The most important step in emancipating oneself from social controls is the ability to find rewards in the events of each moment. If a person learns to enjoy and find meaning in the ongoing stream of experience, in the process of living itself, the burden of social controls automatically falls from one’s shoulders. Power returns to the person when rewards are no longer relegated to outside forces. It is no longer necessary to struggle for goals that always seem to recede into the future, to end each boring day with the hope that tomorrow, perhaps, something good will happen. Instead of forever straining for the tantalizing prize dangled just out of reach, one begins to harvest the genuine rewards of living.
From Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. I’ve got mixed feelings about this book (it makes some fairly spurious arguments about the misery of the world), but this makes sense. Pictured is my louvers, yard ironwork and the long grass before the mower made its way.
