What am I looking for?
February 11th, 2023
I don't accept the fact that I will never have the totality of knowledge and understanding of human nature or history or science. I know that it will never happen, I will never even get close to scratching the surface of all that is there to know and understand. I still won’t accept it and will try my best to get to bottom of the underlining logic and reason for everything that is and was, and I still hope to be able to render my final judgment on it.
In the meantime, I try to live consciously and enjoy everything that gives me pleasure and sustenance to keep on going. That’s funny — that second part of the last statement — I still haven't tried a LOT of things in life and I don't know if there are more things that can give me pleasure and maybe I don't even know it. Maybe that is why I am afraid to try new things and I operate only within what I already know and feel comfortable with.
I don't know…
But what I know is that there are things I keep looking for (and finding them easily and plentifully) within the broad scope of what is called my daily needs and wants. I am looking for beauty, self-awareness, and self-deprecation. Beauty can be found in everything — even in the ugliness and the grotesque — if you look hard enough and know how and what to see. Self-awareness is instrumental in understanding the emotions and moods that constitute all our lives and all our interactions. Self-deprecation is needed not to lose sanity or engage in egregious behavior of self-importance which in the end is all-destructive.
All that combined is needed by me to function daily. When it happens that I don't experience it every day, my mind and body will send me a stark and grim reminder disguised as tiredness and pessimism and catastrophism and paranoia. When I see myself tired and pessimistic and full of paranoid catastrophic thoughts — I don't look for any self-medication or blame others or give up on creeping depression. ANYMORE, that is — for most of my life I gladly and easily let it happen and gnaw out my insides since that was the easiest thing to do and I was magnificently lazy and pathologically and pathetically self-pitying. What I do instead now is to look and find (without any trouble) something to give me a respite and release from it. Like the painting above — it has all I need: beauty, self-awareness and self-deprecation presented through the creativity of the artist. I have zero knowledge of XVII-century Chinese landscape painting, but I know what I like. And I know what helps my mind. And staring at that painting and letting my mind go blank for a while and then formulating thoughts of appreciation and curiosity and understanding and awe was all I needed to get back on track and again be the me I like to be.
