Your cart is currently empty!
BUILD SANDCASTLES!
Dear friend, let us thank God we’re alive.
Ok, regardless of your religious or spiritual affiliation, it fucking rocks to be alive.
Nobody knows whether there is an afterlife after we die.
But we certainly know for a fact that we are ALIVE right now.
You have 100% freedom in your life
You have the choice to live however you want right now. You can choose your own personal philosophy. You can choose what to do or what not to do in life.
In art, you have the freedom to make the art you want to make. You can define art for yourself. Ain’t nobody can force you to take photos that you don’t like.
Have fun in life.
At best, we will live to be 90 years old. At worst, we will die today or tomorrow.
My suggestion;
Treat life like you’re a kid at the playground. The world is your own jungle gym…have fun.
“But mom, I don’t want to go home yet!”
Heraclitus once said that a human life is a child at the beach, building sandcastles, while the eternal waves of time will (eventually) tear down our sandcastles. Our sandcastles are our homes, our skyscrapers, our businesses, our money, and anything we build.
What is the point of building sandcastles if it will all be torn or washed away?
For me, I want to create a blueprint that will encourage others to build their own sandcastles. To help people enjoy the process of making sandcastles, while we are still alive.
The circle of life
To me, building posthumous fame (fame after you die) is a bit of a waste of time. Why? After you’re dead, why do you care whether you are remembered or not? For myself, I’m selfish enough that I only want fame while I’m still alive.
As of now, I don’t believe in an afterlife. I think after I die, my memories might live on via my books, blog posts, videos, or the information I produce. My kids will live on. But I will die. My carbon molecules will re-enter the earth, and give nutrition to avocado and almond trees, and perhaps give back to the “circle of life” from the Lion King.
All the photos I make will become visual phantasms. My photos are just pixels of faded dust and memories. My photos don’t have physical form, they just live as ghosts online on Google Images.
I believe in a soul, but I don’t know if the soul is eternal. To me, my soul is some sort of ether that is inside my body. My soul is probably a combination of my mind, my electrical impulses, my skin and muscles, blood, and DNA.
I have no intention of living forever. Fuck uploading my brain to some neural network, or to the cloud. To be frank, my life is already being archived to the server farms of Google. If I died today, you can probably take all of my blog posts, videos, and make an “ERIC KIM BOT” that uses machine learning algorithms to chat with. For a better representation, watch the BLACK MIRROR episode where the woman chats with her deceased husband.
Why live?
Anyways, what is the purpose of life?
To be frank, I don’t think there is a singular, “purpose” of life. I think we’re kind of put on Earth on accident. I do believe in God, or perhaps some central creator (not as a guy with a white beard on a cloud, but perhaps God as the soul of the universe).
Anyways, we have at best 90 years on planet Earth, we have the power how to live our lives, to dictate our values, to be productive, to make art, and to help others.
Some philosophies and ideas:
1. I find purpose in life by helping others.
I have the best “high” when I’m teaching, sharing ideas with others or empowering others. For me, the high I get from helping others is the best drug. A lot better than getting fucked up on alcohol, than smoking weed, or buying expensive stuff. In a selfish mode, helping others is the best way to “feel good.” Therefore, a good way to feel joy is to help others.
2. Make new shit.
I believe in the psychology and philosophy of “flow” from Mihalay C. When we are in a state of flow, or in the ZONE, we feel fucking alive. We feel like we can never die. I feel a state of flow when deadlifting, when writing, listening to empowering music, or reading challenging philosophical texts or materials.
You are an artist. You are happiest when you are MAKING new shit!
MAKE new photos. MAKE new blog posts. MAKE and BUILD your own artistic sandcastles, with photoshop, illustrator, pieces of paper, sculpture, or through the movements of your body. Do it analog, digital, or just on your phone.
Happiness is CREATING, BUILDING, AND MAKING!
3. Just do it.
I say fuck perfection. Just make shit, and have fun while doing it.
To be frank, 99.9% of the things you built will be washed away by the cruel waves of time. Your sand castle will not last forever. But there is a certain joy the we have in building the sand castle, even though we know after sunset, we need to pack up our shit and go home. Leaving the beach and going home is a metaphor for death.
A child does not seek to make a “perfect” sandcastle. For that is a silly concept. How can you make a perfect sandcastle? You just build it affording to your own aesthetic tastes. The same thing with making any art.
Just make a sandcastle that pleases you.
Practical ideas
Ok, to be less theoretical and philosophical, some ideas:
- Fuck timing: Don’t wait before publishing shit that you like. Just publish whenever you want to. Don’t wait until noon (best time to publish to social media) before publishing your photo, poem, or piece of art. Ain’t nobody really care about your art as much as you do. My suggestion: when you build something, just publish it immediately, then move onto the NEXT ONE.
- See all of life as temporary: For me, seeing life as temporary encourages me. Why? I take life less seriously, and I have more fun. But, I also don’t waste my life doing shit I don’t wanna do. For inspiration, go to wikiquote.org and read quotes from Heraclitus. I think the Zen Buddhists have this notion of “non-permenance” down. Yet the problem with Zen and Buddhism: they don’t encourage us to actually build and do shit. So be ZEN in not taking life too seriously, but hustle hard and make more shit. So I guess I’m a “ZEN HUSTLER.”
- Make your own blog: 1and1.com and WordPress.org. Publish whenever you want. Publish imperfect things. Stop publishing to social media. You will have more freedom.
- Join ERIC KIM FORUM and interact with positive folks. Reject negative nay sayers like the devil, or the plague.
BE STRONG,
ERIC