Hey all! It’s been ages since I wrote an article. I’m writing this article because I’m bursting with inspiration and simply can’t not write it so. Popped on some music to get the comfy vibes and here I am writing.
Anyway, I’ll quickly explain the premise for this article. Basically, for many people, they have to struggle even to survive in this life. That’s like, getting enough money to pay the bills and all that! However, a question then arises – what if our survival itself was assured, was not in question?
Why then, we’d be focusing not on how to survive, but with it assured as a premise, how to truly live!
In fact, I even did a bit of a self-directed exercise on this not so long ago: Imagine you were financially independent. How would you live then?
What you should do, clearly, is to integrate as great a degree of such a life into your current lifestyle as is humanly possible! π
But let’s not get into this now. Right now, what I have done is theorised out the different segments of the cube of life – that is, the aspects of life you can have and I hope it can provide good reference for you. Without further ado, I will proceed!
The first two sides of the cube I have are the epitome of culture – sports and arts. Let’s start with arts.
Arts
Arts… I think I would define them as beauty embodied in representation. Now the standard mediums that come to mind when you talk about art are writing, drawing, singing, dancing, acting… but this list is by no means exhaustive!
Speaking of art, what comes to mind for me is creative self-expression. Additionally, subjectivity. For instance, I myself like listening to music quite often, but only! the type that caters to my taste. Meanwhile, some song could be praised to the high heavens by judges in a singing contest yet mean not a single iota to me as it simply doesn’t resonate with me in the least!!
And that’s just how art is. A dance teacher recently told me that she and another dancer could both be amazing dancers, but they could totally not vibe with each other, clash completely and fail miserably in collaboration! No, you’ve got to find someone who is more in sync with you, and that’s just how art is.
Anyways, let’s call art the left side of the cube!
Here, one must really note that in a sense, less is more. As in, it is better not to dabble in too many areas and be a master of no trades! I myself, for example, am already relatively well versed in some fields and thus choose to keep myself away from other ones like say, drawing. I mean truthfully speaking, I might be able to improve in it if I practise it, sure, but the way I see it is more like…
I have already found the fields that are FOR me. I’ll just dabble in other ones insofar as they bolster these particular fields, but otherwise… no, thank you very much! I’m already covered!! I’m going to immerse myself and give or invest my energies there, and that’s already enough!
Sports
Next we go to sports. Now if we say that arts is the left side of the cube, sports will be the right side of the cube.
Similar to arts, sports are something that require aptitude! For instance, you need to have what you call undou shinkei or sports genes in Japanese.
Now, sports are similar to arts in the sense that you ultimately got to narrow down and settle your focus. Of course, it is perfectly fine to dabble in many before you do, but sooner or later you got to do so because that’s how you master something!
I once read an article which differentiated Tiger Woods and Roger Federer I think. Basically, the former only ever played golf while the latter tried out many different sports before ultimately settling on tennis.
So basically, that is to say that you can show talent and promise in multiple different sports, but at the end of the day you’ve got to go narrow down and choose.
And of course, sports doesn’t have to be at the competitive level! You can obviously purely play with you family and friends or even colleagues every now and then just for fun, sure thing!
So the way I define sports is something that tests your physical abilities. In that sense, I would allow esports into the equation because esports also calls on things like your hand-eye coordination and reaction speed!!!
And before I go any further, let me first emphasise that you do not have to fill every! single! one! of these categories! Yeah, some people may be talented in multiple categories and thus fill more of them, whereas others may see zero affinity with a particular category and thusly skip it over completely so to speak. It’s perfectly fine even then! You just follow your own unique blueprint yo!
And next we go to the top and bottom faces of the cube, the Heaven and Earth so to speak. Heh.
Self-care
Now self-care, which represents Earth, is a very important category in life, because if you can’t fill up your own cup even, how can you fill up the cup of others? Though of course, it is understandable that self-care is somewhat more difficult for people who have issues even securing their own survival! But let’s set that aside for now.
So basically, I would define self-care as taking care of your physical self, and that includes your emotions too. One easy example of self-care, for instance, is keeping stocked up in your cupboard food that you really like to eat. For instance, that’s ice-cream for many people!! But again that’s subjective, and for me it’s more like bread to be honest.
Another thing that falls under self-care would be working out to keep your body in shape or even just doing things like yoga which feel good to you. I mean some disciplines would even say that your body is your temple and is sacred, so!! But anyway, fundamentally speaking, some people like to keep in shape to feel good about themselves.
So obviously I’m not subscribing to any particular beauty standards solely as the absolute truth, because again it’s subjective!! Still, I suppose learning for starters maybe a simple facial cleanser+ moisturiser will do at the very least for skincare…
…What I want to say is that we’ve got to take good care of ourselves in the physical. When we see that we’re at risk of burnout, we gotta slow down and take a rest, no question. When we realise that ah I just feel like having a rest day today, and you KNOW with absolute certainty that consistency is your middle name even then, and you’ll still do it almost everyday for certain, then please, go ahead, be your guest!
One important concept in self-care, I’m sure, would be that of transmutation. For example, let’s say you have a meeting with your boss one day and it’s really irritating like crazy. Well, what do you do at the end of the day? Well, you release the negative emotions! Turn ’em into positive ones! You can do that by singing your heart out to a karaoke track on Youtube, watching a nice movie with a loved one, whatever!
Just know that these emotions are gonna remain pent up within you as blockages even! And so you’ve got to find a way to healthily release them! With a soothed feeling of ease you let it go, and move on!!
Other forms of self-care, finally, would include buying material stuff that you like. For some people it’s shopping, like nice clothes and all that. For some people, huh, it could even be an anime body pillow or figurine collection or whatnot, really! It all! depends on what fills the individual’s cup!
Finally, I just want to say that self-care is the act of giving yourself love. And know that you are the only one who will be accompanying yourself throughout this entire lifetime of yours, so… pretty please to yourself? π
Worldview expansion
If self-care is Earth, worldview expansion would be Heaven…
And the way I would define worldview expansion is: if self-care is for the body, worldview expansion is for the mind-spirit.
I mean, many spiritualists believe that we were placed on this earth for the sake of spiritual growth! And like it or not, spiritual growth is what tends to happen to us in life anyway. Another word for that is maturity.
For instance, someone goes through life giving too much of themselves and having no boundaries. And eventually, they learn to protect themselves and fill their own cup first and say no, yep.
Anyway, spiritual growth. You do that through learning the lessons that life has to teach you. And becoming a better version of yourself!
Now here’s where the important part is! I emphasise that I’m not asking people to be armchair philosophers only and leave everyone out there to evaporate!
See, in many religions, the fundamental building block of life is love and compassion for others. For example, ζ ζ²εΏ in Buddhism, Christianity’s loving your neighbour as you would yourself and ‘if you didn’t do it to the least of these, you didn’t do it to me‘…
Basically, one way of interpreting this is that just knowing concepts and such alone is insufficient. You’ve got to actually integrate, embody this!!
And this is through finding ways to serve your fellow man and give to them, pour out of your cup to them!
Therefore, volunteering in itself clearly falls under this category too!
That’s because as you grow to embody a higher version of yourself, that naturally aligns with becoming a version of yourself that gives to others wholeheartedly.
Obviously though, concepts and such are still vastly relevant! For instance, I would argue that the ideation behind my writing of this article is me trying to pour out of my cup to others!!! in some way, limited though it may be!
And let’s also look at politicians. With their expanded worldviews, serving the nation! Someone who ideates an ideal society. Without them, how can an ideal society be forged? Or even say, psychology because without Carl Jung, how would we know stuff like our shadow side, and no longer repressing and coming to accept and integrate every single aspect of ourselves?!!
So really, this worldview expansion is quite a broad category, and even extends to how you give back to society. Forgive me for not having spent more time on coming up with a better name for it yeah!!
Now left, right, top and bottom are done, and all that’s left are front and back! Let’s continue!!
Consuming media
Ah, now we come to consuming media, the bottom of the cube.
See, think of it as two sides of a coin.
We are creators. Yet, if there are only creators, who might be the ones to consume the content created?! Who are we creating the content for even huh?
Well, it’s obvious really. Human beings only have so much energy, time and effort that they can expend. We also have limited aptitudes, talents. Naturally we’ll be getting our source of entertainment from elsewhere because we spend our own time doing something else!
So we are both creators and ones who consume media.
Now obviously, people can skew towards different extremes of the spectrum. And our preferences can easily change over time too. Extremely so even.
For instance, not even ten years ago, I would probably read over a thousand webnovel chapters in a month. Now, just over a hundred is already good enough for me.
But back to the topic. So books and television and even theatre productions are forms of consuming media, but another common one nowadays that we cannot discount would be games. I mean, I used to play games quite a bit too! Now my music time has increased too hm.
So a bit about the two extremes.
Some people would rather do more productive things with their time, and there’s nothing wrong with that I suppose. Still, I’d still say they really must find a way to enjoy life!! Like, for some people media consumption is really equivalent to self-care too, hah!
Though these people will probably not be able to get too lost in consuming media for long periods to the extent of the exclusion of everything else, don’t underestimate it!! You can still derive much joy from it!
Personally, I was recently reminded of how great dramas can be because I found one that really hooked me like nothing else has for a really long time. Incidentally, it’s on Netflix, and is called The Blood of Youth.
Anyway, don’t discount this face of the cube of life, okay! There is much that you can gain from it! Like, maybe once a month, go check out online the latest movies, concerts or whatever that are available!!
Meanwhile some are just utterly fixated on the other extreme.
But herein lies something that I feel we must take note of.
For some people, outside of survival, does it not seem like consuming media is all their life is?
I will not say that this is wrong, for to each their own. However, the final category, the front of the cube so to speak is as I see it quite useful!! to helping resolve this issue.
Learning
Basically, it’s learning. Mainly systems.
Many hobbies involve the learning of systems really! After all, that’s equivalent to knowledge. Like, for instance, you can be a real nerd about something and know everything about it because you’re just so obsessed. For instance, even something much less mainstream like biology and such…
One great choice for learning as I see it is the learning of languages. In a sense it even opens up a whole new world for you in terms of increasing the number of people you can communicate with! Yep for me it’s Japanese for which I’m actually at the N2 level right now.
And besides actual languages that you speak with in daily life, even programming languages like coding are actually a whole different language that you can learn and integrate into your lives, truly!
Yeah, I mean, some people know it for work, but I know someone who does it purely in his own free time as a hobby too.
Anyway, yep, now we arrive at the whole concept of lifelong learning huh. Well, one way to see it is that it helps prevent dementia from mental inactivity from old people, and another way of seeing it is that even for younger people, it occupies their time just by virtue of being something to do! The people are immersed!! in those systems see.
Of course, the systems learnt can be more practical or less. For instance, some people learn stock markets and trading and such. Technically speaking they can earn a lot from it!! Though really it all boils down to one’s personal preference and what interests them. Subjective yo!
But then again what you learn can be totally impractical too! For instance you could learn trivia and learn lots of useless stuff and simply!! go parading all around the country engaging in inane trivia quizzes with others. That’s perfectly fine too!!!
And right I recognise that trivia is not an actual system but pure knowledge okay.
Really, the crux of the issue is that you find something to learn that occupies you and engages your capacities!
Like, yeah, I’ll stereotype for a bit, but, Taiji and Chinese chess for old people in Singapore!
Of course, gotta reiterate that it’s purely something that you must discover for yourself. Like you may technically be able to do something, and yet it doesn’t capture your heart so to speak. Well in that case you can only move on right! And ideally, I believe that it should stem! purely from within, such that you yourself can find your own motivation! to do it!
Finally, I need to say that this could naturally overlap with some of the other categories too. For instance, let’s say you’re a Harry Potter fan with Pottermania (consuming media). Or Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones or whatever. Well why then, you’re also learning these systems aka lore as you accumulate knowledge!
Basically, as a particular standpoint would have it, mental Stagnancy is death. Whereas simply by having an interest in which you envelop your learning of knowledge and systems into, you plant a whole new rich world into your mental landscape that’s bright and brilliant and bursting with colour! Yep, so basically I’m giving this as a solution right here.
Solution as in… an antidote to the colourlessness and lacklustreness of life for some!!! Where it’s thoroughly just autopilot and go through the motions! Yep.
Conclusion
And so with that, I have finished depicting the six sides of the cube of life. Let me repeat them again.
Left (Arts), Right (Sports), Bottom (Self-care), Top (Worldview expansion), Back (Consuming Media), Front (Learning)
Again, I emphasise that I understand that this is especially impossible in third world countries especially where even survival is in question for the common man.
However! I would promote these as six categories people can make reference to when trying to create a more… wholesome life for themselves, in which everything is accounted for.
Arts and sports as two arms to develop and expand in, self-care of the basic assurance of one’s very physical, worldview expansion as one’s giving back to society (hey they say that when you improve yourself that increases your vibration and by extension the collective vibration of the planet yo :)) while also being able to better guide our descendants and finally, consuming media for joy and learning, to use mental capacities.
Alright, with that, we have come to the end of the article! Once again, let me just say that I felt massively, massively inspired to write this, therefore doing it right after breakfast first thing in the morning.
Hehe. As for whether I’ll continue posting articles here in the future, uh…
And, oh by the way, yeah! One more thing! The faces of the cube of life in this article can also be used as a reference point to see how holistic and all-encompassing your life is in terms of all its aspects. Yeah! Again, you don’t have to fill all categories per se, but just knowing that there are these aspects and having a roadmap and pre-blueprint so to speak is already a really good thing, wouldn’t you say!
Ok bye! I had fun writing. Cya. π