The Unexamined Life…

Over the past several weeks I’ve been finding myself thinking a lot about stuff. There’s a lot of stuff going on, actually more stuff than I can either mention or even want to mention, but it’s out there…somewhere.

When thinking about stuff, I often find myself wondering what other people think about the same stuff. These don’t have to be people involved in said stuff, but most of the time they are.

In wondering about other people and stuff, I find that I also wonder if the other people are even wondering about the stuff, or have considered it in any way. This is a pretty dark place to be really. I mean, the whole notion that people, involved in stuff that you’re involved in, not being interested enough in said stuff to even wonder about it is the kind of situation that leads to disaster.

I just got finished reading about Socrates in my Philosophy class and that’s got me to thinking about a lot of things. Socrates, as you may or may not know, was a persistent questioner. So persistent in fact that they made him drink the Hemlock because he asked too many inconvenient questions of too many people in too many high up places.

But I find myself wondering if I’m asking enough questions, and if they are the right ones, or if I’m taking too many things for granted and just moving along with these incorrect assumptions.

I ask a lot of questions, though not always in the company of others. I ask myself a lot of questions about everything I’m doing, and I wonder if I’m missing something or if I’m just supposed to be asking questions of myself about if I’m asking myself, or anyone else for that matter, the right questions.

It’s probably intellectual masturbation, but I do it.

Like right now, I’m wondering why I’m even writing this when I’m tired and just about over all of it. But then I come back to one of the things that has been with me since I was young, and that’s the idea that I may not always hit what I’m aiming at, but if I just keep shooting, aiming at that target, I will eventually.

I don’t know, I’m torn between multiple levels of excitement and hopelessness, and that’s a very weird place to deal with on an emotional level.

Maybe I’m just not dealing with things very well right now, maybe I’m overwhelmed, or maybe I’m questioning things to the point that they no longer have any real meaning, just an intellectual exercise that, like a cat and mouse, can be discarded once it’s been played with to death.

In any case, it’s been bothering me, a lot. I feel like I’m running out of knowing what to do. I feel adrift, and that feeling is growing on a day-to-day basis. I’ve tried “grabbing the bull by the horns” and I keep getting thrown. Am I not holding on hard enough, or should I just let the bull be, and deal with the consequences?

Either way, I’m likely to get gored.

At least if I try to “grab the bull by the horns” again and I get gored it’ll be on my terms rather than the alternative. That doesn’t instill much comfort, but at least you’re expecting it.

I guess that’s what I NEED to do, even though I’m tired of dusting myself off. Okay, here goes…

/end Doogie Howser music

3 Replies to “The Unexamined Life…”

  1. Everything you know is wrong.

    This realization and how it is handled is what separates mystics from the drifters on the misty flats.

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