April 19, 2013
Vagabond Journey no. 1,990
The value of experience is not in seeing much, but in seeing wisely.
(William Osler)
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Hello Val
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We are always being told to think outside the box. But the fact is that we all live in boxes, and we expect to function appropriately and successfully inside that box whether its our home, job, school or other place of activity.
Original thought is an excellent quality to posses and use. I often write about it. But it isn't necessary to leave one's home or place of employment to exercise it. What is necessary is to look up, realize and explore the unfamiliar places in one's thinking. The real room we live in is the room of consciousness.
I sometimes feel claustrophobic, confined in some tight space I can't get out of. I have had bad dreams about it. But I know what those dreams are about. They are symbolic of a great dislike for anything inane, anything that wears the cloak of ignorance and stupidity, expressed in my life or the lives of those around me.
My room is filled with ideas, mine and other people's. It isn't in order to expand my consciousness, my room. The room is large enough already. It's to have as much wisdom as I can to use as tools for my own thinking.
Outside my window is a parking lot. There's a car parked in it. At first it's an automobile. Then it becomes a symbol of transportation. It soon becomes a gesture of defiance against stolidity and immobility. It eventually returns to being a car, but it has taken on solid expressions of itself that define it in the larger scope of things. And so it is with the ideas in my room.
I shun cliches. I don't like wise old sayings that hang on walls and are ignored. "Love thy neighbor as thyself." That's a good idea but how many people practice it. In fact how many people love themselves enough to practice it.
The truth of things, the real wisdom, may not lie outside the box, if the box is large enough to hold it.
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Dana Bate
Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
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3 comments:
Thank you. What you just said is exactly what I needed to hear. I've often had those thoughts myself but you displayed them so eloquently. So much more eloquently than I could.
I have always been a bit of a free spirited person who beats to my own drum. Don't know if that is thinking outside the box or not, though. As for those darn cliches - the fewer I see of them, the better. (although I am guilty of using them now and again). *sigh*
I agree with you, Rose. They just kind of slip out every now and then.
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