“Nature abhors a vacuum.”
-Aristotle

The mind of man is such that it is always filled with something. If he himself fails to intentionally direct his attention towards worthwhile pursuits and aims, the content of his mind will consume on whatever else is available. It will gnaw its teeth on stale assumptions or pry into the empty lockers of imagination, brewing up fabrications and daydreams. His thoughts will ramble and accidentally knock against ideas that are not only pointless, but actually serve to degenerate the quality of his nature and character.

A man may stand upright and press against the force of gravity. This will build his muscle and allow him to develop in proportion to what it is he wants to achieve or become. Or he can lie on the ground, resisting not by one iota, and let his muscles shrivel to the form of an early grave. So it is with the mind of a man. He can actively fill his inner world with intentionality, strung along always to some plan of action, or leave it idle and open to the doings of a devilish force. And so the downward man will bicker and bite about the trivial and trite.

By this line of thought, we would rank a careerist or worker above the righteous tramps of fashion; those lunatics who believe they are better than the former simply due to wealth, beauty, fame, or any of the inherent blessings of high society. To commit oneself always towards something, and to rise the mind to an upward slope, is the only sanity that can be had amidst the tides of human society. Such men cannot be bothered to flip from one television channel to another, to read the bane material of senseless magazines, or to chatter in circles about gossip and weather. They would grow insane if left with only the nourishment of the completely inane.

Life must be lived like Atlas, where planting and sowing flow in rhythm to the delights of a treasured harvest. Men ought to merit their pleasures, rather than rest on their laurels and soak in laziness, as is often the custom. Of course rarely is a man aware of such sloth, for a little machine inside his mind turns all of reality upside down and justifies reality into a cozy and comfortable fantasy. No man does evil consciously, but only out of ignorance and a sort of slavery to the habits that have come to define him.

Men must do their best and realize that discipline accompanies all virtues. However strange it may seem, it is even discipline that allows men to genuinely relax and truly enjoy themselves. Bliss and ecstasy, those conveyances of grace known to all mystic texts, are indeed explained as the heavenly gifts to those who labour tirelessly. The world goes either up or down, but never remains in one place. If a man’s mind is not occupied with a conscious strain, it wanders by that very fact down a descending plain.