Why practice? Flourishing/ Stretching

Had a hard time naming this post, but it's an idea that's been conking around in my head for a while, kicked into focus by an article I just read called The Fine, The Good, and the Meaningful, in The Philosopher's Magazine, via a blog I read called Integral Options Cafe.

Basically: since everything is in a constant state of flux (that is, every thing,) each thing is either growing, or dying. If you take "thing" to mean, say, "My French Language Aptitude," then it's easy to see that either one is practicing their French, or slowly losing it (something I can attest to personally.) There is no "constant state," only a continual balance. Following this, unless one is getting better and better, actively practicing, one will get worse, even with practice. That is, it's not enough to just practice, one needs to continually practice just outside of their level of comfort, in something I call "The Quick of Practice."

In a bodily sense, this is why I feel to be truly content as a person one must exercise their body and their bodily awareness. The body is made to move. Let it. Harness it, be aware of it, and you will become happier and happier. The body is like the soil for the tomato plant in the passage below. With a really unhappy body it's much harder to be happy emotionally. The good news is that once you've started paying attention to the body instead of a neutral resting state you begin to feel a subtle happy playfulness throughout it anytime a stronger feeling (like pain, or sadness, or joy) isn't present (and even sometimes as a discernible background if they are.)

As far as one's life goes, unless one pushes against one's limits, however you want to think of that, one is floating through life without living. Part of the point of the article, and something that I agree with, is that the idea of human life, the goal if you will, is to flower. This doesn't by any means denigrate the majority of people who never truly flower, or people who have yet to, it is merely to say that nobody goes to Washington D.C. in the summer to watch the Japanese Cherry trees photosynthesize.

And, of course (something I am overly aware of teaching here in China) this continual pushing of limits can't literally be continual. A wave must draw back and forth to wear a cliff away. The body needs rest, like a peak needs a trough. Balance. Push out a little too far, heal. Healed, you're able to push out a little further.

So, then, why practice? In a certain way, there are two phases to human life: socialization, or the mostly mandated period of learning before adulthood when one picks up, consciously and not, the rules and skills valued by their society, and post-socialization, when one is an adult. In this second period the opportunity exists to continue self-directed growth, though many do not. But adulthood is not a plateau. You either grow, or die (a maxim of evolution?) With evidence recently that intelligence is flexible and can be increased, even speaking only of one's brain power the case is clear for practice. While children have the most energy and time to study any number of skills, the paradox is that it is not until one has become a self-realized adult that one can really begin to push the boundaries of who one is and what one can do. Practice, in adulthood, becomes not merely the acquisition of skills, but the conscious engagement with life itself.

The below is from the article.
'Flourishing is a biological term, which etymologically connotes flowering – that is to say the healthy, vigorous unfolding of the capacities peculiar to each species. For a tomato plant, flourishing is quite simply its production of strong leaves and shoots, and then its coming to maturity and bearing rich and succulent fruits. But what are the fruits of human life?

The Lotus Eaters are contented enough – but, as it slowly dawns on Odysseus (or Ulysses), there’s something disquieting about them – they never do anything, just loll around eating the lotus (perhaps the ancient Greek equivalent of reaching for the valium). The moral drawn by Homer, and Tennyson, is that the truly happy life must be one where we are stretched. '