I want to understand the world I live in - I have been told
That means limiting my world to the things I can understand,
or spending all my time trying to make sense of what seems senseless.
Because I have been told that what we do not understand, we fear.
So, to make time enough for actually living,
I need to live in a small enough world
that I can understand it?
Defining "us" and "them" so as to limit out
the complication and paradox that surrounds
the meeting of dissimilar minds.
I've tried that.
I've limited my world to the point where
I was the only real thing in it.
Because all minds are dissimilar, and when you have two people,
you have complications.
And I learned something.
By myself, I cannot understand myself.
I contain as many paradoxes
as any two, or ten, or ten thousand people.
One paradox is enough to do the job,
and language produces paradox after paradox
because it is an attempt to provide symbols for the world
that the brain can use to think with,
and our symbols are never an exact match
to the things we symbolize,
once we go beyond the things we can touch and point to.
Shall I be afraid of myself, then?
Of course.
If I do not understand what I will do
or why I will do it
that is surely reason for fear.
And yet, those things which I take the greatest pride in,
the greatest joy,
are those things which I could not have predicted I would do -
the things I call creative. An image, a song,
a turn of phrase that clarifies an idea.
I cannot understand how I do them,
but I want to do more of them.
Perhaps understanding is not the be all and end all....
Perhaps the unknown is an occasion for delight,
and not for fear.
If I fear myself
then I must fear more as the world I live in expands
to more complexity, more confusion.
How can I not fear others, if I fear myself?
But what if I do not fear myself?
What if my criteria for acceptance
is not how like to me another person may be,
but how much that is new they bring to me,
to be turned into new creation among us?
What if....
The background to which this was written was Cusco's Apurimac - here's one of the cuts to enjoy.
An extra helping of thanks to Yasuragi for republishing this and introducing me to the world of Koslit - I didn't even know it was there before this. Following...