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mindset

Marcelo Baldin
In MIND

Create. Share. Yield.

A Meaningful Life

Derek Sivers said “Die Empty” (which is actually a book by Todd Henry).^1
Bill Perkins has a book named “Die with Zero”.^2
Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf coined the motto “Preach the gospel, die, and be forgotten,” a pietist way of living for missionaries. ^3

Todd aimed to live fully and create everything possible with his lifetime, being productive. Perkins’ book aims to help people enjoy their earnings rather than let them sit idle as useless cash. However, Nikolaus’ message was to live for a cause that extends beyond one’s life.

What can we achieve if we combine all of them? A meaningful life. Maybe a bit of what Viktor Frankl’s^4 work was about, but it’s really what the Bible has been preaching all along.

Let’s do a mental exercise. For example:

1. Die Empty – Living Fully & Using Your Gifts

These verses encourage pouring out your talents, energy, and life for God’s purposes:

  • 2 Timothy 4:6-7 – “For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”
  • Ephesians 2:10 – “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
  • Matthew 25:14-30 (Parable of the Talents) – calls us to invest what’s entrusted to us, not to bury it.
  • John 9:4 – “As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work.”

2. Die with Zero – Enjoying & Sharing God’s Provision

Scripture teaches that blessings are meant to be enjoyed and shared generously, not hoarded:

  • Ecclesiastes 3:12-13 – “I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God.”
  • 1 Timothy 6:17-18 – “Command those who are rich…to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.”
  • Luke 12:33-34 – “Sell your possessions and give to the poor…For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
  • Proverbs 11:24-25 – “One gives freely, yet grows all the richer; another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want. Whoever brings blessing will be enriched, and one who waters will himself be watered.”

3. Be Forgotten – Living for God’s Glory, Not Our Fame

These verses remind us that the goal is to glorify God, not ourselves:

  • John 3:30 – “He must increase, but I must decrease.”
  • Galatians 6:14 – “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ…”
  • Matthew 6:1-4 – “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them…your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”
  • Psalm 115:1 – “Not to us, Lord, not to us but to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness.”
  • Isaiah 40:8 – “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.”

What if we blended these three ideas into a single vision for living?

  • Die Empty – exhaust your gifts, leave nothing undone that your heart calls you to create.
  • Die with Zero – savor your resources while you’re alive; don’t hoard what could have been joy or generosity.
  • Be Forgotten – don’t cling to legacy or fame; let your life point to something larger than yourself.

Together, they outline a counter-cultural but liberating path:
Live fully, give fully, and release the need to be remembered.
You pour out your talents and your wealth for meaningful work and for people you love, and you do it in service of something transcendent—whether that’s your faith, humanity, or the next generation.

This aligns with Viktor Frankl’s insight that humans thrive when a purpose beyond pleasure or power guides their lives. It’s also ancient wisdom echoed in Scripture: “Whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.”

A possible summary mantra could be:

Create what only you can create.
Share what you have while you can.
Then step aside so the story isn’t about you.

That’s a life well-spent—productive, joyful, and meaningful, all at once.

Marcelo Baldin
In AESTHETICS

Cycles of Aesthetics

From time to time, society turns to the past to draw new impulses from it. This occurs because, at certain moments, the present no longer provides inspiration or meaningful prospects for the future. When the contemporary world appears stagnant or saturated, we return to what has already proven to hold vigor and significance.

Such movements arise periodically. The avant-garde often reaches a point of saturation: its creative energy begins to wear thin, and the dominant aesthetic starts to feel excessive or even destructive. While this does not necessarily lead to “social collapse,” there is a threshold of cultural rupture beyond which cycles of revisitation and renewal emerge.

These revivals are sometimes dismissed by the intellectual elite as mere “nostalgia.” Yet they are not simply nostalgic; rather, they represent efforts to rebuild upon foundations that once proved fruitful, now reshaped with new techniques and contexts. Such movements act as attempts to recalibrate the sensibility of an age and tend to spread most visibly through the arts. The Renaissance, Classicism, Romanticism, and others were each driven by reflection on the paths already taken and by the search for both aesthetic and existential adjustment.

Before the internet, these processes unfolded slowly, often taking decades to consolidate and disseminate. Today, however, we witness constant micro-revolutions, which appear to be converging toward a larger revision of the Zeitgeist. The past few decades have brought intense disruptions across multiple fields, reflected in a fragmented and chaotic aesthetic landscape. The pursuit of the sublime, once a guiding force in the arts, has to some extent been replaced by a culture of shock. The accelerated flow of information challenges human capacities for assimilation, generating a kind of stress that verges on incompatibility with our nature.

In response, a quieter movement has begun to take shape—one oriented toward simplicity, tranquility, and reconnection with what endures. It manifests in social and intellectual practices that resist both rampant consumerism and rigid ideological demands. Frequently labeled as conservatism, this impulse in fact acquires an avant-garde quality within the current context. Wearied by impositions, many are once again seeking the sublime—through a kind of futuristic revival that combines critiques of technology with a retreat from mass-produced pop culture.

From Amusing Ourselves to Death (Neil Postman, 1985) to Digital Minimalism (Cal Newport, 2019), calls for a more frugal and meaningful life have multiplied. Yet this impulse coexists with opposing forces that invest in the bizarre and the ephemeral. We thus live in tension between utopias and dystopias, both reflected in contemporary aesthetics. The key question is what kind of fruits each tendency will ultimately bear.

In the end, aesthetics divide into two broad orientations: those that seek only the fleeting instant and those that strive for the perennial. Their results, of course, are very different. Over the long term, some currents will endure as transformative, while others will be remembered merely as passing phases—like the Lisztomania of the nineteenth century.

Marcelo Baldin
In MIND

Signal to Noise

The most valuable thing I’ve gained from stepping away from social media is this: We are constantly bombarded by noise. It clouds our thoughts, weakens our attention, and pushes us toward the average — the easiest opinions, the quickest reactions, the loudest takes. In that flux, clarity is rare, and poor decisions become routine.

Some contemporary composers, as well as cultural thinkers more broadly, suggest that noise can be embraced and even enjoyed. But that can only be true if there’s a cognitive pattern behind it — something that offers structure, something we can think with. Without that, there is no line of thought to follow. Noise, in this sense, is anything that resists contemplation.

Noise is the overflow of misinformation. It’s not just distortion — distraction, excess, and the dilution of meaning. It floods the mind with stimuli but offers no shape, direction, or pause for reflection.

Unless we train ourselves to listen through the noise, to filter and focus, we risk becoming passive receivers. We hear everything, yet absorb nothing. In a world saturated with sound and signal, the ability to truly listen may be the most essential discipline we can cultivate.

Marcelo Baldin
In MIND

Silence

“Silence is the language of God. All else is poor translation.” – misattributed to Ludwig van Beethoven.

To get inspired, we must find a way to be quiet. Countless people retreat to reflect and recover. Lent is an ideal time to do it. Beethoven took long walks in nature to develop musical ideas. Claude Debussy – Found inspiration in the quiet contemplation of nature. Henry David Thoreau – Lived in solitude at Walden Pond to connect with deeper insights. Max Richter – Uses silence and minimalism as core elements in his music, often retreating into solitude for composition. Arvo Pärt – Known for his “tintinnabuli” style, he spent years in near silence before returning to composition. Björk – Frequently isolates herself in nature for inspiration, especially in Iceland’s quiet landscapes.

Lamentations 3:26 🤫

Marcelo Baldin
In MIND

Pain

Pain reminds us that we have a limited and finite body, but it should also remind us that we are not our body; we only have a body. We are spirits, but if we think we are only a body, we will enter into continuous despair, suffocated by materialism, immediacy, and the anguish of avoiding discomfort. The awareness of who we are frees us from this finitude.

Once we are free of this conception of finitude, we can truly aspire to things greater than us. This can be reflected in the Zeitgeist; those who aim for trends are often stuck in their immediacy, whereas those who strive for superior aesthetics create timeless art, societal, or scientific pieces. This thought frees us from thinking only about our egos and allows us to live as a whole. Struggling to create is part of the process; it shouldn’t be avoided.