So sometimes we feel full, sometimes we feel empty.
And what does that even mean? What is this metaphor? It must be some kind of metaphor because, obviously we’re not full or empty physically speaking.
You know, we still have blood and everything inside us, and we’re not actually “empty” of anything.
So what does that even mean? Seems like it has some notion of like a kind of fuel.
Like we get a feeling of fuel, that you know, you’re empty, you need more fuel.
You’re full, you’re full of fuel.
OK.
So we can apply that maybe to eating, sure.
But what about this idea of some days I just feel empty? Some days just feels like I don’t have the energy, the focus, the clarity.
I just don’t have the drive put together in a way that can get me going doing what I know that it’s time to do.
And other days I feel like I have more of it than I can even fit in a day.
It’s like wow, you know, I just want to keep working.
It’s the end of the day, so I’m going to rest now and then continue tomorrow.
But then maybe the next day, I don’t feel that same energy.
So I’m wondering what to do.
What do you do when you have that feeling of being empty? And one thing that comes to mind for me is that this feeling of being empty of energy is kind of built around the metaphor that we are these individual reservoirs of energy.
Like I have a reservoir, I have my energy, and now it’s spent, now I am out of energy.
And well, the simple answer is just to rest, to rest and recover your energy.
There’s eating and sleeping and all those things we can do just to sort of recharge our focus.
But if even those things are not doing it, if still there’s no energy, then it seems to me like one way to look at it is that we’re not really entirely these individual reservoirs of energy.
We’re not- it’s like- it’s hard for me to express this, but it’s like a way of looking at things where I need to do everything myself.
I need to have the will, the energy, the focus, and everything has to be done by me.
And sometimes it just seems like that’s too much, I don’t have the ability to focus and apply myself, and so I just seem to be unable to do what I want to do.
But one thing that I find helpful to think about in this situation is that I really don’t have to do everything myself.
I don’t have to supply all this energy myself, as if it’s all coming from inside me, like I’m this isolated being that has its own energy reserve doing everything.
Because it’s in the nature of who we are that we are always taking in from our environment.
As much as we can, in a very simplified way, see ourselves as these isolated systems, isolated beings, that we have independent action, independent function, so we can see ourselves as independent and contained, self-contained, but really we’re never completely self-contained.
We’re always integrated with the environment around us.
We’re breathing in air.
Without it, we’re dead in three minutes.
We’re eating, we’re drinking water, we’re bringing in water to replenish our system.
Without it, we’re dead in three days.
And of course heat energy: we need the temperature to be brought in, the energy of the of the heat brought in from our environment.
And of course, food.
Without it we’re dead in I don’t know if it’s three weeks or three months.
But we’re always bringing this in from our environment.
I think the same thing applies with this kind of feeling of the energy required to get things done, the focus, the commitment, the drive.
We don’t have to feel like these things are entirely generated from inside, like we have to come up with from inside ourselves all these reserves of energy and drive.
They come from around us.
We absorb our surroundings.
It’s a very abstract point, but I like to think that I don’t need to come up with everything myself.
I don’t need to generate my own energy.
It’s there all around us.
And we’re open to our environment, and we intermix with the environment around us.
So when I feel that I’m somehow lacking in energy, somehow the feeling that I can let it come in from around me: instead of feeling like it has to come from inside and I’m feeling empty, instead I can let that feeling of filling up with energy come in from my environment.
Let myself absorb what I need from my environment.
Instead of making it all about me.
Now I know this is getting really abstract because this whole idea of “energy” as a metaphor, you know, has a lot of issues to it.
But I just find that there’s something powerful to this idea that helps me to just remember that I don’t have to come up with everything myself.
I can let it come in from around me.
#noenergy #isolated #recharge