Staking A Claim

There is a finite number of claims that you would bet your life on or die for. A clear minded person will be able to tell you what their’s are. The serious person will only have a few.

Defining these claims is a worthwhile exercise: what do you prioritize for? It’s also an increasingly salient question as modern society gets more technologized and distracted. If you kept your priorities in check, you’d probably be more sparing about your screen time or feeling sorry for yourself.

It can be exhausting work though, psychologically and spiritually exhausting, to define what you stand for with the ultimate at stake. And you and I both take this business of living seriously, we must be certain it's going to end - at least, in its current form as we know it.

That’s why art and grace and style count for so much. If you’re going to live and die, you might as well enjoy the process. Hell, there’s no reason this can’t be fun. Expressing your life as an artwork, as a song, as an expression, with all the material and mental resources you can muster, leveraging everything you got, in the most idiosyncratic manner, must be the most elevated and agentic expression of being alive. It takes honesty. It takes courage. It takes enthusiasm. And your wits.

A thoughtful person's brass ring: how to make the conception living and dying serious but also amusing. When you find your version of that and you're succeeding. You're transcending.

Ironically, in order to transcend, you need to know what claim(s) your staking. And some part of you needs to understand why.