Day 58

I do fear, sometimes, that the act of pondering aloud has become a cathartic experience and nothing more. It is hard in this town to find a diversity of thought, because we've all been raised in very similar ways with the same norms, experiences, and conventions. I find that the mightiest opinions of some of the the twentysomethings I know are so damningly narrow that they cannot possibly stand to the slightest breeze of doubt.

Often the biggest theory is the thinnest. Our shadows grow long and starved moments before they disappear under the sunset. The natural world has cursed us with its indifference, its vaccuum of conscience in which deeds neither good nor evil subsist. I find the urge to view our species of conscious and conscientious beings as alien. It is as though the world we inhabit was never intended for us to inhabit it.

In short, this town is a box. This country, political system, individualistic ideology, humanist dogma, faux rebellion against imagined authority; it is all a box floating along countless boxes, meekly bumping its way down time's river. I feel stuck inside it, while people say that we're on the outside; that we're on the valley's crest, looking down upon the river like gods.

Sometimes I feel a bump, if only slight. And sometimes, in moments of solitude, I cannot avoid the tingling suspicion that a waterfall approaches.

Comments

Miss Vanessa said…
Pondering aloud and criticizing the world around us is as inevitable as the heart beating. I agree that the thoughts that pass through peoples' minds in a given community are likely to have similarities. After all, we are to a large degree products of our surroundings. But, articulating what passes through our minds when we think in solitude, while reading a book, or while listening to music should not be discarded or fought back on these grounds. What should be happening, however, is a practice of reflecting on our own thoughts as they ponder the world around. People should go beyond just thinking about things. They should think more about the way they are thinking, such as the paradigms that shape their outlook. You do a great job of this in many of your entries and I hope that more people take some time in their pondering to do so.
9:01 PM
Anonymous said…
I agree.

Flee from the box.
You're meant for bigger and brighter things, and it'd be folly to think that they'd all be found convienantly for you here.
- Vicky
10:59 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 212

It is very true that the best people in the world at any discipline, skill, sport, instrument (etc). are never particularly well-rounded people. There should be, as my grandma mentioned over dinner last night, a competition for "well-roundedness" with international competitors. In order to win you'd have to be physically capable, perhaps musical and mathematical, moral and charitable, very learned, and so forth. And that's the interesting thing, the jacks of all trades get absolutely no attention from the peanut gallery. But on the contrary, they typically have the healthiest and happiest and most fulfilling of lives. I can't tell you how many young pianists I've met, for whom piano was the sole self-measure of pride and value. And, like all people who have themselves judged for one thing, they are utterly miserable, feeling highs and lows that appear and fade as quickly as do the passing opinions of strangers. --- On a tangent: some of the most miserable girl...
Read more

Day 168

You hear non-religious people say it all the time: "If only there was a God! That would honestly be great, if there was a supreme moral arbier in the universe looking out for my every action and running the universe with me in mind. It's really too bad there isn't." I used to say that, until I came across a few authors who vehemently claim that such a wish is, in reality, a wish for slavery. When we ask for the comfort of a god (or fantasize for it anyway) were asking for a kind of absolution that only the slave can have. And the price for that is extremely high. And still, there times when I do wish I were this sort of slave, though I no longer say so with a smile.
Read more