rambling non-sequitur.
I've come to realize something this weekend:
1) That while I am bothered by the inherent impermanence of things (as in the world and life in general), I also take vast comfort in it. Knowing nothing is everlasting unhinges me from reality and responsible adulthood, but on the other hand, it also keeps me relatively unhindered by worries (aside from those that spring from my own neurotic insecurities), though this also tends to be a bad thing because most of those worries are rather valid. Then again, because things lack permanence, they must also (to my small mind) lack importance, and I am free to make as many mistakes as happens to happen because it won't make a dent of difference once I am dead. This impermanence allows me the luxury of never having to make up my mind, or if I should choose to do so, rest well in knowing that I can always change it tomorrow.
Nothing is immutable-- not circumstances, not consequences, and not conclusions. Regardless of whether I keep myself open to change, change happens.
2) I don't lead my life, I follow it. Some higher power has written it and I am merely the reader flipping the pages to see where it goes, searching for signs and omens and foreshadowing of future occurrences that sometimes happen and sometimes don't. I'm a player in a game I haven't designed and don't know the rules to, and everything seems to be decided sometimes by the roll of the dice-- that some things happen out of pure luck, some by serendipity, and some by kismet, but it's always kind of hard to tell one from the other from the other and it doesn't matter, anyway, what is caused by which as what happens happens.
3) I'm more enamored by possibilities than I am by actualities-- even if said actualities are the manifestations of said possibilities. That something might happen is far more appealing to me than that something actually happening. Perhaps because reality never quite lives up to idea, or because a majority of the time, I'm never sure when something is happening until it's already happened. So not only am I playing a game that I didn't design and don't know the rules to, but I'm also doing it blindly with only hindsight (in itself a scaled, subjective standard because what I feel tomorrow about something that happened today might not be the same as what I feel the day after) to guide my actions. Never mind that I'm not even sure what the objective of this game is, so I have no idea what I'm supposed to be working towards. Which means I'm constantly hedging my bets based on what I think is supposed to happen (what the "author" of my life is trying to accomplish) but am never really sure about and are not necessarily what I want to happen. (Though being me and knowing what I want are two things that seem to be mutually exclusive.)
So, essentially, I think I might be stuck in a "Choose Your Own Adventure/Ending" novel written by M. Night Shyamalan and it will turn out the cake is in fact a lie and I'm stuck in the Matrix eating sand instead of sandwiches.
I don't believe in the fate of the Greeks that no matter what you do you can't get away from your prescribed destination (poor Oedipus, innocent in his ignorance), but I do believe in fate in the sense of having an ideal place (in time and space) that you can end up in providing you identify and choose correctly the opportunities that present themselves in the course of this journey. But then, as much as I believe in fate and opportunities, I also believe in temptations which might seem like opportunities to get somewhere better but in reality are only feints designed to test one's faith and fidelity. (So if you're a sociopathic social climber, things probably won't end too well.) Which is why I'm so neurotic and unsure because I can't trust myself to know the difference between one and the other.
This lack of confidence in my own judgment and reasoning is pretty troubling, but at the same time, I have to trust my conviction that I can be highly unreasonable and self-deceptive and given to justifying thoughts and actions that I know are not logically correct or practical. Though I'm not always sure what it matters whether I'm being reasonable or unreasonable as the majority of my decisions to act are based on momentary whims, anyway, and I just ride out whatever subsequent consequences they may carry because I'm pretty curious and I'd like to know where this is all going.
A third of the time it doesn't go anywhere. The second third of the time, it ends up somewhere that's more or less unpleasant. And the other third of the time, it ends up where I expected or wanted it to end up, and I feel all smug because I totally called it back in page 12.
Reasonably speaking, such an approach to life will probably mean I'm screwed, but it's worked out well so far and I can't really complain even though I'm still holding out for a do-over. In any case, worse case scenario is that I die, but then, that's kind of a given. I figure, if my life is a Choose Your Own Ending novel, and all the endings are "You are dead." then what does it matter if I hit it on page 35 instead of 1559? Yes, it might have been nice to get as far as that and see what juicy fun thing happened on page 198, but, unfortunately, there are no spoilers for this story, and by that point, I'm dead and can't miss anything.
So. In short, things are good, things are fine, things are as they should be. Here's a block of blue that is a snapshot of the sky I took a couple of days ago.
Isn't it pretty? Before I decided my favorite color was green (as in that earthy, sage-ish kind of green), my favorite color was this blue exactly. Though it's kind of creepy how you can't really tell that this is a picture of a patch of sky and not just like, a random blue tile or something. But maybe that's why it's kind of fascinating.
Really though, my facebook picture was just kind of out of season with the snow. I need a better spring-time picture... I thought I had one, but it turned out to be fairly ugly. So it shall be this blue until I get something more recognizable... Though I might decide I'd like to track the progression of blues the sky takes on as spring turns to summer turns to fall up until winter when it is gray. And I totally just came up with that idea like, just right now.
Speaking of out of season, this layout is in need of some spring-ing up. And you so did not see this twist coming. (To be fair, neither did I.)
PS: It occurs to me that I have tags for summer, fall, and winter, but not one for spring. I should get on that before the season's completely over. Hello, May.
1) That while I am bothered by the inherent impermanence of things (as in the world and life in general), I also take vast comfort in it. Knowing nothing is everlasting unhinges me from reality and responsible adulthood, but on the other hand, it also keeps me relatively unhindered by worries (aside from those that spring from my own neurotic insecurities), though this also tends to be a bad thing because most of those worries are rather valid. Then again, because things lack permanence, they must also (to my small mind) lack importance, and I am free to make as many mistakes as happens to happen because it won't make a dent of difference once I am dead. This impermanence allows me the luxury of never having to make up my mind, or if I should choose to do so, rest well in knowing that I can always change it tomorrow.
Nothing is immutable-- not circumstances, not consequences, and not conclusions. Regardless of whether I keep myself open to change, change happens.
2) I don't lead my life, I follow it. Some higher power has written it and I am merely the reader flipping the pages to see where it goes, searching for signs and omens and foreshadowing of future occurrences that sometimes happen and sometimes don't. I'm a player in a game I haven't designed and don't know the rules to, and everything seems to be decided sometimes by the roll of the dice-- that some things happen out of pure luck, some by serendipity, and some by kismet, but it's always kind of hard to tell one from the other from the other and it doesn't matter, anyway, what is caused by which as what happens happens.
3) I'm more enamored by possibilities than I am by actualities-- even if said actualities are the manifestations of said possibilities. That something might happen is far more appealing to me than that something actually happening. Perhaps because reality never quite lives up to idea, or because a majority of the time, I'm never sure when something is happening until it's already happened. So not only am I playing a game that I didn't design and don't know the rules to, but I'm also doing it blindly with only hindsight (in itself a scaled, subjective standard because what I feel tomorrow about something that happened today might not be the same as what I feel the day after) to guide my actions. Never mind that I'm not even sure what the objective of this game is, so I have no idea what I'm supposed to be working towards. Which means I'm constantly hedging my bets based on what I think is supposed to happen (what the "author" of my life is trying to accomplish) but am never really sure about and are not necessarily what I want to happen. (Though being me and knowing what I want are two things that seem to be mutually exclusive.)
So, essentially, I think I might be stuck in a "Choose Your Own Adventure/Ending" novel written by M. Night Shyamalan and it will turn out the cake is in fact a lie and I'm stuck in the Matrix eating sand instead of sandwiches.
I don't believe in the fate of the Greeks that no matter what you do you can't get away from your prescribed destination (poor Oedipus, innocent in his ignorance), but I do believe in fate in the sense of having an ideal place (in time and space) that you can end up in providing you identify and choose correctly the opportunities that present themselves in the course of this journey. But then, as much as I believe in fate and opportunities, I also believe in temptations which might seem like opportunities to get somewhere better but in reality are only feints designed to test one's faith and fidelity. (So if you're a sociopathic social climber, things probably won't end too well.) Which is why I'm so neurotic and unsure because I can't trust myself to know the difference between one and the other.
This lack of confidence in my own judgment and reasoning is pretty troubling, but at the same time, I have to trust my conviction that I can be highly unreasonable and self-deceptive and given to justifying thoughts and actions that I know are not logically correct or practical. Though I'm not always sure what it matters whether I'm being reasonable or unreasonable as the majority of my decisions to act are based on momentary whims, anyway, and I just ride out whatever subsequent consequences they may carry because I'm pretty curious and I'd like to know where this is all going.
A third of the time it doesn't go anywhere. The second third of the time, it ends up somewhere that's more or less unpleasant. And the other third of the time, it ends up where I expected or wanted it to end up, and I feel all smug because I totally called it back in page 12.
Reasonably speaking, such an approach to life will probably mean I'm screwed, but it's worked out well so far and I can't really complain even though I'm still holding out for a do-over. In any case, worse case scenario is that I die, but then, that's kind of a given. I figure, if my life is a Choose Your Own Ending novel, and all the endings are "You are dead." then what does it matter if I hit it on page 35 instead of 1559? Yes, it might have been nice to get as far as that and see what juicy fun thing happened on page 198, but, unfortunately, there are no spoilers for this story, and by that point, I'm dead and can't miss anything.
So. In short, things are good, things are fine, things are as they should be. Here's a block of blue that is a snapshot of the sky I took a couple of days ago.
Isn't it pretty? Before I decided my favorite color was green (as in that earthy, sage-ish kind of green), my favorite color was this blue exactly. Though it's kind of creepy how you can't really tell that this is a picture of a patch of sky and not just like, a random blue tile or something. But maybe that's why it's kind of fascinating.
Really though, my facebook picture was just kind of out of season with the snow. I need a better spring-time picture... I thought I had one, but it turned out to be fairly ugly. So it shall be this blue until I get something more recognizable... Though I might decide I'd like to track the progression of blues the sky takes on as spring turns to summer turns to fall up until winter when it is gray. And I totally just came up with that idea like, just right now.
Speaking of out of season, this layout is in need of some spring-ing up. And you so did not see this twist coming. (To be fair, neither did I.)
PS: It occurs to me that I have tags for summer, fall, and winter, but not one for spring. I should get on that before the season's completely over. Hello, May.