DStilled

Renaissance

April 9, 2008 on 4:13 pm | In Blog |

Rebirth, renewal, born again, metamorphosis, change. These words and so many others describe what happens to us everyday we wake up and take a breath. Each time we think a new thought we are somehow different than before we thought it. Every time we take a step we have gone farther than we had gone before. Often our direction is what trips us up.

In physics, speed is the absolute value of velocity. Velocity has direction while speed only has movement. In velocity you can go either positive direction or negative direction with the difference being where you put the arbitrary parameter of zero. Speed on the other hand has only positive numbers. It cares not about where you are going but only how quickly or slowly.

In life we worry so much about direction we many times forget to enjoy the simple fact that we are moving. This truth can radicalize the way we live life. My dad is pretty postmodern and will tell me that the present is much much much more important than either the past or the future. He will almost never be a destination person but focuses on the journey. He loves life more than almost anyone I know and I believe one of the reasons is that he has discovered the difference between speed and velocity. Not that he would EVER put it that way. Science? That’s what makes him able to drive his Prius and blog on Myspace.

Last week I spoke about my “depression.” I still put it in quotations because there’s no way that loaded, clinical word is clinically accurate in my case. Since I wrote that I have actively engaged people in social settings and really haven’t shied away from people at all. In fact, I feel more extroverted than I’ve ever been. I’m going to class, so that’s good. Now all I have to do is write the papers needed to not fail. OK……go……wait, I’m still here.

Since the new year I’ve been thinking about change, both how people change in general and how I specifically change. Change is not always growth. Change can be negative or positive while growth is only positive. But change in my life has pretty much always been associated with growth. Much of this has to do with my perspective on truth. I know I can learn something from every situation in order to make myself a fuller human. I know someone that says she has to live in a constant state of change. However for her, reflection and insight don’t always accompany her flux so she often spirals both positively and negatively. It is difficult for us to not moralize each others’ paths for they are so fundamentally different from our own. In any case, our brains work differently so I chalk it up to that.

I hope you enjoy the new site design. This is much closer to what I want out of a site and Ryan was able to get paid while setting it up, so it’s a win-win situation! The picture in the background will change from time to time so be sure to come back!