With my first article, I would like to set up the vision and purpose of my blog and the topics I will be writing about.
"Since my early childhood, I have been always exploring various activities and areas of life."
Since my early childhood, I have been always exploring various activities and areas of life. It seems like I have never stayed with only one thing that I would devote my life to, like some people do. Instead I would be "jumping" from one thing to another, starting to learn a skill, then abandoning it for something new I feel attracted by and then again after some time picking up a new activity, or exploring a new area of life. It has been sports, science, greek mythology, seafaring, music, writing, marketing, business, philosophy, martial-arts, and I guess much more...
"Many times, especially when I was younger, I have been feeling inadequate for not belonging to a certain society..."
Many times, especially when I was younger, I have been feeling inadequate for not belonging to a certain society, the criterium of "belonging" being that I should master well enough a certain skill that a given society has been built around. Like for example the game of football and being a footballer... In order to feel adequately deserving to belong to the football society and be called a footballer, I felt I need to master the necessary skills on a perfect level and adopt the respective style of living for enough long time. Only then I felt I would be allowed to be called a footballer. The same I have been feeling for any other endeavour, or activity.
With time though and as I was gaining more and more life experience I began understanding that this pattern in my life is not going to change and that exploring various areas of life and activities within it is how my life script has been set-up. By starting to accept that, I also started appreciating more and more the various skills and experiences I have collected through life so far. I have been also becoming in peace with not devoting my life to one skill mastered to perfection, but to being able to wield various skills pretty well. Beyond that I have been also greatly enjoying the universal ticket I have been having in my pocket, allowing me to easily make myself feeling I do belong to any society grouped around any of those skills, whenever I feel I want to enter that society. I now feel no more dependent on the craving to derive my personal value from the feeling of HAVING to belong.
"It was there that I heard for the first time the term Kalos kagathos or Kalokagathia, which comes from Greek."
When I was studying journalism on the Charles University of Prague, I chose sports as my specialisation, so part of my studies were taking place on the University of Sports. It was there that I heard for the first time the term Kalos kagathos or Kalokagathia, which comes from Greek. Explained in my own words, Kalokagathia stands for the ideal of achieving perfection in all, inner and outer aspects of human being. It has to do with working on oneself to master skills in sports, poetry, philosophy, music, etc..
The Kalokaghatia principle made a great impact on me back then and I have been coming back to it throughout my later life, always feeling attracted and inspired by it, but never consciously making myself hold on it as being a driving force in my life. Nevertheless, looking back through the years, I could now appreciate even more the purpose of touching on different areas of life and picking up various skills from it that have been helping me to expand my being in a more complete and harmonious way. I now also understand that Kalos kagathos is not that much an ideal of perfection, but a principle of coherence of being, where no one aspect of our being has been left unexplored and undeveloped. If not fully, then at least to the highest level we have been honestly able to master.
Therefore I would like to devote my blog to the exploration of various areas and aspects of life that I have ever been attracted by in my life and the ways each of them has been impacting on my completeness as a human being.
In the spirit of exploration and harmony,
Michail