My views on begleri as a philosophical point:
- It's inexpensive so anyone can get involved. And if they can't, but want to, it should be the community's obligation to offer a cheap set to get people started. It's such a small price to pay to have someone else potentially join the community and increase the overall happiness of that person, or other qualities I'll mention below.
- Begleri inspires a few qualities in people that I've seen.
- Determination to learn a new skill, a new trick, or learn something tangentially related (such as video editing).
- Sense of community. I've seen a bunch of people post about how welcoming and positive the begleri community is when compared to other skilltoy communities. In general, I've seen it be a lot more positive that the vast majority of online communities that I've been a part of, period.
- Happiness/pride/accomplishment. This goes along with learning a new skill, because who isn't proud of showing off when they've learned a new trick? It's a great feeling to finally accomplish hitting a new trick and incorporating it into your flow.
- Money management. This is a weird one, but for me, it helped me relearn the value of a dollar. I used to collect every single set I could find. I was dropping a lot of money of new beads every week. When I realized what was happening, that I was thinking of my bank account in terms of numbers instead of value, I stopped buying every set that came out. It's been a few months now and I don't regret doing that at all. It's helped me start saving for a house and not saving for new bead releases, which, as much as I love begleri, life should always come first.
- Easy easy to practice. Whether you sling in the car on the way home (as a passenger. Please don't sling and drive.), in bed before you go to sleep, or you're bored in study hall, the small space that begleri requires makes it super accessible, as opposed to yoyo or balisong. Yoyo requires a bit more space and balisong is illegal in a lot of places. I've heard stories of people taking beads in airplanes even.
- When I'm with my beads or researching beads, I feel good. It's my passion to learn ever more about begleri and to document the beads and other stuff relating to modern begleri culture.
I guess this was more of a post on why I like begleri rather than how I feel about it philosophically. I have a philosophical approach to begleri that I struggle to put into words. Here's a few points I have about that:
- No one begleri set is inherently better than another. We as people have preferences on what we like, so we may like a set more than another, but beads are just beads. They're equal in their beadiness. The beads don't battle to be better than one another. Beads are designed so that people will like them more than others, not to make beads better than others.
- The beads don't care. They don't care if you're the greatest slinger alive or if you can't hit a wrap. They don't care if you drop them off a cliff or if you keep them on a cushion in a display case. They're there for you to use however you will enjoy them most.
- Enjoy yourself. Enjoying yourself doesn't mean that you can't be upset or angry, such as when you're pursuing a new trick but can't hit it yet, but the end result should be a better happier you. Don't give up on learning that trick. You'll be better in the end.
Those are a lot of my thoughts on the subject. I may come back and update this post every so often.