July 10, 2010
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Beings of worship
There is a terrifying aspect of irremovability to the life that you live. It is impossible to live in a way that is not permanent; your life stains reality. To live is to define what it means to be permanent; you can beg and scratch and kick and scream, but the past will never be other than it is and will be. To forget is not to erase, it is merely to turn away. The picture of your life is slowly being unfolded, and once it has been lived, it will look as it does until eternity has passed.
Irremovability, however, is not the only culprit that lends a terror to life. To live is to confess. Together these two ghosts haunt the lonely thinker in his barren room in the depths of the night.
When you have a thought, there is a sense in which you believe that thought is worth having, unless you try to direct your attention away from it. To have a short life means to have a limited thought life; therefore, whatever we spend time thinking about we are letting take up pages of the story of our thoughts. To think is, in part, to commit yourself to the subject of your thought.
To say something is a next step of commitment; it is to put your thoughts into the public world. Thus, whenever you talk you are indicating what has a weight to you, what kinds of things you think are worth saying. Every person you talk to, underneath everything, understands this; there is a belief in them that what you are saying is in some way important to you, and makes you who you are, or else you would not have said it.
But what really means something to you is what you act on. If a thought is the blueprint of an airplane, and saying something is to build the airplane, then an action is to actually fly the plane; it is saying, in the deepest sense possible, this is something I really think is worthwhile. I am committing my life to it, pouring what time I have into doing this thing.
To act is for your life to be airborne; where will you go?
Thus, the life you live is a confession of what you think is worthwhile, perhaps even to yourself. Your life reveals your God or gods. This is why it is scary for another person to know your life; they hear your confession. Otherwise it is only for our wide eyes to think about on our deathbeds, feeling the quiet anxiety of a wasted life.
For the three elements of thought, speech, and action to be in harmony is what it means to live an honest life. And to live an honest life is of course a good thing. But I think it’s a part of being human for our spirits to ache to not just live an honest life, but to live a true one, one where we are not only consistent and genuine in what we pour our life into, but one in which we pour it into what is actually the right and good way to live, the way life ought to be done. I think to feel that desire is to really come alive. That there’s a true and beautiful way for life to be done, and to think we might miss that way, should thud to the floor of every young person’s heart, and bring at least one true moment of sadness in life, even if one never knows what it is to be sad again.
But to think that life doesn’t matter at all is a lie; your life reveals your gods.
Comments (7)
Honest life – I like that. Being real with yourself, God and those around you! Great writing and thought to ponder. Thank you.
You are a really wonderful person, you know that?
Purer than pure is stupid. Dumb does.
Our thoughts compressed and to undress
In the cleverness of resting lives–lying.
For children, they say, but aren’t we all
under the same sky if it is shared within?
Some feel while others don’t — as you
Wanted it to be in your truest, true hues.
“But I think it’s a part of being human for our spirits to ache to not just live an honest life, but to live a true one, one where we are not only consistent and genuine in what we pour our life into, but one in which we pour it into what is actually the right and good way to live, the way life ought to be done. I think to feel that desire is to really come alive.”
Absolutely. Are you channeling Clive Staples by any chance?
~V
Everything with me starts with a thought. You have reinforced that with the logic that thinking about what I am thinking about is worth thinking about.
The end can be blessings or consequences. My mom taught me more about consequences.
My dad taught me more about blessings.
Guess who I loved more as a child. Not fair, because mom was the disciplinarian and day was lax.
Good post.
Frank
On premis I agree with your logic, but I feel nuance is needed to flesh out the wholeness of my perspective.
Truly that which we have done is permanent. I a past moment/decision as a bell that tolls in our life; beginning strong then often dissipating as new experiences knell and overwhelm. It is this aspect know as priming in the field of psychology that leads me to accept in part your second discussion on commitment. That vestiges of past experiences do generate the very thoughts and perceptions that we have. But my conjecture is that we find our commitment not in the initial thoughts, but rather in how we deal with said thought. You make a gesture toward this line of thinking when you state “unless you direct your attention away from it.” But I feel that the commitment only begins with the appraisal and subsequent cognitive response. It is for this reason I find the biblical challenge “take every thought captive” so wise. For the thoughts that emit are the process of past dealings, and present external oppressions and influences, but the way in which we deal these thoughts is what is truly indicatory of who we are.
I enjoyed your airplane analogy! The subsequent statement that we want all three steps to stem from an objective justifier is true as far as my life is concerned. I doubt we’ll find a fellow who is on the whole blithe enough to debunk your conjecture. For when I analyze the fruit of my peers, I find those that experience contentment act in accordance with Love/God or a close facsimile thereof.
I have also noticed from two of your most recent posts that you are using a form of the phrase “you show your gods” quite often. I wonder if your currently “in amor” with this logic, and if so when did it occur both temporally and philosophically; and can you divine the next illumination in your thought life?
My current “affair” has been with “unless you have something to die for, you are not really living.” And I believe this fits in quite nicely with your final point on the need to live for a greater than. Therefore, I will take the liberty to expand your analogy of the plane.
“We all want to conceive, build, and fly a plane whose flight is of such importance that it demands we cope with the peril of crashing.”
Beings of worship | StrokeofThought’s Xanga Site
Thanks for sharing with us your wisdom.