Flow - Strength.

So today I thought a lot about Flow. I talked about that plenty with Sam last week; and today I could see it so clearly. I have known the concept, but it was excellent, this past Tuesday, to really connect with examples from my own life how often when I am faced with a feeling that is both apathy and restlessness at the same time, usually what I am looking for is flow.

When I'm searching for things on the internet, not knowing what I'm after or why, what I want is this flow.

The term has been sort of adopted by psychologist Czikszentmihaly. I remember Any recommending his book Flow to me, and relating to me how she noticed that she was seeking flow when playing video games, and she played scales on the piano to sort of shake herself out of the desperate, seeking feeling that lack of flow produces. This story has stuck in my mind ever since; the thought comes to me once and a while. And I don't know what it is, but it finally made sense to me in a real way this afternoon, when I was playing video games. I thought to myself:

Maybe I need to not buy into these thoughts that I need to play a game, when obviously I am not engaging with the games, not focusing on them. I am just consuming them and moving on to the next ones. If I could somehow make myself feel more open, more connected, more alive, then I wouldn't need to look in these places (on the internet, with video games, with stimulation, needing to see images of people and hear voices, on t.v. or radio) for satisfaction.

The big reveal involving Sarah was noticing how much of what I got from her was something that actually resides inside of me, this strength of feeling. I described it to Sam as feeling like water was poured into me: it's a quenching feeling, a fuller and denser feeling, as well as quickening and enlivening and lifting - the difference between a living leaf and a dead leaf.

This is my stuff. This is not Sarah's. I need to sort this stuff out. In fact, I shouldn't even really be turning this discussion into something about Sarah - it's primally important activity. I simply make the point: I am projecting this issue onto her, as I have projected it onto many other people. I feel smaller around her because this idea is perfect and impersonal, as far as she is concerned, and it therefore reduces her humanity. This is not real relation; and it is not real flow. Real flow is when I own that feeling for myself; real relation is when I am not looking for my own strength to come from someone else.

So much I can write down now. Hopefully I won't forget it.


Good night.