It's a potent thought, that the more we think the more undermined we become because the things we most often think about are out of reach and therefore impossible to resolve. Of course it presumes 'we think' so as to understand and by understanding will have gained knowledge from which we can build further understanding. The concept that understanding is a basic function in life is part of our route into it. We are schooled to pick up the concepts our tribe or our environment wishes us to have to be a useful member. We are coached to be dutiful citizens but in being dutiful comes the assumption that someone else got it right in the first place.
If we believe our thoughts are uniquely ours how can we be so coopted by others. Surely the path we took to our own understanding is the only important conclusion since it's ours.
Our lives are a succession of optimistic awakenings, things to do and people to meet but in amongst all this conformity lies our self opinion, not only of the others we meet but of ourselves. This bubble of 'self' with its prejudice and optimistic/pessimistic self awareness which runs through everything we do, is its own filter of approval, our own self centred image of right and wrong, good and bad.
If the world we colour in with our own beliefs was actually so different when seen through the the eyes of the guy standing next to me it would make a mockery of my own surety whilst at the same time, adding myriads of other possibilities to the one I hold. Of course it could be a minefield of obfuscation, a miscellany of tastes, an ideological mismatch which would drive us mad. Far better to be wrong in our own wonderland of fixed images and assumptions, assumptions based on assumptions, for which we mark those assumptions as facts, gleaned from a lifetime of thinking.
If we classify our lives as a habit, an absurdity of 'not knowns' then living too becomes absurd in the context we think of as living. The purpose and our achievements are all illusory, they are chance happenings since in so far as we believe we have a hand in our future clearly this is a delusion. From being knocked down by a No 95 bus on our way to work to waking up one morning with a severe pain in the chest or hearing in the morning you have been fired and our future plans grind to a halt, it all depend on things outside our control and when you think of it, what is in our control. The platform we build which gives us so much comfort is a platform based on what we have read about others and should bare as little consideration as we have of our knowledge of those people.
Our lives then are a day by day event which we embellish with stories we tell ourselves. A good storyteller will come up with something glamorous, a bad one will have nothing to add to the reality of our reality.
"Into this universe and why not knowing, nor whence like water willy-nilly flowing. And out of it as wind along the waste I know not wither willy-nilly blowing".
"The worldly hopes men set their hearts upon turns ashes - or it prospers and anon like snow upon the earths dusty face, lighting a little hour or two is gone"
Sent from my iPad
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