So, in a few days time I leave for Thailand. A strange feeling: the knowledge that everything will soon be different. Yet you do not know exactly how. You have ideas and plans: a teaching post, beaches, women (you hope vainly). Yet, more than usual there is just a big blank where you suppose the future to be. So, if as Satre thought, ‘that positing nothings’ (the ability to make predictions and plan for the future) is key to human superiority of other animals, then what does this make me? I am unable to plan long-term; I have always been unable to look too far into the future. So maybe this is a challenge? The challenge to dream a future. But in many ways this is the beauty of travel. Why plan a trip to the smallest detail? Doesn’t this contract life to your own small-minded controlling ideas? Why not be open to caprice? And, in the final analysis, you have no control. The only thing I believe you have control over, or can learn to have control over, is your own reactions. If you are wealthy, your wealth can disappear in moment of world crisis; if you are beautiful, this will inevitably give way to wrinkles (and, very easily, bitterness). So the art, as some sage said (no reference, sorry) is to turn around and face the future, as opposed to watching the past stream away from you. How is this reconciled? --
Do not become attached to the past; be prepared, with an open mind and a open heart to all the future may bring, with the knowledge that how you react now, will affect how and who you become in the future. Facing the future is about fearlessness (for, knowing the inherent unpredictability of reality, your fear will be completely disabling). And courage will be easier with a high degree of self-understanding, so that whatever is happening externally, at least you have a sense of the continuity of self and its change and development. Well, Lets see if this is warbling rhetoric or if fear will again continue to influence my life…
Yours
Paul
1 comment:
Well said.
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