"The Road"

I'm not so clinical as to hold skepticism over the always pervading metaphor of life as a journey (as opposed to happenstance, random events that we tag together as narrative).  AND, because journeys queue romantic ideals, it is often tempting to see life as some sort of linear progression.  Which is also to say that if you've been somewhere, you won't be back there, exactly, again.  You don't really go back.  Or if you do, it is clear, anyway.  Ah, exit 34, where I binge drink for five weeks straight and become estranged from my parents!  Yep, I know that one.

Consider a misty confused world, when you don't know where you are.  You're not sure what the exit reads.  You don't know how far you've come.  You're not lost, but you're certainly not found, and you have no idea where you want to go.

I find it useful to think of progression, though I hold a few caveats.

Caveat number 1:  It is really exceedingly easy to traipse upon ground you've traipsed on before and not recognize it.  Which is to say that we have to stay constantly curious and aware, and that we don't really learn everything we need to know, necessarily, the first or second time we experience an event.   It is hard to stay patient, by the way.

Caveat number 2: We don't know where we're going.  We won't ever get there.  But the journey and the idea that we're going somewhere is still really important.

Caveat number 3: Since there's no beginning and no end, comparisons to other people's positions are largely irrelevant.

Caveat number 4: There may or may not be an invisible hand.  Sometimes, though, it is nice to feel like something is "meant" to be.  This is a feeling we should indulge in rarely, as it is often delusion.

Caveat number 5: Knowing something conceptually and knowing it experientially allows such a wide definition of "knowing" that I am not convinced these are the same objects at all.

Caveat number 6:  To some degree we create our own reality.  It is only to a degree, though, and forgetting this will lead back to delusion

Hope number 1: Other people can share in beautiful events.

Hope number 2:  We can be inspired even and especially after horrible loss.

Hope number 3: The possibility exists that everything will get exponentially better at any random juncture in time, and that all suffering will be validated, but repeating this phrase too often leads to judgmentalism and hypocrisy, as well as laziness.  Hope number 3 is for clarity within bliss: for the ideal of fractured ideals that hold images of reality in their seams.