Keep Telling the Story

The other day in class Matt gave an outstanding presentation on The Lament of the Dead.  One of the first things Matt said was, "You aren't the center of anything, you have to somehow connect with those that came before you."

I wrote this down the instant he said it - before I had even processed it. And when the meaning of this statement hit me, I felt something click: something I didn't know I had been searching for, but the second I found it I knew it was what I needed.

When you ask someone what they want to be when they grow up the answer varies; some say "doctor" and others say "teacher" and others say "mechanic."  We all choose different things.  But no matter what people want to be, they all want to be it in the same manner: happily.  One of the biggest problems with our current system of education is that kids are taught how to pass tests and get into college, but they aren't taught skills that will directly foster their happiness; we need to teach kids how to accept criticism and how to be thoughtful, responsible beings and how to properly think through problems they encounter (not just math problems, but life problems).

We aren't the center of anything.  We must connect with our predecessors and use what they found out to direct our own searches.  If we ignore what previous generations found out we are putting ourselves at an extreme disadvantage; we make more work for ourselves in trying to find things out.  But it isn't just that.  We need to connect.  And the people that came before us are not out of reach.  We may not be able to communicate with them in the same way we communicate with living people, but we can still look at their art and read their words and listen to their songs.  We can still have a very real interaction with them. And we must.

Kids need to be taught to read. But not so that we can test their memorization of things - so they can appreciate the vast amount of literature in the world: the recordings of thoughts that people have had since the beginning of time.

There comes a point in life when you realize you aren't special; you aren't unique or important at all.  And this can be a sobering realization.  It can make you insecure; "If I'm not special, why would anyone want me in their life? If I'm not unique, what can I possibly offer this world?" But with that realization also comes another: we are like speakers.  The energy of the whole world can use us an outlet and be broadcasted through us.  Which is more than we could ever have done as an individual anyhow.

Another think Matt said was to "Keep telling the story" as compared to thinking of how the story "makes you feel" or trying to find the "meaning."

Because, as it turns out, the meaning can only be realized once the story is over; the anagogical is the literal and we must have every word present to see the literal in its entirety. If this is true, which I believe it is, then we will never know the meaning of our lives.  Take a second.  Think about that. Does it scare you?  I know it scares me.  Our life is a story we write every second of every day until it is over.  And yet we will never know the meaning.

There is a W.H. Auden quote that goes, "We are lived by powers we pretend to understand."  I know this is certainly true for me.  I have such a desire to understand my life and it's meaning and to understand myself as an individual.  I fear that if I don't know myself well enough then I will never be able to fully relate to anyone.  And yet it seems no one ever knows who they are. We all live in a state of confusion because we are constantly exposed to stimuli that cause us to react and therefore carve down the statues that we are ever so slightly.  We can make guesses at what the end product will be; as we chip more and more away the image becomes clearer.  But we do not know when the carving will stop.  We do not know when death will come to retrieve us.  So we can only speculate. Which is just so silly to do... I don't know.  I want to know myself. I want to confidently project my image into the world - to express myself through every action I do.  But I'm just not sure it's possible.

If we were meant to know things, wouldn't we know everything? If we were meant to know, words like "doubt" and "confuse" and "question" wouldn't exist in our language. There would be no question marks. And yet there are. So maybe instead of fighting to find answers, we need to learn to embrace living in question. However one goes about doing that.