Like amateur weavers we seek patterns of meaning in the fragments of our awareness as though reality and our lives were a mere train of thought needing an outline. We believe in the importance of the search, assuming that the truth that would finally give our existence some coherence lies somewhere beneath the rubble of brokenness and destruction. Desperate as we are, and fearful of the possible insanity that daily hammers at our consciousness, we fail to notice in our rapt and obsessive search, that the patterns we find were half-wished into existence, and to a great degree distorted by our desires, or perhaps, not so much mutated as simplified translations of our hopes and the more manageable of our despair.
We fail to see that there is no meaning because for the sake of our sanity there has to be. Just as our bodies are the primary timepieces of our lives–time happens to us, and only to us–while the natural world looks upon us with the indifference of the eternal, reality almost scoffs at our sense-seeking. With equal indifference it hurls joy after tribulation, tribulation after joy with the attitude of utter randomness, and yet whether for good or ill we exclaim eureka! the pattern! and claim to see order in a world that is ruled only by undirected action, accidents, and chaos.
Very true. However, sometimes it’s good to realise the subjectivity of those patterns, in order to stand at a remove from them, examine tham and possibly alter them to better fit our lives.
And I wouldn’t assume that ‘the natural world’ is necessarily indifferent… my own experience indicates there may be feedback from outside us, but that it speaks in a means outside our language. Some call it the Numinous, some Tao – but by definition any label will be incomplete and transitory. And even if I’m wrong and there is no such message, acting as though there is has enriched my life greatly.
Your proposition requires much thought and experience. I will pay more close attention.