The World I Want to Create
28 December 2023
I want to create a world of stability, order, and balance by creating, building, and meditating.
That quote is kinda silly without context. I wrote that in response to a thought experiment prompt that a friend of mine made me try. The idea is that you fill in the blanks in the quote "I want to create a world of blank by blank." The first blank is the thing or set of things that you want your world to look like. The second set is the method or methods that you will use to achieve the first set.
However, it's not a concrete set of actions in the second set; it's more of a big picture view of the methods you use or would like to be using in your life, in order to ultimately achieve the first set. This is my understanding, at least.
So, to break down my version of the quote: I desire stability, order and balance in my life. I like when things are stable (another word might be 'secure') in regard to finances, health, relationships, even hobbies. Order, in this case, mostly means "a lack of chaos", and goes hand-in-hand with stability; I don't like chaos, unexpected happenings (although those are inveitable), and disarray. And balance refers to a "happy medium" between work and play. I want to be able to work, and feel fulfilled from it, and use my hobbies to mindfully relax and unwind.
To achieve those core values, I will ideally employ the second set of words (which are all verbs). I desire to create things, generally. It's something that makes me feel fulfilled when I'm able to get into the zone of creation, which admittedly is not often lately. But I put it in the second set of words because it can help with the stability I desire, since creation can help with finding purpose, and knowing my purpose can lead to the type of work that might help maintain stability in my professional life. It works in a cycle, too, because that stability also facilitates creation — it's easier to be creative when there is a backbone of stability (security) to prevent the worrying that would derail the creative process.
The building part is about building good habits — ones that will help with the stability of health, for example. It's also about building mechanisms to achieve my goals, like methods or processes or workflows. It can also be about building relationships (as I don't have many friends who share similar interests lately, and that would be a good thing to have).
Meditating is the act that will help me to refine my entire outlook, as goals inevitably change and/or evolve as time goes on, or as more things are uncovered about myself. It's like reflecting, and then some. Reflecting with introspection. I chose the word 'meditating' because it has a double meaning; I also would actually like to meditate more (the actual practice) because I think it will help to calm my racing thoughts.
So clearly, this thought experiment doesn't directly define goals for yourself. But my hope is that having this insight into the core values I want to achieve (and even the general methods I want to use to achieve them) will help me to get more clear about the nature of the goals I want to set for my life.
— Derek Andersen