A Circle of Compensation.
When the time to understand economic cycles, in personal or startup budgets, is compressed beyond our control, we tend to take things into our own hands, and take the necessary steps to plate the theories, and find them agreeable to our own palates.
We usually take our sweet time, relishing the choices. Isn’t this the whole point to tasting? The excitement of the revelations at the end. The picking and choosing is not, to my opinion a real russian roulette, but more a roulade where we put our lives in the centre of our work, and unroll them before our eyes in an array of integration, in so far as curating our tastes and preferences along the way, (charred not boiled please, sugar in two cubes per 5oz. latte, organic beetroot sauce from backyards only allowed in my balsamic reduction, vegetarian not vegan, etc.). We substantiate our lives to an utmost brinking level of near-perfection that makes our vision of ourselves locked in to a 20/20 tempo, as long as that un-blurred vision of yourself (in the first person) comes to an image very becoming and pleasing only to your own eyes.
I have always been a foodie, so taking in life via food is not new to me. This week, I marvel at this Off Menu video series that has been sponsored by Chase Sapphire Preferred which shares the table adventures of this female chef / food writer in the US, with travels that befit the learned palate in country-to-country introduction by locals to their adopted country’s selection of places to eat - with the challenge of finding an off-resto, on-chef’s-special-menu with commentary for “the levelled up”. It is a joy to behold, and a conversation i don’t mind being a part of constantly. The amazing thing is that programmes like this give light to artistry and balance a sponsorship to both local and explorer. Well-edited and well-taken videos under 20 minutes, with a relatable and smooth narration in very ambivalent but bold cultural subtexts, the location-different places that features differently from the piles of travel videos on my playlist, all contribute to the enjoyable food-as-subject content consumption. This is a wonderful example of a simple corporate/media-modelled socially responsible research platform.
Because why wouldn’t this be a good opening to what would be held as a welcome to both ends of the corporate-funded social outreach? This accompanies the content that has been used to educate our minds, as well as now our palates, and make for a more economically responsible blogger-sourced knowledge to the helm of possibly the good lead of user-preference knowledge being amassed in the hipster-nielsen software that is our fast artistic minds, to the masses. (Obviously, to the American masses.) That bank has now shared its sponsored content to the world via google and youtube platforms, seriously smart marketing there. And monetarily, it comes round to their socially invigorating the demand for credit, and travel-hungry folks. Well-circled funding right there.
So, reviewing what you had actually had done would contribute to the sponsorship of others to what had been your life: its erstwhile imperfections, its sweet and sours, its ups and downs, the unhealthy regurgitations that we end up spitting up in the middle of the night with the roman blind curtains that hang very courteously to shield from glares, and the very learnings that we tend to bookshelf, and not share, nor publish.
So before the internet, we tended to actually use what we called “legs” to go to one place to another - in a foray of friends for a summer play, whether that was in your neighbourhood, or to a park or destination everyone had been invited, and agreed to meet at - it was in a free finding of good fun. We comparatively wanted to explore (oh family was cool, it’s just time to check out friends, and other people now) to escape (the house has just given me another dose of slick city cabin fever) the tiny 167 square metre 3-room humble abode you called home, until you felt sick somewhere in your head, unrested from the pit of your stomach and travelled to your “legs”.
From the traditional phone lines, we now text or set appointments via mobile gadgets, or when a popup window from your messaging applications keeps you at your seat on keyboard web, and rips you out of the en pointe mid-sentence hustling that closes the year’s annuities to catch the ray of light that filters through a tree group round the bend that someone had sent you a quick picture of. Do you bolt? Knowing that you can finish that mid-sentence, but not be able to capture the light if you leave work just right after sunset? We now enable ourselves with technology, the advances of which had been a kindling to a massive change in how we live our lives, but not necessarily what we live them for.
When someone who had been able to do both: analyse, and more or less quantify to a manageable detail, and then take to the mattresses in the same vein as to express their ideas very eloquently, sets out the art of understanding they would have probably by now understood their places in the sun. It is the same intelligence and curiousity involved as when picking out a book from the library, or from a bookstore, as when word-mongers had certainly become more alive. We can now learn from them. And this is how.
The challenge to life, and all streams of thought, is not its cognisance (that is actually peppered with luck, and a bit of a learned touch) but to actually make others know, in an organic and steady stream in the helm of an active maker mindset - and with a touch of mutual respect, awe, discipline of craft, be able to lead with a steady hand. When creating paths, aren’t we happy to sit at the chef’s table, and become one with the omakase experience?
Sometimes, it is not a real mystery. There has been a design but it takes a lifetime to recognise the pattern that lies underneath. The underlying premise of life that takes monks and jesuits and ascetics the conserve of their energy to understand, and translate for us. The massive context to the brave paths, and intersections that we support with our systems, and adjust our culture affectations for, takes a more of a fast ball curve. When you blink, sometimes your keyboard is not enough a tool to capture something so eloquent, and so profound. Not to wax any more poetic, or vague, (my planet doth accommodate the occasional visitor) but the reason why we are here goes more than what is plated and consumed for the day. We have amalgamated both the knowledge in a lifetime’s read of books, interaction with people, formulation of friends, climbing of work ladders, tile-propping of walls, the crafting and refinement of implements to take it all in - as well as the intake of life in a single drop of coffee.
We are the lucky ones.