action breeds action: on establishing a healthy practice

something it’s taken me almost 26 long years to learn and i’m still only beginning to realize it: the more you do the more you are able to do. power builds by use. will, focus, practice, patience, compassion, communication, these energies are a muscle, you have to exercise them in order to make them grow stronger. Like a corollary to the first law of thermodynamics, a body in motion will remain in motion. as soon as you rest, you loose all drive and ability to act.

i noticed this first at work, where on slow busy days i get a lot more done. there is no time to sit down and i go from task to task in a continual flow. but as soon as there is a lull in orders and i sit down, smoke a cigarette, read the paper, play pinball, i loose all momentum, and getting back into the kitchen is near impossible. the same goes for writing, the moment you stop working on a poem, a story, it dies, and the longer you wait between working the harder it is. you must keep going, you can not stop loving it and living it or entropy takes hold, the flatline fading of the couch and the doldrums. of dying daily. you must keep exercising your muscles or you will rot where you stand.

and more, finding this kind of practice, anything you choose to do regularly builds that flow of energy, your will to act. i’ve heard several writers and artists talk about running or biking regularly in order to build a healthy practice for something, anything, to get the blood moving and apply that to their primary task. recently i have found myself creatively slowed down and realize i have a poor practice of it of late. this past week i’ve had to watch the dog and chickens and gardens while my housemates are on tour, and this regular activity is already allowing me to focus in on having to perform my tasks on a more regular basis (even if these creatures are taking up a lot of the time i would like to spend on my crafts). this is like the path of karma yoga, of doing one’s daily tasks without looking forward to the reward of them being done, of building a healthy practice out of doing the dishes, going to work, watching your children, whatever it is you are required to do on a regular basis. the key point being that it’s regular (though not necessarily clockwork) and part of one’s flow of doing.

because it is a flow, a font. you have to be open to it and let action well up and pour through you, and it will carry you along through everything you want to do. drinking won’t, tv and video games won’t. the internet won’t (unless it’s part of a practice of research or networking). Remember, you are what you choose to pay attention to. of course, it helps if you have specific and limited paths to practice. one can’t build focus towards any one thing by spreading thin towards everything. i would recommend no more than one practice from each discipline (unless you choose to focus on multiple from one discipline). physical- running, biking, yoga, martial arts, etc. mental- research, essays, conversations, crosswords or other logic puzzles, math, etc.. creative – poetry, fiction, visual arts, music, dance, photography. the day to day – work, pets, children, cooking, etc. emotional- all your various relationships. spiritual- church, personal rituals, exploration (external or internal)… you probably get the point. the benefit of a multi-disciplinarian practice being that it allows one to exercise the numerous modes of being that make up a complete human and thus allows one to grow in totality and not just specialized in one direction at disadvantage to the others. keep in mind we are multifaceted and easily atrophy, and if you maintain good practices across the board than when the situation arises you should be capable of doing anything.