Reap the whirlwind...
It's a tenacious matter, living life the way you mean to. First of all, the future is by no means a tangible object, especially with a flexible outlook and a mutable character at the reins of moving forward. The absolute best that can be conceived is a path ideally followed and in line with a running sense of morality and simplicity, which can never be beaten or driven underground because of its unshakeable compatibility with nature and the flow of time. Build foundations which are vain and ambitious and they will consume what precious time there is, and potentially crumble to the earth which is filled with consuming ecstacy at the failure of something so hostile and narrow in intent.
My life is by no means linear but the fragments and shimmering details of respect for nature and the people whom surround me make me always able to recover from error and laugh and not pity myself when I become to crestfallen or beaten down. The dirt and the roots that are once recognised when vanity subsides into humility are worth noticing and allow a sense of life to permeate my consciousness. For every time I am proven wrong, I find something new and delight in it. My error becomes something I can work upon and gives me the ability to guide others past certain pitfalls. Boris Pasternak once wrote that he could never trust a man who had never made his own mistakes, and truly this is wisdom; for what man could it be who derives wisdom from caution and watching others take wild steps before him. What sense of wonder and respect can this man have if he has not felt his error and recovered himself from it.
I read a great novel by Marcel Proust during the spring-time and as I made my slow progress through it I was overwhelmed by its insight and overpowered by a sense of interconnectedness in the universe. I felt that I understood it and was filled with a vain supposition that what I knew others didn't. Thus is the peculiarity of reading; it is a very solitary experience unless shared and the wisest man must know that only a confluence of intuition and reasoning might lead to greater wisdom and insight. Fortunately I have experience on my side and I have suffered sometimes acutely from painful sympathy for others and the human condition. But I have not experienced it, have not thrown myself into a human state.
And what could all of this possibly mean? That I am not human, not as I should be? Perhaps. The most troublesome thing for me has been the way I have lived almost seperately from life (paradoxical, yes) and at odds with nature. Reason has been taught but hardly believed to be as valuable as it is suggested, and the commodities that I have consumed have hardly been of my own production. Famine, death and squalor have not touched me and I feel that nature has been sidetracked in an effort to create something of an artificial situation wherein it will all be quite correct and as it is and as it was if people keep believing the structures in place are at once moral and sustainable. Well, bless me if I have never been able to quite believe in it all.
The deliberate nature of life has evaded me and I refuse to step along a narrow path of reason for the duration of my life. There are simply so many things to say and to castigate for their wrongness, their detachment from reality and their abhorrence in my heart, but it is not within my control. All I can possibly hope for is that when the event does come that we all lift ourselves out of this morass of skewed morality, reliance on the unfortunate other, and inflated sense of economic and social purpose... well, I hope that people will begin to see things in their true light, and in all new potential colour. I wish to live with purpose and I want to know that my hands have worked and my mind has assisted in the development of others. This life that has been presented to me, this society and this government is all so purposeless and fruitless. The life that exists regardless of it and just narrowly within our reach is full of warmth and potential to govern ourselves and our children. That is all I hope for and it's as Alexander Herzen says: they're all warning us against it, but intuitively it is absolutely essential that we start living for each other and not ourselves.
I include nature in the matter; we are not its inheritors but a species living within it and limited by its force. Today's forceful winds and showers of immense rain testified to that. Just a little more intuition and sensbile humility before nature would give us a world to live in because mutual respect on any level provides exceptional fruition and rapture. All that we could ever dream of is not to be found in the post- "enlightenment" age (termed so inappropriately because of all the enlightened ideas we took the chaff and left the wheat strewn on the floor) but in a human age, even a determined human harmony with nature and all other species. We are taking on the absolute role and we will pay awfully for the indignity that we inflicted upon the great and ancient whole if we persist.
On a higher note, I am indeed in a positive and unbeatable frame of mind and existence.
My life is by no means linear but the fragments and shimmering details of respect for nature and the people whom surround me make me always able to recover from error and laugh and not pity myself when I become to crestfallen or beaten down. The dirt and the roots that are once recognised when vanity subsides into humility are worth noticing and allow a sense of life to permeate my consciousness. For every time I am proven wrong, I find something new and delight in it. My error becomes something I can work upon and gives me the ability to guide others past certain pitfalls. Boris Pasternak once wrote that he could never trust a man who had never made his own mistakes, and truly this is wisdom; for what man could it be who derives wisdom from caution and watching others take wild steps before him. What sense of wonder and respect can this man have if he has not felt his error and recovered himself from it.
I read a great novel by Marcel Proust during the spring-time and as I made my slow progress through it I was overwhelmed by its insight and overpowered by a sense of interconnectedness in the universe. I felt that I understood it and was filled with a vain supposition that what I knew others didn't. Thus is the peculiarity of reading; it is a very solitary experience unless shared and the wisest man must know that only a confluence of intuition and reasoning might lead to greater wisdom and insight. Fortunately I have experience on my side and I have suffered sometimes acutely from painful sympathy for others and the human condition. But I have not experienced it, have not thrown myself into a human state.
And what could all of this possibly mean? That I am not human, not as I should be? Perhaps. The most troublesome thing for me has been the way I have lived almost seperately from life (paradoxical, yes) and at odds with nature. Reason has been taught but hardly believed to be as valuable as it is suggested, and the commodities that I have consumed have hardly been of my own production. Famine, death and squalor have not touched me and I feel that nature has been sidetracked in an effort to create something of an artificial situation wherein it will all be quite correct and as it is and as it was if people keep believing the structures in place are at once moral and sustainable. Well, bless me if I have never been able to quite believe in it all.
The deliberate nature of life has evaded me and I refuse to step along a narrow path of reason for the duration of my life. There are simply so many things to say and to castigate for their wrongness, their detachment from reality and their abhorrence in my heart, but it is not within my control. All I can possibly hope for is that when the event does come that we all lift ourselves out of this morass of skewed morality, reliance on the unfortunate other, and inflated sense of economic and social purpose... well, I hope that people will begin to see things in their true light, and in all new potential colour. I wish to live with purpose and I want to know that my hands have worked and my mind has assisted in the development of others. This life that has been presented to me, this society and this government is all so purposeless and fruitless. The life that exists regardless of it and just narrowly within our reach is full of warmth and potential to govern ourselves and our children. That is all I hope for and it's as Alexander Herzen says: they're all warning us against it, but intuitively it is absolutely essential that we start living for each other and not ourselves.
I include nature in the matter; we are not its inheritors but a species living within it and limited by its force. Today's forceful winds and showers of immense rain testified to that. Just a little more intuition and sensbile humility before nature would give us a world to live in because mutual respect on any level provides exceptional fruition and rapture. All that we could ever dream of is not to be found in the post- "enlightenment" age (termed so inappropriately because of all the enlightened ideas we took the chaff and left the wheat strewn on the floor) but in a human age, even a determined human harmony with nature and all other species. We are taking on the absolute role and we will pay awfully for the indignity that we inflicted upon the great and ancient whole if we persist.
On a higher note, I am indeed in a positive and unbeatable frame of mind and existence.
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