Tonight I have no urge to do anything. I just want to put everything off until later. If I could, I would put all of life on pause. Since I am deprived of that particular talent, I have to settle for being 'unhealthily' good at procrastination. I don't know why my severe lack of motivation is worse these days, but I do know the weather is not helping. I went down to the Cape for a night, and it was so beautiful I did not know what to do with myself coming back. There were so many stars I could not be sure of Orion's lines. And, there was family. The closest to family that I have away from my family. They are in mourning, as am I. He was a fine man, and always kind and generous to me. I will miss him.
It is important to know want, to become a truly mature and responsible human. And not just know the fleeting desire and the shallow, in the ignorance of youth, but true need biting felt at the height of awareness and intellectual capacity. At the same time, while it is an essential developmental milestone, I believe that its extended presence hinders growth and creative potential. A system that employs techniques whereby need is incorporated into learning could be quite powerful, especially if combined with Socratic disturbance. Educational systems are key to the natures of people and their societies. Theoretical exploration followed up with trial implementation of experimental methods needs to be encouraged a lot more than has been done in any of today's societies. I hope to do some of this work myself...later.
I've been thinking a lot lately about pressure, and the strangeness of that construct, and the incredible variation that exists in people's interactions with it. Stephen King mentions it significantly in his The Langoliers. Maybe I'll come back to it.
As hard as we try to distance ourselves from our origins, parade our transcendence above the physical, the sensory, and the bestial, we cannot but fail. We are cruelly, inexorably linked in reason, emotion, and behavior to our physical state and all material influences upon it. Free will exists, and is a powerful driver of human history and civilization, but in most of our everyday lives, for most of the everyday people, it is but a mirage. Would that knowledge be upsetting? Should it be? What is our need for control, and where does it come from? Is it pride, or is it fear? A sense of and need for agency are built into us neurologically, and I find that fascinating, because there can be no human without it, and yet some are able to recognize that it is often false. Just one more example as to how people are not and cannot be equal, either in their rights or their responsibilities. Controversial, I know. I guess I'll try to address that particular issue in the future as well.
If there is time. Think about that. You do not have the time to do all you wish, to discover all you do not know, to answer every question and fulfill every need, to pass through every experience, sense every sensation, feel every emotion, and think every thought that you ought to. What does that do to your morale? Because mine's not happy about it.
6 years ago
I have had a vaguely similar train of thought lately, as far as pressure and our limited time on Earth. I got a call from my old boss asking if I was going to paint this next summer, and even though I have a good working situation now and should be looking at year-round jobs, I couldn't say no just yet. Painting houses was something that took on a lot of meaning in my life, and I feel like if I let it go now, I might never have a chance to have the same good experiences again.
ReplyDeleteI say "a lot of meaning" because I hear your argument in the last paragraph. There are so many things that we probably should experience that we just don't, either because of lack of will power or sheer running out of time. But I think of those beautiful or horrible or important experiences/sensations as meaningless until we attach some sort of personal meaning to them. They are sort of just things in the ether. I know there are some things that humans seem to have a universal emotion towards, ex) a beautiful sunset, but doesn't that just come down to a sort of conformity? I could look at a tupperware full of fig jam, and say ew that looks gross. But you could look at it and see a pine forest and a mountain view and the joy of planting something and watching it grow. And you could look at a paintbrush and think ugh that needs to be washed, while meanwhile I would be enjoying the paint fumes and thinking of hard work in the sun and meeting awesome people and seeing a finished product that I was proud of.
So, I guess my point is don't be discouraged that you can't do everything; it's only meaningful when you actually get to it anyway and put it in the context of your own life. I'm not advocating ignorance of other people's lives and situations, I just mean the experiences that you want to have. And also don't waste your time on stupid shit, like homework, unless it will pay off in the end ; )