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.
I have continued reading in this series of posts about Thumotic living. I like discovering the framework that goes with what you've been blogging about for some time now.
ReplyDeleteMy experience is that each of us is unique; in what captures our attention, in what we have to give to the world, and in how we express ourselves. I think about the ways in which conformity is built in to how we're raised--through institutions and/or systems of all types. It begins with our earliest education, even our religious institutions, and the notion of "appropriate" and "inappropriate" behaviours. In this regard, many of us are asleep.
I've often thought that my parents, for example, did the best they could at the time in raising me. They went by how they'd been raised, linked in a sense to their hopes and dreams for me.
You're right, it's never too late to unlearn or set aside those teachings. Absent all of that conditioning, what would I have been? This seems a place where the phrase "better late than never" certainly applies.
I don't have any question about this. It's up to me to sort through how best to undo. I've always been especially fond of the notion that "it's never too late to have a happy childhood." That's as good a place as any to begin living from the heart.
Oh, I do like "it's never too late to have a happy childhood!" : )
ReplyDeleteGlad you did. :-)
ReplyDelete