The Symbol for Ceaseless Striving
The idea of Ceaseless Striving is connected With both Oneness and Mindfulness and is an answer to the question what is the meaning, motivation, purpose of life?
Ceaseless striving is based on the general principle of movement. When we stagnate, we suffer. There is no need for traditional motivators or external achievements to feel good about life and oneself, since the process of the movement, while engaged in an activity of ceaseless striving, creates the reward in the form of a pleasurable, possibly even results-driven, process.
The idea for the symbol for Ceaseless Striving is a minimalistic face representation. For the eyes, the infinity sign is used. This reflects the infinite space and time of Oneness and shows the ceaseless striving (without end, infinity) attitude.
Happiness is not a state but a process, a continuous striving. Aristotle defined it as an activity. Marcus Aurelius, an earthier Roman, likened it to wrestling. Or maybe it is both a state and a process. The ancient Greek term, eudaimonia, captures something of both interpretations and translates roughly as flourishing. This is an appealing idea: to be happy is to flourish.
And, like Buddha, Spinoza is often dismissed as a mere seeker of tranquillity – but what he valued most was joy, which he defined as a sense of empowerment created by the understanding mind. But, again as in the teachings of Buddha, understanding is not a passive, final state, but a process requiring ceaseless effort. In another insight prefiguring neurobiology, which defines living organisms as systems for optimizing life conditions, Spinoza suggested that our very nature is to strive. His Latin word for human nature, conatus, means ‘striving’ or ‘endeavour’: ‘The striving by which each thing attempts to persevere in its being is nothing other than the actual essence of the thing.’ And the striving has to be difficult to be valuable: ‘If salvation were readily available and could be attained without great effort, how could it be neglected by almost everyone? All that is excellent is as difficult to attain as it is rare.’
To survive is to strive. The problem is the tendency to strive for the wrong things, especially to emulate those who have found worldly success. The human creature is a search engine of great power and sophistication, but with little idea of how to choose search parameters or evaluate results. So, when misguided striving fails to provide satisfaction, there is a tendency to believe that the alternative must be a rejection of all striving, that the answer is to lie on a Caribbean beach lathered in coconut oil. — Michael Foley, The Age of Absurdity
What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him. — Viktor E. Frankl
