#and temples

I always feel a little jealous when I imagine the Guardians in their temple. Jealous of what? Well. For one thing, you may have noticed that I'm one of those strange people who enjoy meditation. You may also recall that I miss being able to move my body in ways not dissimilar to what a Guardian's training might consist of. So aside from physical health (which actually matters less than you'd think), let me try to explain what it is that I envy.

When I try to meditate, I have no guidance. I have no one to compare experiences with. Instead of being told that now is meditation time, I need to MAKE time for it. I don't have a quiet and comfortable space for this purpose. Meditating for longer than 30 minutes would feel excessive, like I'm wasting time I could be putting to better use, whereas a Guardian acolyte would be praised for it. When I struggle to keep up the habit, there is no one to help me get back on track or identify the cause.

Many of these things also apply to the tiny amount of exercise I do. I'm sure if I were in that kind of environment, I could do much more and would improve faster. Then there's the fact that anytime I overextended myself, I would suffer no negative consequences other than pain if I lived in a place where regular meals were provided and I didn't have to do any physical tasks during recovery. Here in the real world, I still need to cook and clean and buy groceries no matter how I feel. Which in turns makes me feel even worse. And then I can't exercise anymore. Even in hospital, where I DIDN'T have to cook or clean or go shopping often, most of my energy went into groups, appointments, walking to the dining hall that was unfortunately in another building, and so on. There wasn't much left for exercise, and if I was exhausted from an earlier miscalculation, I couldn't very well stay in bed to recover. I had therapies to attend, and as long as it was possible, I attended. An ill or injured Guardian, on the other hand, would probably be advised to take the day off.

So these people get to do all this stuff I wish I could do, but for them it's not a luxury - it's kind of their JOB. How freaking unfair. I try and try to exercise and meditate more because I think it might improve my health, but circumstances make it very difficult. Who knows how much healthier I'd be in a temple!

... Which. Obviously, temples of various kinds do exist in the real world. I recently joked I wanted to "leave civilisation" and become a monk, out of frustration, but really it was only half a joke. If it were possible, I might seriously consider it. Clearly there are reasons it's not actually possible, or as ideal as the fictional version, but I'm just saying. When I was younger, boarding schools always appealed to me for similar reasons. ANY self-contained and clearly structured environment that I heard of or read about, real or fictional, made me think I'd feel better there than I did at home. But currently, temples happen to be optimal. I already thought the same about the Jedi temple before R1 came out, except of course there's that aspect of competition and I'd constantly disagree with the doctrine. Yikes.