(no subject)
I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. Actually, brooding might be a more accurate (if not better) word for it. As expected, most of the brooding has been needless and useless circular thinking that makes its track through some of the nastier spots on my brain, but I'm determined to pull something constructive out of this.
So I'll start with this: You remember that adage about being careful what you wish for because you just might get it? Well, that goes double in the case where you don't wish for anything. Not wishing for anything can be a whole lot like wishing for nothing, which is pretty damned dismal. Case in point: I've recently been asked several times, in not so many words, "what do you want to be when you grow up?" The charm of leaving that answer blank is starting to wear off.
Then there's one of my favorite adages (which I very well might have made up on my own): perspective is key. It's no secret that if you pull your perspective far enough back, nothing is really all that important. Well, I think there's something to be said for keeping your perspective close enough that you don't lose sight of the importance of self. I mean, the more logical parts of my mind still say that in the BIG picture, my self is really not that important, but I don't think that's a healthy perspective to live with. At least, not if you can only hold that perspective in a half-assed sort of way where you wind up not doing anything (because it's not that important), but then spend a lot of time whining about all the things you missed out on (because, after all, experience is all we get, so yeah, it's important).
And no, I'm not talking about Junk Mail Man, even though that's where I'd be right now if I were more interested in smiling than brooding.
And then there's the other thing I've been thinking about, which doesn't necessarily attach to any of the previous items. It's one of those hippy-dippy, fresh-off-the-bong, what's the point of life kind of things, but at the moment it's important to me. It seems to me that the point of consciousness is to decide what we like, and what we don't. Or, put another way, to invest psychic energies in pulling things nearer or pushing them away. Really, it's not my theory. It's in the Bible, pretty much right up front, under the heading "Forbidden Fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil." Anyway, the reason I mention this is that I think I've been letting the dark side of my mind do most of this work recently. Oh, I have my reasons, but they're essentially bullshit; or at the very least, irrelevant. I tend to think that my degree of control over the balance of liking/disliking is limited, but it might also be fair to say that it's my effort that is limited.
So, like always, I have a choice. I can make the effort to focus my perceptions on and think about things that are pleasing to me, and I can conclude that life is good; after all, that's true. Or, I can brood over things that make me upset, and I can let my perceptions rest on things that displease me, and I can conclude that everything sucks; and given the subset of data I'm evaluating, that will also be true.
But, sigh, sometimes it just isn't that simple.