I am your Archer -
I am your Bones -
I will guide you true,
I will steel your stance.
I am your arrow -
I am your vision -
I will see your heart,
I will help you dance.
05 September 2012
04 September 2012
my otter story
On Sunday, just a couple days ago, I took my child to the zoo. It was a ridiculously hot day, and most of the animals were napping in the shade or pools of water. A few of the more desert-inclined animals were moving around, but one animal was especially active: an African Spotted Necked Otter was playing in the water, looking for all the world as though he were having the time of his life. He had a log-shaped slide (it was actually quite a good replica of a hollowed-out log) and would climb up inside it, slide back into the water, barrel roll across his pond and come back and do it again. His companion, another otter, was dozing in a shady spot on land, but he was clearly enjoying being.
I felt a connection like a message being sent.
Life is what it is; revel in it, learn from it, don't let it get you down. Be.
Point taken.
q is for quixotic
quixotic - foolishly, impractically, idealistic
Yep, that's me.
~
I remember my mother telling me once, when I was 17 and we were in the middle of an argument, that I was an idealist. She said it as though it were a great shock to her, not necessarily a bad thing, just very surprising. I retorted that I was a realist, and not prone to cynical fantasies or damaging stereotypes. The argument was probably about one of my boyfriends. Or maybe it was about her boyfriends. I really don't remember. We both had poor taste, in very different ways.
I don't know whether I've really retained any of that certainty I had then in my own perception of reality. Some, perhaps, but not all. I doubt it would be for the best, if I had retained it all. I'd like to think that the certainty I feel is warranted. At times, I believe it is.
Just last night - or maybe it was the night before - Archer commented on my tendency to focus on the 'now' as opposed to a more broad way of thinking. I believe that 'now' is all we can really be certain of; the past is subect to interpretation and critically faulty memories, while the future isn't written. And within that narrow window of 'now' I believe we can only be truly certain of our own thoughts and perceptions, short those rare moments of complete trust, which afterall isn't truly proven. That leaves us with a rather small bit of certainty.
And yet, I'm more optimistic than not. I don't feel the need to be certain of reality, because I feel that we, as a species, are such a mixed bag - sometimes miraculously generous, sometimes horribly tragic - that it doesn't make sense to see only one side of us or the other. Truly, we cannot know any soul so well as our own, and the farther the relation the less we know. Thus we cannot truly comprehend what another soul experiences, or know whether most people are 'good' or 'bad'. But we know that if we do good things, we attract good juju, and vice versa.
So as long as I'm working on being a good person, I think my faith in a more idealistic experience of reality isn't so misplaced afterall.
It's possible that my perception of the world makes me quixotic. I'm ok with that. It's a good path to be on.
~
These are new thoughts; I don't think I've really given this aspect of myself serious thought since that argument with my mother, 14 years ago.
This line of thinking was inspired by an otter. More on that later.
Yep, that's me.
~
I remember my mother telling me once, when I was 17 and we were in the middle of an argument, that I was an idealist. She said it as though it were a great shock to her, not necessarily a bad thing, just very surprising. I retorted that I was a realist, and not prone to cynical fantasies or damaging stereotypes. The argument was probably about one of my boyfriends. Or maybe it was about her boyfriends. I really don't remember. We both had poor taste, in very different ways.
I don't know whether I've really retained any of that certainty I had then in my own perception of reality. Some, perhaps, but not all. I doubt it would be for the best, if I had retained it all. I'd like to think that the certainty I feel is warranted. At times, I believe it is.
Just last night - or maybe it was the night before - Archer commented on my tendency to focus on the 'now' as opposed to a more broad way of thinking. I believe that 'now' is all we can really be certain of; the past is subect to interpretation and critically faulty memories, while the future isn't written. And within that narrow window of 'now' I believe we can only be truly certain of our own thoughts and perceptions, short those rare moments of complete trust, which afterall isn't truly proven. That leaves us with a rather small bit of certainty.
And yet, I'm more optimistic than not. I don't feel the need to be certain of reality, because I feel that we, as a species, are such a mixed bag - sometimes miraculously generous, sometimes horribly tragic - that it doesn't make sense to see only one side of us or the other. Truly, we cannot know any soul so well as our own, and the farther the relation the less we know. Thus we cannot truly comprehend what another soul experiences, or know whether most people are 'good' or 'bad'. But we know that if we do good things, we attract good juju, and vice versa.
So as long as I'm working on being a good person, I think my faith in a more idealistic experience of reality isn't so misplaced afterall.
It's possible that my perception of the world makes me quixotic. I'm ok with that. It's a good path to be on.
~
These are new thoughts; I don't think I've really given this aspect of myself serious thought since that argument with my mother, 14 years ago.
This line of thinking was inspired by an otter. More on that later.
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