For me, the process seems more like book devouring than reading--trying to inhale culture, though I couldn't say to what end. Am I looking for something? Or are the words just a salve for a creative wound that I can't seem to find a way to heal? Whatever the case, the books have made things bearable lately--a place where my imagination can hide while my reality swirls along around me in colors that I'm not sure I like--too lazy to pick up the pieces when what I want isn't what I have.
There's always a real sense that what I want is something I will never have, but when I ask myself what I really want, I'm never sure I'm happy with the answers that I give myself--as if every answer holds a bit of a lie within it--some ideal that isn't quite my own, though "my own" isn't something I know how to define, really.
And then my role-play.... I get frustrated when John tells me that my characters don't really make sense--that the things that I think they're thinking aren't things that they should think--or that they don't have any real basis for thinking as they do--as if people were rational and didn't ascribe patterns to things in spite of, or because of, events, and people, and things that they've encountered. So, I'm left feeling that my characters are fake, too--not really any part of myself entwined with them. And so if my characters aren't rationally conceived, then is there anything at all rational about my own thoughts and perceptions? Do I think the wrong way? See things in the wrong light? Is my ability to judge something skewed in such a way that no one can really understand it?
And I hate those questions--as though trying to answer them is futile--the act of questioning made doubly futile by the inability to really grasp the answers. After all, what does it matter if who I am as a person doesn't make sense? It isn't as though I can simply put forty years of life behind me and start over.
"Now I will make sense."
Life doesn't work that way. And that which I have meta-gamed couldn't possibly be a rational thought for a character that is based around the mind of a person that makes no sense.
It's like those court cases, where the jury is told to disregard something--how do you really disregard it? How do you tell your mind to not place that thought, image, or idea outside the realm of possibilities when it makes sense in the larger picture of things? It's there. It's influenced you. There's no turning back from it.
I suppose, if you wanted to make a chart, perhaps--forcing your mind to work through something without the basic premises that you all ready hold--if you'd been trained in how to do that--it would be easier. John is very good at convincing me that this is what a good philosophy degree teaches you--how to set aside personal ideas, adopt someone else's ideas, and then see how they can get to the conclusions that they've made by following their train of thought.
But I don't think thoughts are that easy to follow, really. We're influenced, as I've said, by the things that we encounter. And how can you understand those millions of encounters that another person has had in order to reach the conclusions that they've made?
So everything falls to pieces for me--certain that I can never really understand something in the same way that everyone else will understand it. I've seen it happen quite a bit lately--the more I'm around other people; we ascribe meaning to things, and if you share that meaning, then you are able to share in a part of that collective thought. But if you don't....
Thinking back on all these words, I want to erase them. They're wasted words, because even though I've considered them, there isn't a conclusion. People are complicated. Life isn't easy. Thinking about everything doesn't change anything. I am where I am because I made choices--I acted--certain that the future is far too chaotic to try and predict. So the moment matters, but how do you plan for something in the future? If you put a plan in motion, will it happen as you envision it? I always think it won't. I imagine that if you spend the time to learn everything you need to ensure that the plan will occur as you envision it, by the time you put the plan in motion, enough will have changed from what you learned that the plan will all ready be flawed. A futile vision. A futile plan. So what's the point, really?
A plan half-conceived....
There are people who say that humanity's greatest asset is its adaptability--to change things as needed in order to see something through to the end. Maybe that's what makes a great plan or a great vision something that can be shared--even years later.
But it makes me wonder about the idea of purity.... Truth....
There is nothing that I do that hasn't been influenced by a million other things. Nothing is pure, and my truths are limited. And I have adapted to this reality. But I keep looking for that something that is pure--that is truth. Some people turn to a god for that. Others turn to science. I turn to words, knowing their flawed nature, their many connotations--their false hope.
But what else is there? These moments ticking by? This sense of emptiness? This lack of purpose?
And so we fill them with meanings--or try to.And I try not to think about it, because this is what happens--the conclusion lacking, the desire not to look beyond the undoubtedly flawed premises that bound my life (or the certainty that I couldn't even if I wanted to,) the desire to create a right and a wrong, or the desire to hide from meanings--my own and others', so that I don't have to make a decision.... So that I can stop asking questions. And just be. And not try to make sense,....
Maybe that's why I read the books. Maybe that's why I listen. Other people have created a vision of the world; it's been adapted. It's been embraced. And understanding why lurks in the back of my mind, but I don't listen to it. It leads to posts like this--futile, pointless, ...erasable.
But I'm going to leave this one here. Maybe someone can explain to me the way they understand it, and maybe then I'll have a better vision of me than the one I do now. Maybe with enough half-seen images, I'll be able to construct a vision of my own.
I'm not going to hold my breath, though.
"Thinking about everything doesn't change anything." I disagree. Plato's allegory of a cave (in which he describes the shadows made by the campfire and people on the caves of the wall) shows us that if we examine things, we might begin to get a different picture. It won't be a correct one until we have totally examined the situation from other angles And even considered that it isn't what we first thought it was. That is what you are doing with your reading and with this post, I think. Eventually, you might figure out that the shadows are not the real picture. You will never figure it out without inhaling as much writing as you are doing. In doing that, you do actually change your existence and your reality!
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