Cultivating a Vibe

A story about collection

You might divide everything in life into two categories: utility and beauty. These aren’t mutually exclusive, of course—nearly anything could be both: a shirt, a building, a relationship—the difference comes down to intention. And what directs our path through life more than intention?

The Cultural Tutor perfectly sums up why beauty matters: “what’s the danger of a world without beauty?” they ask. “If everything is simply functional, simply useful, then life becomes a mere conveyor belt. It turn humans into machines of consumption, labour, & reproduction. Aren’t we more than that?”

Yeah, I hope so. But let’s take a few minutes here and get into this. What does beauty really mean? For us as individuals. For the world all around. How do we recognize it? Cultivate it? Attract it?

To clear the air, looks have nothing to do with this. Beauty derives from an unseeable place, but not unknowable—we’re used to taking in the world visually, but since beauty rises from the depths we have to abandon our eyes . . . and feel it.

Enter, the vibe.

Everything around us is literally vibrating. As we’ve discussed before, that’s why you feel the difference when you sit in an IKEA chair versus something handcrafted. You may be saying, well, a chair is a chair—but even in the most strictly utilitarian worldview, the quality is different. And though you may justify this through modes of mass production, attention to detail, etc. etc., the difference is actually in the consciousness behind it.

Some would say this consciousness inhabits everything, regardless of sentience. Alan Watts used to ring a bell during his lectures, explaining that even this is a rudimentary form of consciousness. And what is real consciousness but understanding the reason behind something, its intention, its purpose?

The purpose of a bell is to ring. Simple enough. The purpose of a human, though, is a hell of a lot more complex. Which is why when it comes to meeting people, sometimes you feel their vibe and sometimes you don’t.

An old friend describes it like this: every one of us operates on our own wavelength. When we meet each other these wavelengths interact, either amplifying or diminishing one another. In the worst cases, the wavelengths cancel each other out, flatlining completely. I’m sure we’ve all tried to force these kinds of relationships—but forget it, move on, there’s nothing there. On occasion, however, these wavelengths coalesce and amplify and within a few minutes it might feel like you’ve known each other forever. (Who knows, maybe you have?)

This is hard science, not some woo woo bullshit. Graph out a vibration and what do you get . . . a wavelength. And if you accept that, then what is our life but a plotted collection of every vibration we’ve surrounded ourselves with?

Our own vibe comes from deep in the lifeforce—you might call that our personality—but soon it’s shaped by every person in our life; and not only every person, but everything. Each item added to and subtracted from the mix affects it. The complexity is vast. Cultivating a vibe means curating the collection of relationships, experiences and objects around you, continuously choosing which to keep in the milieu and which to discard.

The famed UCLA basketball coach John Wooden once said: “five years from now, you’re the same person except for the people you’ve met and the books you’ve read.”

I say the more things in your collection the better. Meet more people, read more books, surround yourself with more as to craft your vibe into exactly who you want to be. There’s a resiliency to such maximalism, a system reinforced by not putting too much stock into any one aspect. It creates a healthy ecosystem: if you decide to remove something from the mix, the other vibes repair the rift; and if you add something, it won’t overshadow all the rest.

In this way you can try things, experiment, explore, without fear of any misstep having too great an impact. So liberate yourself in a diverse collection of vibes—don’t succumb to the dangers of minimalism. Perhaps there is a life changing magic to tidying up, but such action ought to come with a word of caution. Taken too far, consolidation toward only the most essential veers awfully close to utilitarianism. For beauty to survive in that stark environment is a tall order, requiring a singular vibe that can stand entirely on its own.

That’s not me. Nor is it most people I know. For us it’s about finding beauty out there in the world, bringing home bits and pieces and adding them to the collection. Then enjoying the buzz.

-Martin