It’s a simple idea, but even just wrapping your head around the idea of “doing something you’ve never done” is huge. And beyond that, it’s a really interesting concept to “want something you’ve never had”. If you’ve never had it, then you don’t know what it’s like, so it sounds like we’re talking about an attempt to move out of our familiar reality, and into unfriendly territory…
To me that almost sounds like insanity, but might it just be creativity, instead? Then what is creativity? Inviting entropy, and then evaluating it after the fact? Processing the results of previously unjustifiable actions? In order to bring about something original (at least in our own eyes, and what else matter?), we need to push ourselves to do something unfamiliar, something we’ve never done. Then we get to look at it and deconstruct it as if we’re just observing the results as a third party. Originality and newness are in the interpretation of a thing. In order to be creative, we need to be willing to be unpredictable, even to ourselves.
That’s the scary part. Throwing ourselves into something foreign and expecting we won’t just make a bigger mess out of it. Beginning with disorder and new concepts, things we don’t even have words for, and then organizing it and compartmentalizing all this new information into a system that lets our lives make sense again. It’s a bit twisted to actively tear apart our very understanding of life - the result of so much loving dedication and time and sacrifice - on nothing but the intention of rebuilding it. For the better? Maybe, but how else would we find out?
This is a thoughtful little poem with what I see as a lot of wishful thinking, but there’s certainly some wisdom here that shouldn’t be ignored.
This line in particular struck me: “I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.”
And this one, even more so: “It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.”
I emphasized the last sentence because I see it as a stark contrast to the rest of the poem, which sings the praises of hope and love and reckless abandon, but the last bit is something I very much agree with. A faithless person may be the only person that can be truly trustworthy. As with anyone else, the basis for their understanding of reality can be questioned to the point where it won’t stand on its own without explanation, but without the arbitrary justification of faith on their side, they’re forced to deal with truth and honesty in a very real way. That is, if they care to follow their lack of faith to its bitter conclusions. It’s a terrifying prospect to lose faith in the beliefs that structure our lives, but nothing can take the place of building oneself from the ground up. The more we can hold ourselves accountable for every single thing we do and think, the more we have to gain in self-respect and genuine fulfillment. The reward is limited only by our tolerance for responsibility.
This is the first video in a series of 6, but I just finished listening to all of them. I highly recommend Alan Watts for reading, but fortunately he’s got a great speaking voice, too! There will be times in this talk that you’ll stop and think “Wow, if it really is that simple, then what does it all mean?” And he’ll tell you.
If anything, I seem to be learning these lessons backwards. The first two continue to elude me… and number five is an ongoing battle. I find myself trying to make the best of wherever I happen to be at the moment, and I’m not one to point out problems when I don’t know how to fix them. Getting through that step would mean making sense of the situation, finding the problems, and then dealing with each in turn. I’m not entirely sure why, but I find that kind of oversimplification to be insulting. It gets things done, but where’s the fun in solving a bunch of easily manageable problems when the legitimacy of whether they’re “solved” rests on settling bigger, more difficult issues? Without a (worthwhile) end in sight, I can’t bring myself to justify a project. And so it seems my place is to be forever at the drawing board. I’m okay with that. Let me take care of the trial and error -once it’s all polished out, I’m happy to hand it off to the people looking for accomplishments to put on their walls.
Slow down… let’s define the steps, then take them one at a time. You have to fail at the first step before you can even hope to fail at the second.
There’s only so many ways to say “make the most of your life - it’s the only one you have”. tumblr has found most of them. They’re fucking everywhere. But when you get numbers like this thrown in your face, it can wake you up from the “I should be happier than I am” hipster garbage and light a fire under you. Your time isn’t necessarily being wasted, but do you have something better to do than read tumblr posts right now?
tumblr is like a bottomless pit of gorgeous pictures and inspirational/sappy little sayings. I could stay here and relay things until the end of time, but I think I’ll go to sleep, instead.
Beauty in the decay of structure/s - something created with a direct intention, in the organic process of becoming something other than its original ideal. Physical or philosophical, it’s all beautiful to me.
And for some reason, I’ve always loved to see refineries. Every bit of them is built in the name of efficiency, but the whole becomes a gorgeous, complicated mess in my eyes: disparate pieces (so many little pieces!) coming together as a singular impression of metal and fire, beaten into submission by aging hulks of industrial machinery. There’s a fragile “human will vs. time” theme here that evokes a kind of sweet sadness for me. From the instant they’re complete, the machines are a monument to human accomplishment, but always in a state of slow disintegration; silently defying our attempts to impose form on our surroundings by falling apart and returning to basic, raw material. More than against nature, ours is a fight against time.
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