The moment to moment of living …

Which is best, encounter with each moment according to a schedule or surprise at what happens next? What is there about routine that engenders a sense of secure stability or stable security while at the same time devolves routine into staleness?

What do devices for me? In this moment or out of this moment would I be able to experience the day without devices? Or, being addicted to my devices, would living in their absence drive me crazy?

There are implications then to the idea of being “left to one’s own devices.” I begin with a question, “which devices?” Mechanical devices we use to rule our days. Creative devices we use to nourish the heart. Is there a point past which we stop thinking about what we do, both mechanically and creatively? Past that point do we become mechanically mindless or creatively mindful?

Do boredom and melancholy dwell within the mindless? Is the mindful the only context where flourishes imagination and excitement? Does the mind have a locking device as part of its design? Or, do we install a locking device at some point when reason, passion and imagination are challenged by chattering scattered thoughts at the expense of contemplated ideas and the desire to find ways to express them?

Does thou mind pout when it doesn’t get its way, taking it out on the heart? Perhaps there’s more of a contest between entertainment and creativity. It is not difficult to find entertainment once one learns the means. It is however more challenging as well as satisfying to imagine a creative that also entertains. Entertains whom? Whomever … but first and foremost the entertainment and satisfaction of one’s self.

Such is when the heart parents the mind; the way things ought to be.

What is in the mind makes things possible. What is in the heart makes things worth it. If the mind is satisfied, the path to the possible remains open. The heart will not also be satisfied in the presence of the mind’s open path because the heart isn’t primarily about satisfaction. Rather, the heart’s purpose is the continuing powerful beating for aspects of beauty that can be imagine, expressed and brought to fruit in a variety of forms.

Devices then are or can be one’s friends. They may as good friends be in a closer relationship that one realizes. In some cases, close friends – such as drinking buddies – may never know when you’ve had too much. So long as you are imbibing they are supporting and participating in your consuming activity.

In other cases there are devices that are like loyal and trusted friends. In this mechanical and electronic age of friendship, trusted devices – from cars to refrigerators, to working tools, vacuum cleaners and the like – are what we trust to help us get things done. Another is the word processer with which I write this and it’s access to the Internet where research and questions with answers are almost without limits; a writer’s absolute necessity.

Then there are instrumental devices – in my case, the piano, the keyboard, music players that enhance the creative mood.

And there are devices for pure entertainment and information via films of all kinds and television.

What then about life with devices? Let them not be dominated by mind addicted to routine and struggling with boredom. Rather, let them best be utilized by the heart seeking expression through a venue of creativity and imagination.