the day to day of a professional actor in the San Francisco Bay Area

mostly the day to day of a professional actor in the San Francisco Bay Area, but also the home of the Counting Actors Project

Monday, August 27, 2012

Entelechy

So I've just learned about this word/concept and it's been making me stagger a bit.

It's Greek in origin, and the Greek word means something like 'having a goal' or 'creating completion'

Aristotle uses it when talking about plants and seeds.  It's the essence of what's in a seed that makes it grow into the right kind of plant - the essential thing that makes a tomato seed grow a tomato plant or a pumpkin seed a pumpkin vine.  In other words, the entelechy of the acorn is an oak tree, the entelechy of a caterpillar is a butterfly and so on.

It's a fantastic word that holds in it the concepts of soul, potential, growth, transformation, self-actualization, possibility.  It's a way to name one's purpose and reason for being.

What kind of oak tree is already there, waiting for me to manifest it?

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