An Unfortunate Occurance

I wonder... how often does one person ask another if the other would like to partake in an activity in which the former has little interest but only asks out of generosity to the latter? Or, how often do we offer another some of our food, hoping that the person will say no? Am I the only one? Such a happening, especially the first, is unfortunate. One person asks another disingenuously to partake in an activity. Let's say the second person, thinking the first earnestly wants to engage in activity with one yet is uninterested oneself, consents out of magnanimity because that person thinks it will make the other happy. But it doesn't make either party happy, as each is only doing it for the sake of the other, with true intentions concealed in their hearts. I wonder how often this occurs. I wonder how disingenuous or sincere people are? Of course, one can't generalize for all the time, but I wonder what percentage of people, across and within cultures, are disingenuous in their dealings with others. What does this portend for our impressions of others, if they are built on falsehoods, albeit with good intentions? I'm not so miserably cynical and misanthropically pessimistic as to follow this vein of thought to its end, but the question itself is worth asking...

Wanderer Above the Mists

There was a time, perhaps high school, when I used to search for words online that I thought described me. I would see where those words would lead me, usually toward various images, and in a manner of speaking I would derive meaning from those images - perhaps that I was not the only one or that there was a visual representation of how I felt inside - who I was.

I have long since ceased this practice. I no longer search for meaning in words, but words in meaning. I define myself; I am not defined. The agency matters. My direction has inverted. I have become the expeditious captain of my own life, rather than the wayfaring skipper. Enough with the metaphors. I can weave the most brilliant of tapestries, but it takes someone attuned - or perhaps simple-minded - to divine the meaning latent in their images.

That's what is all comes back to - the variable of understanding in the equation of perception. It all comes back to the desire to be understood, to leave clues that others might decipher, to understand another being for even a moment. I sought definition, manifested in image, as a mirror by which to feel understood, even if it was only by me. That alone, I submit, is a grand accomplishment that few can boast. I'm not even sure I can to be honest, but I'm getting close... Close to the perception of aperception - that is, sensation - just being and awareness of it. If a picture is worth 1000 words, then what of 1000 pictures? It's all an exponential curve approaching the asymptote of comprehension that can only be reached through empathetic inference grounded in experience. Words and images merely seek to convey what we fail to adequately communicate - pure sentiment. Each thought is a wave in the ocean of brain activity. Often we just ride the wave toward the equilibrium of the surf... bardo nothingness. But to share that wave with others... to be joined on that wave - what would that be like! Incomprehension. Failure to compute. We only know what can call to conscience, grounded in immediate experience. Memories are but a representation of that experience - potent yet alien. We've all been to the ocean, seen it in pictures and movies, read about it in print... but to actually be in it! No memory can adequately recreate the sensation coupled with disposition that leads to perception. We each experience it every time for the first time, and nothing comes close to conveying that exact experience. Such is the nature of thought. We've all been there, but who can live in a thought perpetually? [If only sharing was so intuitive, we would hardly have cause to do it and value it so.]