Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Reflections. What Reflections?

This blog has become predominantly an intellectual affair. I've stopped reflecting on my day to day life. I've stopped commenting on my real experience. Instead, I've continued to comment on books, on ideas that I have.

I have been telling you all (you invisible readers) the story of my thought, not the story of my heart (although they are intimately connected).

I want to reintroduce my heart into this blog. Because it has become too dependent on the activity of my mind.

So, what to say of my heart?

It is still frantic. It is in no state of stability. I have been changing jobs and I'm finally looking for some stability. I am so very satisfied with one of my employers. Just beginning my process with another one of my employers. Who knows what will happen there. Good things, I hope.

But why can't I speak of my heart as easily as I speak of my mind? It is so easy for me to speak of things, to speak of authors and their ideas. I've become adept at that mode of thought and speech.

But my heart is not mere ideas. It is relationships. It is other people and my interactions with them.

If I'm to truly let you into the workings of my heart I'd have to let you into the hearts of others. I'd have to tell you about my relationships, my friends, my acquaintances. But I'm not willing to name names. No need.

Tonight I had dinner with a friend I hadn't seen in a while. A lovely time. We talked about the people we knew, about changes in people's lives, about how silly some people are. A good time.

But oh what a difference it is to speak of people and to speak of things.

Oh! To speak of people!?! To speak of things!?!

How different they are. Because people are the stuff of life and emotions. Things, however, are some kind of background, something different. Things, ideas, are not the same as people and relationships.

There were times where I wrote terrible drunken poetry on this blog. Time where I let my heart run amok on these pages. Let it banish my embarrassment so that I could run free and wild in my own way.

But these days I am too timid for that. I don't care for wild ramblings right now. I care for ideas, for writing.

That and I work all the time. I'm still working 6 days a week. Don't know what to do with myself. Just waiting things out. Things will stabilize. And that stability will beget instability.

I will have more thoughts. Those thoughts will beget more thoughts. Those thoughts will beget times of silence. Then I'll be quiet. I won't think and read as much. I'll relax more. Then I'll write more.

Is there any latent emotion in this post? Can you feel any part of my heart penetrating this dense electronic space? Because I feel my heart. I feel lost and pleased. I'm continuing to live the best way I know how.

I'm making progress on my writing because it is one of the only ways that I know how to stabilize myself.

Talking to a co-worker today, I was explaining how our worldview presuppose the correctness of nihilism. Both of us, more or less, feel that life's meaning is to be created rather than discovered. The meaning of life is to make life meaningful. This idea, however, presupposes that life has no objective meaning. Because if life had objective meaning the task would not be the creation of meaning but the discovery of meaning.

It occurred to me that my writing is my attempt to create my own meaning. It is my way of creating a complex moral system that I can adhere to. I don't always follow it. I fail.

But at this point in my life, I have chosen to ground my conception of ethics in aesthetics. I have tried to make my life meaningful by trying to making it aesthetic. By which I mean, above all, expressive. I want my life to be full of expressiveness, full of a pursuit of truth, and full of attempts to use consciousness towards these ends.

Ohhhh. I don't know what to tell you about my life on this blog. Because I don't want to get too explicit about people.

But I want you to know that I don't just think about things. That my life is full of people that I think about.

And this is so difficult, so interesting. When you know people you speak about people and things equally. But when you first get to know someone, what do you speak of? People? Things?

Who knows.

I'm out.

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About Me

I spend most of my time working as a mental health professional. I have been preoccupied with philosophy, politics, healing, and many other questions for the last 15 years or so. I am currently working on putting together my study of Plato and Aristotle with contemporary work in philosophy, psychology, psychotherapy, and trauma research. I use this place primarily as a workshop for ideas. I welcome conversation with anyone working on similar problems. The major contours of my basic project have been outlined here

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