What is Your "Natural" State?
What what would you be doing — if anything — if you didn't have to worry about the daily stresses of life and grind culture and the inevitable mountains of bills and deadlines and getting everything done?
It's something I've been thinking about... going beyond the stereotypical fantasy island scenarios of "what would you do if you won $1,000,000 in the lottery" that people like to occasionally speculate on.
Some people insist that they would be a nonstop hive of activity trying to do all the things that they otherwise haven't had time to do, striving to complete impossibly long bucket lists.
Personally speaking, I'd be breathing a sigh of relief at the opportunity to just sit still and not have to think and not have to do anything, which is pretty much also my natural state.
Which leaves me pondering the question of what our true "natural" state looks like and subsequently why is what we think of as our natural state our actual natural state?
I think my assertion that I would be sitting still and doing nothing is heavily informed by the reality that I've never had a chance to not be in motion and constantly doing things.
I just did a quick inventory — in part using my physical and digital photo albums as a help — And as best I can tell I have had exactly three vacations in the past 22 years. And that's not because I'm a workaholic and didn't want to stop, but because I've simply never been able to afford to. Such an idea as going on holiday for two weeks — given that I'm a self-employed person — would be a financial disaster.
Of course, that's perhaps just a reflection of the fact that the things I work at don't earn me much more than a very basic subsistence living.
But what would I really do? That is, after the novelty of being able to sit still without demands constantly being made on me wears off.
The good news in that department is that I would be doing pretty much exactly what I do right now! I would be writing; I would be going in search of beautiful things and photographing them; I would be tooling around with collectables; I would be beachcombing and I would be pursuing my art.
The only real difference would be that I would be doing so without the constant time and financial pressure making it so that every waking hour had to be dedicated to finding a way to scratch a few more cents out of life.
In a sense, being able to write those words is testament to how much I enjoy doing these things, and in spite of the fact that I live, breathe, eat and sleep them I still find joy in doing them!
As such, I'm even open to the possibility that things are unfolding exactly the way they're supposed to, even if Iwish they were easier. A few weeks ago I was listening to a podcast in which somebody pointed out that life has always been a struggle for the human species and it seemed most likely that a "comfortable homo sapien" would most likely have died. So there's always that to consider.
Even so, I have never truly thrived on constantly being busy. And while there may be some truth to the sociological assertions that the best creative things come forth as a result of suffering, that has not typically been when my own best has surfaced.
To each their own, I suppose!
Thanks for stopping by, and have a great remainder of your week!
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Created at 2025.08.27 00:58 PST
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I also would be doing just what I am doing, just not having to wait for money to get things done. My last vacation was in 2000 when I visited my sister in New Mexico for 10 days.