On Sculpting Your Life

Circuity, derived from circuitus of the verb “circumire,” meaning “to go around,” where circumire stems from “circum” (around) and “ire” (to go), is the idea of going around. Sculpting Your Life is an extension of my previous How to Be Alone with Your Thoughts. Once we’ve established ourselves within, we can create our expansion outwardly.

Winding, Maintaining, and Rounding

Winding roads follow streams and rivers that have carved their way through mountains for over a millennium. They all settle into a larger pool of water, something bigger than themselves. Forests, mountains, and grassy fields decorate the river like a cow does a spot. The zigzagging of water reminds us that life is built around organized chaos. Every animal nearby will become a resident of the riverbank so they can access a key resource for survival. The river’s process of creation resembles our own. We must sculpt a path to establish abundant flow. We must move with the current that drives us and watch as life takes shape around us.

Maintaining a closeness to our inner resources defines the artistry that we use to sculpt our lives. So that we may drift with the flow of the river in tubes and be prepared to kayak through the rapids. Our direction is shaped both by the land and through our own making as we declare ourselves. Creating a life that is alive is made through the sculpting of the present towards an imagined future. Life expands outwardly. Our existence is a delicate power that facilitates growth around us; it is only through our willingness to be the embodiment of our lives that the flower receives nourishment along the riverbed.

Rounding corners and reaching blockages is nothing more than the natural cycle of challenge and ease. With nothing to overcome, we remain as we are. Ease is understood through the forces that oppose it. A smooth rock with steep edges demonstrates how close we are to meeting an end. Either way, the edges prepare rapids for us to navigate, and through close observation, a way through is exposed. With challenge comes the understanding of ease, and to persevere, we must apply ourselves. We must study our edges. Otherwise, we follow a current that is not of our own making. There is no natural path without hardship. Challenge is presented so that growth is continually sought out. So that the evolution of ourselves resembles the rapids we’ve overcome.

Lasting, Following, and Waiting

Lasting droplets of water collect on surfaces, and your presence is made known through them. Everything we experience is also experiencing us. Whether we approach the river from a tube or kayak, or follow the road or trail, we are experiencing this flow. There is no separating us from the entanglement of all things. That we can breathe in the air that is the breath out of plants, that our footprints leave imprints on the soil, and that our actions are the declaration of some outcome, all share with us a secret about the nature of existence. You, I, and they are all expressions of a movement. The definitive endings and beginnings are merely blurred transformations in the eyes of planetary rotation.

Following behind our movements are the shadows of uncertainty for every possibility we didn’t choose. These parallel existences of ourselves remain where we’ve left them and are of no use to us. In this life, we follow our own time and deliver ourselves in space. Concerning ourselves with what could’ve been or would’ve been is an exhaustive exercise that leads the present individual down backroads that splinter from the current. We must surrender to the disciplines of the present. Just as soon as we are declarative, we are faced again with choice. Perhaps the discrepancies in understanding choice between living forms are that humans believe it to be escapable, while all others recognize it as a part of being.

Waiting for a decision to be made is like waiting for the trees to wrestle with the wind. They will only move based on the direction of the current. There is no protesting from the birds, deer, or bees. They carry on their own as we wait for something to happen. Absence of action is a life gone missing. How luxurious of us to contemplate another way before having to exist in it. That we can imagine a future before we must be living it. Anticipation for what’s to come is afforded to us by our dexterity. Without this feature, we would’ve never wrestled with the wind to sail.

Living, Learning, and Practicing

Living is a narrow chance granted to a few, but is endlessly created by them. Their lives are defined by all those they’ve encountered. But this definition is not definitive. Being perceived is made of two halves. You take fifty while the rest of the world takes the rest. In this way, life remains in the hands of the sculptor to produce something that resembles themselves in the current. At some point, you might find a place to settle. An inviting home along the river that allows you to dip your toe in the water for inspiration and excitement. Life is meant to be a nearness that energizes our bones to live, not a distance that decays our bones to death.

Learning to sculpt is a practice that involves conscious creation. Needs are revealed by being attuned to the body. Wants are demonstrated through interactions with, and the perception of, others. If you are raised by a flock, you’ll desire to fly. If you are raised by a chef, you’ll desire to cook. Being conscious of all that we encounter and all that influences us allows us to find the separation of ourselves. So that we may sculpt not through the eyes of our influences, but through the meaning we’ve taken from our experiences. An awareness of ourselves must be present in our creations so that we may establish a resonance throughout all versions of ourselves.

Practicing awareness is the gentle unification of self and flow. To recognize smooth and rough edges, so that challenges transform into ease. Securing a space along the river requires adapting to the changing current. Life is the sculpture. It is produced and observed. Believing there is an alternative to the process of planting, watering, and waiting to grow into one’s life is an assumption based on the illusion that someone’s rapid rise happened suddenly. You are not the lightning, nor the thunder, but are the water cycle that brings the rain.

Returning

Returning to the flow is surrendering all other ideas that keep one from it. Life does not deliver itself to the individual, but the individual must deliver themselves to life. It is indirect and inefficient because life occurs through constant trial. Each of us has an expression of this. Growth is in every corner that we choose to present ourselves. The establishment of an abundant flow waits in our determination to sculpt through uncharted territories. To find meaning in the mundane. Nonetheless, when it’s all said and done, we will discover ourselves floating, swimming, or sinking in the body of water that is the summation of all our doings. Like a hawk that circles its prey, we live to be captured by something bigger than us in the end.