. Something is different from the first time I wrote that though, and as The Stoa’s sigil theme song foreshadows: This time it will be alright.
Fuck yeah, this time it will be alright. I am ready to get it right, and if anything gets in the way of my getting it right, I will Stoically amor fati that shit hard. There is something else here though, alongside this throbbing thumos, and that is a deep presence.
I am sinking deeper into this presence, and sometimes it is kind of deep, and other times it is really deep. It is a new thing for me, this tension of thumos and presence. The tension feels sexual. My focus is sensually oscillating between this intensely potent thumos and this “just chill in the here and now” kind of presence.
It is like the “having mode” and “being mode” are done with flirting with one another, and they are ready to fuck like existential rabbits. Let them fuck then. But wait, one must fuck with wisdom. I do not want this to be a one-night stand, so perhaps it is wise to keep them somewhat apart. Let the tension build, and let the desire become so powerful that they become crazy for one another.
Yeah, that is the right game to play. Let them get so horny for one another that the having mode will write penetrating love letters, and the being mode will look so sexy as fuck that a quick glance will invite one to lose complete control.
I have lost control before, and I can lose control again. It can be dangerously fun, but if I am going to lose my self, I am going to lose my self in the right way. All of this is a test, of will, of character, of a word that is tragically out of fashion: virtue. This word is not out of fashion for me though, because this word gives me an endless meta-boner, and it is making me come, back to the present, where I am now.
It is time to slow down again. I have been privately journaling every day, in a very slow way, and so many insights are coming my way. I am changing. I do want to write here, so I can change in front of you, and share all of my intrasubjective adventures with you.
Some things are best kept to oneself though. The dark things, the embarrassing things, the precious things. Things that would surprise you, things that would surprise me. I am ready to be surprised, and this time I want to get it right. This time I will get it right.
I might not be here every day, but I am here every day, and I will be doing my best to make haste slowly, and I invite you to make haste slowly with me.
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