So... I haven't written in awhile, mostly because the realm of my consciousness has not been very active outside of one particular incident thats incredibly perplexing. I have done nothing wrong, which suffices to say that I don't understand how this happened. You have a life, you go to bed and you wake up and that life doesn't exist anymore. Everyone has moved on except for you, and this is not an easy thing. You replay these images in your head a thousand times, and as every thing seemed in the right place, it never was. The key word here is seemed.
As we were reading in the Faerie Queene by Spencer in my Renaissance class, my favorite professor told us to keep an eye out for when Spencer would use the word "seemed." This usually was a enormous red flag to indicate that what the knight sensed was right was in fact, never what actually was. Poor Red Cross, he was stranded in the middle of a forest facing a forked path, had lost his companion, and he had to choose for himself which way was the right way. One path "seemed" well beaten down and worn in, and the other was what "seemed" to be a dangerous terrain. Of course he chose the easy way, and wound up in the "House of Pride" which was a house full of the physical embodiments of the seven deadly sins.
Red Cross didn't use his senses very well, and I must admit, nothing much has changed in the last 400 years. We all still choose the easier path, and on the one occasion when you actually do choose the precarious path you're stuck in a dense forest without a guide. This is life.
However, one might ask the question, Why do our senses deceive us so? Or, how? There are many theories I could dissect, however I'll just list them. (1) the truth hurts, plain and simple. We don't ever want to face the truth because we know that it's not what we want to hear, so we lie to ourselves. We make ourselves believe we sense serenity in order to delude the reality. (2) We are taught since birth to be an idealist. Our parents hammer into our brains the belief that we can do anything, we can be anything; thus, we can think anything. (3) We want to think positively because we believe that by the "power of thinking" we can control our lives, thus we can control how we see people. We want to believe in the "best possible" version of a person. (4) We have an innate need to bring out the best in someone, thus we only concentrate on the goodness of a given situation, and try to suppress the bad feelings. These delusions, no matter what the case ultimately leaves us alone, with only a mangled image of what we thought was reality. This is the point where you wake up the next day and realize that the life you were living doesn't exist anymore, because you are so tired of telling yourself a lie.
Today my friend compared his relationship to a certain somebody as though she were standing behind a plate of glass. He was suggesting that he could see the potential, but he could never really touch it. As much as this analogy made sense, I began to extend this train of thought. Everybody is surrounded by these plates of glass. We can see each other, but we never really know whats going on with them. Subtle facial expressions give us hints as to what they are thinking or feeling but there has never been the possibility for us to reach beyond the glass and touch it.
Anyway, as my friend and i sat opposite each other for a good majority of the day, we talked about everything. Yesterday, I spoke with one of my favorite oldest friends for an hour as he lifted my spirits and self-confidence up, a way only he can do. And last night, I again embraced the warmth of a below freezing garage, next to a fire surrounded by those who will stay up until 2 am just talking about the most random things. These images of common contentness among people, simply doing nothing at all but being in each others company, gave me the insight that i needed at a time like this: The upside to falling? It gives your friends a chance to catch you.
As we were reading in the Faerie Queene by Spencer in my Renaissance class, my favorite professor told us to keep an eye out for when Spencer would use the word "seemed." This usually was a enormous red flag to indicate that what the knight sensed was right was in fact, never what actually was. Poor Red Cross, he was stranded in the middle of a forest facing a forked path, had lost his companion, and he had to choose for himself which way was the right way. One path "seemed" well beaten down and worn in, and the other was what "seemed" to be a dangerous terrain. Of course he chose the easy way, and wound up in the "House of Pride" which was a house full of the physical embodiments of the seven deadly sins.
Red Cross didn't use his senses very well, and I must admit, nothing much has changed in the last 400 years. We all still choose the easier path, and on the one occasion when you actually do choose the precarious path you're stuck in a dense forest without a guide. This is life.
However, one might ask the question, Why do our senses deceive us so? Or, how? There are many theories I could dissect, however I'll just list them. (1) the truth hurts, plain and simple. We don't ever want to face the truth because we know that it's not what we want to hear, so we lie to ourselves. We make ourselves believe we sense serenity in order to delude the reality. (2) We are taught since birth to be an idealist. Our parents hammer into our brains the belief that we can do anything, we can be anything; thus, we can think anything. (3) We want to think positively because we believe that by the "power of thinking" we can control our lives, thus we can control how we see people. We want to believe in the "best possible" version of a person. (4) We have an innate need to bring out the best in someone, thus we only concentrate on the goodness of a given situation, and try to suppress the bad feelings. These delusions, no matter what the case ultimately leaves us alone, with only a mangled image of what we thought was reality. This is the point where you wake up the next day and realize that the life you were living doesn't exist anymore, because you are so tired of telling yourself a lie.
Today my friend compared his relationship to a certain somebody as though she were standing behind a plate of glass. He was suggesting that he could see the potential, but he could never really touch it. As much as this analogy made sense, I began to extend this train of thought. Everybody is surrounded by these plates of glass. We can see each other, but we never really know whats going on with them. Subtle facial expressions give us hints as to what they are thinking or feeling but there has never been the possibility for us to reach beyond the glass and touch it.
Anyway, as my friend and i sat opposite each other for a good majority of the day, we talked about everything. Yesterday, I spoke with one of my favorite oldest friends for an hour as he lifted my spirits and self-confidence up, a way only he can do. And last night, I again embraced the warmth of a below freezing garage, next to a fire surrounded by those who will stay up until 2 am just talking about the most random things. These images of common contentness among people, simply doing nothing at all but being in each others company, gave me the insight that i needed at a time like this: The upside to falling? It gives your friends a chance to catch you.
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