We are a seesaw of forward and reverse. Tumbling snowballs of massively interconnected cascades of interactions. And somehow from within the fury, we are able to create enough stillness to convince ourselves what we are. We each, a human body, find ourselves having an experience, and decide how to cope with it. The appetites are there to show us the momentum required to keep alive on basic levels. But consciousness stacks higher than that. At it's peaks, needs trickle into wants like the fine feathered forms at the edge of a crystal. And time serves to bridge the gap between wanting and having. And so our lives become the navigation of courses determined by our wants so that we can have an experience with the things we have. We negotiate obstacles and reinforce motives, leaving ripples of consequence radiating out from our every choice. And either we make it to the next day or we don't.
If we do, we will begin to appreciate ourselves as the center point of larger and wider ripples, as we hold our ground through months and years. And as much past time as it takes to make us realize we can start looking forward, we expend our energies doing whatever is asked of us unless we decide against them.
The beauty is there, in the simple reflexive pattern of a butterfly wing. All things exist as a vibration, an infinitely cycling alternation between polar opposites. And for every thing that cycles with an opposite, there exists and infinity of generations of families that descend from the cycle. So the fractal appears in our minds. We appreciate where what we are fits in.
Cycles compose our framework and, of course, our connections to it. Learning and maturing is a process where the consciousness becomes more articulate with how it it interprets signals from the sense organs. It becomes able to consider what it sees and hears in broader and broader contexts. And in terms of larger periods of time. And as this happens, the work of planning take deeper roots into the realm of meaning. Boredom occurs when cycles of behavior no longer fit rhythmically with motivation. And boredom makes us consider change.
Planning offers us the comfort of conviction. With conviction we can believe that we should stay alive and move forward. And this belief, in however strong a form it occurs, bolsters the level to which we will use what we have to manifest it.
And so we can define ourselves as an awareness of a part of larger system that knows of its own role. In however detailed a way we can perceive the framework, we are able to act on every aspect that becomes apparent. Like the parts of a broccoli stalk as they get smaller but more numerous farther away from the base, our options become more specific and therefore more varied. But the base is the path by which the stuff that becomes the tips gets there. The route must exist from the roots to the tip.
And our roots are anchored in love. That is to say, love for life, being alive, valuing being here over its opposite. To be here requires work. We must tend the nature of our own tumbling, overcome pain, and elaborate joy into meaning. So it's from this base that we draw the details of how we do that tending. The feeling of wanting to live, and its related conviction, force the energies that lead to its manifestation into smaller and smaller bundles. And those bundles flow through us as cycles of our behavior. Our sensations influence or convictions, and our convictions drive our choices. And so we are able to choose as sentient beings, who can communicate and move and be aware of themselves and how their choices make impact. And so it seems then that love as we see it is a feeling that makes us want something, is the root of our existence into the rest of the framework. Because our natures require us to make choices in order to survive, in order to connect roots with flowers, we need to feel love for the ground in which we root and the sky to which we climb.
For the pirouette of cycles that define matter, two set the axes. Size and motion. Size is an assessment of grouping. All cycles are interrelated, and therefore to point at a thing requires including all the cycles which define it, while simultaneously excluding all that don't. Everything is always everything, but a thing is only a thing when its a thing. Motion describes how a thing of size influences its space. Heat is the elemental form of motion.
We characterize states of matter by the characteristics of of molecular activity. Solids cling together and vibrate against their electrochemical bonds. Liquids break free molecularly and flow across each other like rings of dancers switching partners on every beat. Crystals in of molecular elements pattern themselves against the connective natures of their molecules. Plant structures pattern themselves against the connective natures of their cells. Animal structures pattern themselves against the connective nature of theirs. And social groups pattern themselves against the connective nature of their members. The central thread is identical.
Entropy is not so much a function of disorder as it is a reduction of simplicity. Order is still there, just more finely embedded in an individual. Farther from the branches, the tips exist in a less obvious grouping. Particularly when the tips are ideas, ideals and behaviors, deeply intermingled in fashion, architecture, political structures, and ritual. What are the branches that feed us? Why would we think they can be ignored?
Our definitions suit our purposes. We say an animal is alive, but a rock is not because it suits us. We think we're alive, that we think, that we feel, and we draw parallels and use those as substantiation. An animal moves and makes sounds, seems to convey expression, and relation and therefore is obviously alive. To many, plants seem less so, though still we believe in their life. Minerals are alive only to those who see the common denominator - the branching flow of elements into greater and greater detail. And the universe itself, the balls of hot gas and the space between them. These are alive only to the dreamers and hippies.
It was the European scientific tradition of recent times that purported a dead clockwork universe. That somehow things doing what they're doing out of rote mechanistic necessity was something other than living things enacting their nature. Other traditions saw the life in celestial bodies and common forms and characterized their natures as spirits with detail, personality, and subtlety. Our modern societies have nearly eradicated these peoples and their ideas. But still the truth of their understanding lingers, despite the growing adversary of fear which reinforces our tenacity for true primate group agreement. Monkeys which fall out of line get eaten. That is to say, going against the group means you're going it alone, and there is of course some safety in numbers.
Except when the numbers are guiding bad decisions. All natural forms have a growth pattern and a decay pattern, as their cyclic nature would imply and balance is enabled through modulating the rise and fall of each individual. Modern society, driven by greater and greater strength of the few has enabled impossibly permanent growth patterns while eliminating the breakdown step. Plastic for example, is a material that never existed in the universe. It is made quickly and lingers for an extraordinary amount of time, poisoning everything around it with its irregular nature. Corporations, as well, are immortal. As are wealth and legacy, determined by laws which don't resonate with the demeanor of the environment in which they exist.
Yet cycles cannot be stopped. Only pushed in various ways. And as the smaller cycles twist and warble, the larger cycles in which they spin continue to slug along, eventually bringing all the foam back into placid clear calm. So the determination of our choices ought to reflect our orientation in this process. Do we want to contribute to the stable core of life, or disappear briefly into the froth of its warbling progress? The universe is immortal, and living as it lives offers our contributions the same lifespan. Deciding another way will only seem useful within the short-sightedness of those who see it that way.
