Zeroing In

FROM SEQUENCE 2013
August 2013

This will be an unusual, oddly (usefully?) repetitive, experimental piece or post.

I had an idea. At first it seemed an idea for one of my aphorisms. Then, late one night, as I was hoping to get past thoughts and hopes to sleep, the idea began to expand and speak of something more general, something about being a human being and interacting with other human beings, at least in the corner of the twenty-first century “Western” world in which I find myself.

I trust that in time I will understand better what this idea is telling me and how the details work themselves out in daily life (including in work and family relationships and romantic ones). Among other things, the “I” needs to be better integrated; the “I” cannot be much different from the many other human beings he is (I am) describing. And insofar as the subject is the parallel universes of the under-sensitive (or ignoring, denying) and the over-sensitive, it should be noted that forests and even trees may be missed by those with an eye for individual growths, fungi, Lady Slippers, spider webs.

1. How could I have known this is what you wanted—because you never mentioned it?

2. The role of imagination in sensation may be underestimated. The highly sensitive may add imagination to sensation and thus perceive things, present and not present, that others cannot.

3. People express their desires reasonably clearly, but often they will not hear what their words are saying. If you respond to what has been expressed, it may seem to be you who is confused.

3a. People express their desires reasonably clearly, but often they will not hear what their words and deeds are saying. If you respond to what has been expressed, you may end up the more confused.

4. If you respond directly to desires, positive and negative, that other people’s words and deeds express, they may well deny having ever felt or expressed what you have so clearly heard.

5. Suppose you continued to listen carefully to what people were saying, and in particular to the desires they expressed, but you responded as if they had said the opposite. Would you live in greater harmony?

6. A way to live quite confused is to listen carefully to what other people are saying and to respond as if they, too, were listening to themselves.

6a. A way to live quite confused is to listen carefully to what other people are saying and watch what they are doing, and to respond as if they, too, noticed or cared to.

7. A careful listener surrounded by people who cannot hear what they are saying or why they are saying such things will receive many signals to which he cannot respond.

7a. To live in a Freudian world surrounded by non-Freudians involves receiving many messages and not being able to respond to any.

7b. A Freudian surrounded by non-Freudians receives many messages that people will deny ever sending.

8. Many people go through life lying, to themselves above all, about who they are, what they are doing and what they want. If you, taken in or not, respond to this stuff as if it had some positive connection to truth, any temporary confusion will be lessened and these other people will understand and appreciate you.

9. People speak quite clearly and in many different ways, but if you respond directly to what they are saying you will be alone.

10. Is it possible that any given person, to include the author of these lines, could be more honest either about himself or with other people? And if so, in what confusion would he live?

Credit & Link

Photo of Cypripedium acaule (Pink ladies slipper) is by Thomas G. Barnes, University of Tennessee Herbarium. Found through the US Forest Service’s Celebrating Wildflowers website.

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