You can see yourself as an impregnable castle. Take care of a strong foundation, high walls, and a deep moat.
This approach works as long as the world around you remains like a museum. But once things start moving, frustration is inevitable. The bridge rusts. The wall cracks. Wild hordes appear. There is no peace.
The alternative is to see yourself as a vortex.
A vortex has structure. It has power. It can destroy anything. Yet you cannot grasp it in your hands.
A vortex exists — and it doesn’t. A paradox.
The key is this: a vortex lives only while it remains dynamic. Energy flows in from one side and out through the other. The moment this flow breaks, the vortex disappears.
It maintains its meta-form precisely because it contains no rigid forms.
The Belgian physicist Ilya Prigogine called such open systems “dissipative structures” — systems that exist only as long as they dissipate incoming energy.
Does a vortex have constants? Yes, of course:
tension
renewal
swirling
dissipation
movement
rebalancing
unpredictability
self-organization
So what are the priorities of a vortex if it wants a long life?
Stay open to the outside world.
Never freeze for long in a single form.
Avoid extremes — when the flow of energy is too weak or too strong.
See your instability not as a threat, but as a source of strength.
Sincerely yours,
-Alexander
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