Weekly Technetic #32: Return

I have returned. Older and wiser, the saying goes, but I often only feel the first of those.

After my brief vacation, I wanted to take this opportunity to look at my own journey into technetism, and how I'm trying to live the technetic life that I'm offering to all of you. To start, I'll take each of the Seven Keys and show what I'm doing to follow their guidance. Call it reflection, if you will.

The First Key is almost tautological, one would think. Yet there is hidden depth there, and I'm still trying to find all of it. I do believe in human progress, hard as that can be these days. I believe that all of us have the power to search for eudaemonia. That said, I also believe that far too many people, even if they knew what it was, wouldn't want it. But that's their problem, not mine.

My partner praises me for my open-mindedness, while my boss is often ready to lend a hand when he notices I'm not being as positive as usual. So my search for the Second Key is mostly successful, if you take the opinion of those I trust. For myself, I know I could do better, and I'm always looking out for new things to learn, new things to build.

Humanity remains my one true focus. In the past few weeks, I've been able to see a brighter future for myself, one that might—assuming a lot of things go just right—lead to a family of my own one day. Thus, I can start to think about how I would approach the first half of the Third Key, something I haven't considered much at all until now. As for the "species" part, even my work manages to get into that somewhat.

The Fourth Key, that of knowledge, had already found its way into my life long ago. Indeed, it's one of the reasons I created the technetic path in the first place, because I was tired of seeing the world dumbed down. I never want to stop learning, but now I have people willing to receive my wisdom, so I can begin to increase the sum total of human knowledge even after I am gone.

With all the upheaval in my life lately, I haven't given much heed to the Fifth Key. Arts and crafts tend to fall by the wayside when you're dealing with a full-time job and a budding relationship. But I've been thinking about things to create, and I'm trying to get everything else to a place where I'm able to devote more time to creating them. On top of that, I've been urging others to find creative hobbies, and some of that seems to be working.

Sharing requires both giver and receiver. Now that I have the latter, I truly feel happier. That's not only because of the love I have for my partner, but for the sheer joy I feel when she takes an interest in something I say, a story I tell, or a work I've created. The Sixth Key, trite as it may seem at first glance, really deserves its place in the tenets of technetism.

Finally, the Seventh Key, that of spirituality, remains my sticking point. I am searching for truth, yet I sometimes feel I'm farther from it than ever. Most of those closest to me believe in things I often can't understand. On a few occasions, we've discussed them, and it's as if we're speaking two different languages. Of all the Keys, this is the one I'm having the most trouble with. It's there for a reason, though, because humans are not mere automata. I can accept that, even if I can't comprehend the alternative.

But I'll keep trying for all of them, and I'll keep you up to date on my progress. I'd love to see you do the same. This is a road we can walk at the same time, albeit not together. We can learn from one another, then use that knowledge to find our own truth. That's the technetic way.