Thumotic Living, Part 8: One-of-a-Kind

Thumotic living, living from our heart, is living a unique, one-of-a-kind life. There is only one of each one of us. Our life story, composed of our choices, is like no other. What we create and share no one else does. No one else can. 

We can enrich the lives of others with what only we can create or we can withhold it and keep it to ourselves. The choice is ours.

Let's support each other in living our one-of-a-kind lives. Let's support each other in creating what only we can. Let's fulfill the life-affirming desires of our hearts and enrich the world.

Thumotic Living, Part 7: Creativity

Thumotic living is creative and productive. Living beings create in a variety of ways. We create more living beings. We create safe places to bring forth more living beings, nurture them, and add to the rich tapestry of living beings. We help nurture the offspring of others. 

We produce abundantly. Look at how many seeds one dandelion produces, how many acorns one oak tree produces, and how many mice one mouse produces. Look at how much honey one hive of honey bees produces. Look at how many eggs a human female produces and how many sperm the human male produces. Abundance is natural.

Spirited beings cannot not produce and create. It's what spirited beings do. We do not have to try to produce. It's natural. Rose bushes do not try to produce blooms. They just do it. It's what they do.

We humans also work in cooperation with other living beings to produce language, tools, food, clothing, shelter, jewelry, paintings, flower gardens, statues, musical instruments, music, dances, imaginative stories and songs, countless machines, and so much more.

We do not create and produce just to survive. We do it to thrive and enjoy living. We often strive to create beauty, that which gives pleasure and delights ourselves and others.

Only those who, for whatever reason, do not value life produce life-denying creations. They suppress, hinder, and destroy their own lives and those of others. They rob life and the world of its value. 

Until they can make life-affirming contributions, they forfeit the privilege of having significant influence in the world.

We all need them to do better.

Thumotic Living, Part 4: Acorn-like

Thumotic living is not about "following your heart."

When  we live from our thumos and fulfill the life-affirming desires of our heart, we follow no one. We follow no thing, including our heart. Rather we manifest in our actions the life-affirming desires of our heart.

It's a  natural process. No exhortations like "Become who you are!" are needed. We do not have to try to become who we are. 

When we live from our thumos, just as an acorn naturally becomes the unique oak tree it is meant to become, so we naturally become the unique human being we are meant to become.

Thumotic Living, Part 3: Amorality

If a morality is a set of rational concepts about what is right and wrong, thumotic living is amoral. Not immoral. Amoral.

It's amoral because when we live from our spirit and heart, complying with our own or some else's rational concepts about right and wrong are irrelevant. 

What matters is fulfilling the life-affirming desires of our heart.

Thumotic Living, Part 2: Natural

Thumotic living is natural. It's living in accord with how we were born to live.

We're born to live from our thumos, our spirit, our heart. We're born to fulfill the life-affirming desires of our heart.

When our parents and others nurture and support us in becoming who we are naturally meant to become, they affirm our life and we live naturally from our spirit. We naturally become who we are meant to become.

Only when our parents and others "educate" us to comply, conform, and live according to someone else's ways do we later have to unlearn unnatural, life-denying ways. Only then do we have to learn later in life how to live from our spirit, fulfill the life-affirming ways of our heart, and become who we are naturally meant to become. 

It is never too late to unlearn life-denying ways, fulfill the life-affirming desires of our heart, and become who we are meant to become. 

Thumotic Living, Part 1: From Our Spirit

My next two or three posts will be about thumotic living. Here's part one:

Thumotic living is living from our thumos, our spirit, that which makes us alive.

Since we experience  our thumos in our chest, it is associated with our heart. Thumotic living is also living from our heart.

We can feel when we're living from our thumos. Sometimes we feel warmth in our chest, our heart. Sometimes the warmth blazes into a heated flame of passion. Whether it's warmth or flame it compels us to speak and act before we think.

Thumotic living is living not according to the dictates of a divine or human authority figure. It's not living according to a religion, philosophy, or moral code. It's not living according to reason, rationality, or logic. It's not concerned with conforming with current social mores.

Thumotic living is irrational. It's free-spirited living that manifests in our actions the life-affirming desires of our heart.