Monthly Archives: June 2010

Subsistence of the Soul

Posted by Gluon the Ferengi on

Builds Upon: Any Small Thing,
Introverts: Denizens of a Social Ghetto

Especially in youth, an extreme introvert feeling little commonality with the surrounding society must find ways to nourish the spirit even through the most trying times.  A life on the fringes is sink or swim.  You either find ways to take care of yourself or you just don’t make it.  To this day, I tend to be very reverential of food and intolerant of wasting any usable resources.  A subsistence survival sort of mentality got drilled into my head early on.  Though I never went hungry growing up, I’m the sort of person who likes to eat every last grain of rice or sop up the crumbs and juices left over from a meal with a piece of bread until my bowl is clean.  My stomach lurches when I see someone throwing out food.

Most people I meet dread the passing of time and aging.  I feel the passing of every day to be a gift, especially if it passed without too much trouble.  I will see having a white head of hair as accomplishment because I have a feeling of good fortune and privilege to make it even as far as I have.   My life has rarely been in serious physical danger, yet I feel I’ve had to claw every inch of the way out of stone.  I feel I’ve already been alive nearly forever yet most others consider me to be quite young.

This sort of mentality, this subsistence of the soul is an attitude that utterly baffles most people I encounter.  Rather, they find my actions strange because they know nothing of the code by which I act.   How would one even begin to explain face to face in a way that really made sense?  Would one want to if one could?

Do I really want to explain that every grain of rice, every red cent is another precious second of my life won from the birth society’s capricious standards and demands?

That I still make the most out of every grain of rice as I had to with every good feeling and happy moment?

That cultivating such reverence produces the sort of emotional rewards that make life worth living?

Though it could be tough to hold myself together in the worst times, I would find myself inspired to joy by things people around me didn’t even seem to notice.

Living with a lean soul has had its advantages.  I find I require far less than others around me to be content with life and therefore there are less things I fear losing.  I have an ongoing relationship with death in my everyday life while others postpone the very thought of it until telltale signs of aging can no longer be ignored or covered up with denial.

Most importantly, living by subsistence of the soul has the potential to teach one: fulfillment when distilled to its quintessence has very little to do with pleasure.

Introvert Survival: Any Small Thing

Posted by Gluon the Ferengi on

Builds Upon: Survival in the Void

One of the most powerful remedies for feelings of depression, loneliness, and rejection is a hobby or discipline that commands your intimate attention.  As a kid I loved insects and all kinds of small life.  I gained an appreciation early on by dissecting bugs from the garden under a stereoscope.  I realized just how intricate and otherworldly they were.  I had already seen how most people passed them over, only noticing them long enough to kill them.

Years later during the deep black states of mind of my teen years, I learned that by doing something intimate and intricate with my surrounding environment could revive me.

Once as I high school junior, I was crushingly depressed and lonely.  It was a depressingly sunny cheerful day near the end of the school year when everyone else seemed so happy and unified.

I turned my attention as I had done since childhood to the leaves and branches of various shrubs.  I knew well how to search.  I soon noticed small bumps that I instantly recognized as plant galls.  Plant galls, I well knew were the nurseries of the larva of tiny parasitic wasps.

I broke off some galls and snuck into the biology lab.  No one was there but me.

I delicately cut open the galls and extracted the larvae for viewing under the microscope.

My state of mind was much improved when I was done.

Something, any small thing that makes you appreciate the enormous intricate beauty of our universe will save you.

Any small thing at all will work.  Sometimes all I had to do to ground myself was simply to stop and watch the afternoon shadows of swaying tree branches, a single autumn leaf drift all the way from its branch to the ground, a ray of sunlight suddenly shoot through a high window as the sun rose just the tiniest bit higher.  The key is shifting one’s attention from the social plane and becoming aware of the vast, chaotic extra-social reality that surrounds us.  Eventually that outer Void becomes home.