Figuring It Out?

How we do or don't understand what we already understand--the circumference of our knowledge, if you will--is actually a terribly difficult and hard project to start.  It is akin or parallel or even exactly the same issue of wondering whether there is ultimately any purpose to one's life, and whether there is any purpose at all.

I don't know what I don't know.  However, I am quite aware that there is a lot I don't know.  At this point, I'm even willing to say that I don't know most things.  However, that's not always a successful way to live life.  Paralyzing anxiety and dread can come out of it, and stop one from thinking straight at all.

So there's got to be some sort of leap of faith in one's own capacity to understand decipher and try to knock down the harsh complexity of the world and one's place in the world into some boxes, categories, and yes, stories.  The reduction of raw data to stories is in fact at the core of almost every discipline.  What is the story with those numbers, for instance, or with that dataset.  How do we understand it in words, even if very complex words that take years to understand?

We reduce.  Simple and plain.  The best of us recognize the reductions, and the complexity behind those reductions.  The worst of us use the reductions as reality.  Conflating the two can yield quick gain, but I'd wager that long term it is not a tenable strategy.  Deciding you understand everything just because you think you do is not, to me, the sign of what we should be aiming toward, or how we should act.  However, it is how we act most of the time.  Almost all arguments are based on someone's misunderstanding of reality, and backing away from your own misunderstanding is the hardest thing to do in the world.

It is OK to take things seriously, with one important caveat

You must self-correct when you're wrong, and you  must maintain blithe lightness of mind.  Difficult, when getting deeply into something, and emotionally wrapped up in one perspective on that thing.  Purposeful open-mindedness is something that is an artform, and a lot of "open minded" people are quite close-minded.  This troubles me.

But the point of the post was that it is OK to try, to make effort.

What we're scared of isn't effort, but failure, that our efforts = no result.

Even given "failure," though I would argue that there is almost always something to learn if you've made a serious effort.

Doing It, Your Own Way

If you have the right kind of confidence, doing what makes you uncomfortable can be entirely enthralling, and spur on intense creative streaks.

It isn't doing what you are scared of, and it isn't the confidence itself that forms the spine of this sentence.  It is instead the need to go through incredible amounts of repeated mistakes, and still strike forth, nestled atop a scaffolding of slowly built up and and learned increments.

Two Things

I had a horrible classic exchange today where "fuck yous" were exchanged.  Well, it left me shaking, weak, and full of misdirected rage.

I miss some people that I once had in my life.

There are no easy resolutions for either.