every now and then it occurs to me how much of the mess in my head is self-inflicted. pun. entendre. hah. actually, it occurred to me again tonight as i wrote those words to another and realized in the moment of the writing that i was talking to myself more than to them.
i’ve stumbled onto this rather odd notion that all outgoing communication is just talking to yourself. you think you see something in someone else, but what thinks you see it? you. the filters and perceptions and fears and all of that jumbling around inside.
everything you perceive gets passed through those filters. and what you think you read, heard, saw, etc. is your interpretation of it.
how do you ever know what you interpret is what is? or close enough that you can embrace the ‘point of certainty’?
culture tells us where the lines are (or should be) in relation to that ‘knowing’. hah. i’m hard pressed to call it that. it very rarely is…. knowing. most often, it is assuming, inferring, implying, construing, deducing, discerning, intuiting, and all manner of other ‘ings’ that happen INSIDE THE HEAD AND AFTERWARDS.
it has always pissed me off no end that it’s so damned acceptable to do all of that. “natural” they call it. but it isn’t. damn it.
it is not natural. it is taught.
remember when you were a kid? remember asking ‘why’ until your parents were ready to explode? remember how you wanted to learn, wanted to ask so you could understand more and better than the sum total of all the things inside you?
remember how you actually knew you didn’t know… and it was perfectly ok not to? it wasn’t embarassing. it wasn’t shameful. you didn’t have to feel guilty or stupid or unable or any of it.
you… just… wanted… to… know.
so you asked.
that’s natural.
where along the way did it become ‘a bad thing’ to just… ask?
asking questions these days is as usually taken either as a challenge or an insult. when not this, as some indication that somehow, you’re either ‘slow’ or ‘having difficulty’ managing ‘the rules’.
i’ve lost count of the people i’ve pissed off asking ‘why’. because i’ll ask until they get to the place where they have to do more than toss the glib answer at me. damn it. i want to understand. tell me why you think it. tell me why it matters. tell me what part of it has meaning. so i have something to compare/contrast/challenge myself with, so i can figure it out for myself.
it took me a long time to really understand that isn’t “normal”. well fuck normal. i want to understand.
on the other hand, i’ve been looking for the damn ‘off’ switch for about twenty years now. i hear ignorance is bliss.
meh.