I like intensity. 

When there is space, we spread our lives out, perhaps with abandon. Our dreams and aspirations enjoy floating or flying, depending on their nature. Boundaries are softly breached, and depths are gently probed. Our body’s energies experience the delightful and ephemeral amplification of ‘extensivity’.  

After a while, however, I feel abandoned in all that space. My energy wants to attach to that which stabilizes it, and which serves as an attractor (a systems science term) for like-minded energies. I am happy to expand beyond boundaries for a while, but the desire for a new and potentially mind-expanding boundary replaces it. When I reach a new boundary, I have a chance to make new connections that immediately lead to channels for energy to flow in particular directions. The constraints of these new connections, then, become opportunities to relate to existing connections that are new to me. And my delight changes from extension to intension, from expansion to connection, from reaching out to reaching into a new and perhaps densely occupied realm. Perhaps the drive to wander the sea is to reach a new shore.    

After freedom to roam, constraints become compelling and attractive. Constraints provide opportunities to see how known things are connected – and my mind becomes intent on finding links between both close and distant potential relations. Once found, I want to use this new knowledge to do my favorite thing which is to create structures. I identify with the wasp that constructs a hive on the porch roof, or the mole that digs a network of channels under the garden, or the spider that cannot help but create a web in the corner of the garage.   

Nature is parsimonious, reusing the same elegant structures again and again over time. But to see those structures work, we must pause and retrace paths, store the map of those paths, reflect on those paths– and be a bit intense about that process. Without constraints, it is unlikely that we will see these elegant structures. With effective constraints, however, we can make connections that are… worth developing. 

With constraints of time, we prioritize.

With constraints of space, we conserve.

With constraints on mental space, we organize. 

With constraints on emotional energy, we love. 

A constraint might be decision about resources; a mental puzzle about how things work; a question from an authority who wants an answer; a neighbor who needs support; a potential or realized danger that needs addressing; a future opportunity that calls for a plan; or a new friend who invites a visit. Who knows? What I do know is that when I feel a cloud of unchanneled transcendent chaos form within me, I hope that I can constrain it to become dense and fraught with substance.