EVEN WHEN YOU THINK YOU KNOW - YOU DON'T

EVEN WHEN YOU THINK YOU KNOW 

YOU DON'T

 

   Remember junior high and high school?  You thought you knew about your parents, about life, about your friends. 

 

   Then came college or the job(s) and/or marriage with or without children -- and you went:

"Oh, man, I had it all wrong.  This is what life is all about."

 

   And you were wrong.

 “Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life.

It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.”

― Joseph Campbell

 

 

   Old Joe has a point:

 

   We bring the meaning to each stage of our journey.  The paths ahead look without number.  When at the end, we look back, we will find only one. 

 

   That path, good or bad, will be the result of our many life choices.

 

“To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.”

― Robert Louis Stevenson, Familiar Studies of Men and Books

   You may think you know the meaning of your book.  You are wrong.

 

   The meaning of your book is the one the reader assigns to it as you assign the meaning to your own life -- but it will change as the reader and you change.

 

   The you that you are and the reader that the reader is at the start of your book will not be the same person at the end.

 

“There is not one big cosmic meaning for all; there is only the meaning we each give to our life,

an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.”

― Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

   You think you know why you started your blog.  But the why of its origin is not the why of its continuing.

 

   John Steinbeck, in his journey across America in 1960 described in TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY (his giant French poodle) seemed always lost. 

 

   Yet, where he ended up usually held more truth and meaning than the rare times he actually arrived at his stated destination.

 

   Gary Sinse, by the way, does a haunting performance of the book in audio.  Do yourself a favor and listen to it:

https://soundcloud.com/#penguin-audio/travels-with-charley-in-search

 

 

“However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.”

― Stanley Kubrick

 

That light for me, besides the Great Mystery, is the caring others I meet in this life.  Each soul casts a light of its own. 

As Samuel McCord says in DEATH IN THE HOUSE OF LIFE:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HIU5O38

 

Each of us is a walking shadow.  The people in our lives are lights, varying in brightness and color. 
As they pass by us, our shadows move and change with each light, becoming something different with each one. 
We become a living dance of light and shadow with the people entering our lives … and leaving them.

I guess maybe we all become different people in response to different times and places, different duties. 

Maybe in a lifetime we become a small number of different people, when, in fact, we could become many, many more –

 if only life moved us around more.