a slight change of subject today…
after several days of aggravation, work trying to kill me again, computer problems
that has lead to my laptop dying (right now I am working on my daughter’s computer)
ugly heat over the last few days and I don’t do well in heat (its suppose to drop to 84 today)
so all of this aggravation has really taken me away from what I want to do which is
contemplation of the questions that vexes a man, a village, a society, a country and
a species…
and it occurs to me, that one path, one path, of wisdom lies in this very aggravation that
has so bothered me the last few days…we are bothered by such things as work…
at work, they had me close, which is 3:00 pm to 12:00 midnight and then come back
to work at 10:00 the next morning… lovely crap like that… that type of schedule
takes me two days to recover from… I was pretty much unable to function yesterday…
as for my computer dying, that has prevented me from writing as I like to write
in the morning…usually by the afternoon I am too tired to gather my thoughts…
and this heat has keep me from sleeping for days…
this aggravation is keeping me from even reading…
I had to fight through all these distractions and aggravations to get to today and being able
to sit here and type out these words…
it was a question of preserving… of fighting through the aggravations and obstacles
and it occurs to me that most of life is simple just that… fighting through the obstacles
and aggravations that present themselves in life… on a daily basis, we find ourselves
facing challenges and obstacles and how we respond to them is not only a sign of
who we are but a sign of our wisdom…but this is true not only on an individual level
but on a society and national level…
we face trials and tribulations as a country and as a society… we are facing one now
and how we respond tells us much about who we are and how wise we are…
we are facing, as a people and as a country, the greatest crisis we have seen in the last 40 plus years…
perhaps this is our greatest crisis since Watergate and I suspect this will be far worse…
we face this crisis in part because we have lost faith in the ism’s, ideologies and institutions
that have governed a people for generations…
we have allowed the aggravations and distractions of the day to deter us from
what should be our focus which should be on who we are and where do we need to be…
Philosophy is not just a love of wisdom, but philosophy is a path to wisdom…
and we have lost our path… we have lost our way with distractions with
fears about Islamic terrorist and how do protect ourselves when we must
change our focus… let them attack… they cannot hurt us unless we let them…
that is a truth… we can only be affected by change if we allow it…
the terrorist, and the greatest terrorists we face today are domestic,
and even then, they cannot hurt us unless we allow it…
but we allow these insignificant, minor events to dictate our feelings and
our actions…
over 11,000 people died from gunshot wounds last year and no one even pays
attention, so why should a minor fleabite like a terror attack even make the news?
we have lost perspective on what is important and what we should be
paying attention to…
think about it this way… to a strong person, a cold is a very minor detail
and quite often a strong person will work through the cold… but to an old
or physically weak person, a cold could be life threatening…have we become so
weak that we are threaten by such a minor event like a small scale terrorist attack?
weakness is not just physical, but mental and emotional and we have become
mentally and emotional weak… so much so a minor terrorist attack sends
us into a tizzy and we entertain talk of reducing our freedoms and the liberties
of others in some vain attempt to secure our safety…
how weak we have become… that the trials and tribulations and aggravations
of life has made us change what is important to who we are…
the lack of security has been a major issue for most of human existence…
read accounts of being in a city before the 20 century and we see that
violence was so common place as not to be noticed…it has only been in the
last century or so, has being in a city been a relatively safe thing…
but freedom… we have only had freedom in the last 200 year of
our existence and that freedom has created in large part, the modern world,
don’t allow fear to take us away from that which has created the modern world which
is freedom and liberty…
so in my own personal journey, I face times of aggravation and tribulations and
I outlast them and so sit here and do what is important to me…
so outlast the trials and tribulations and do what is important in society
and within the country… don’t lose focus on what is important because
of fear about what may come or what has happened…
focus on freedom and not safety and that change of perspective makes all the difference in
the world
Kropotkin