Posted February 4th, 2008 at 5:42PMAll philosophical beliefs and ramblings boil down to a few fundamental concepts. You have your individualism versus community, belief in a religion and belief in the terrestrial, pessimism and optimism (often – evidenced in a belief of the inherent evil or good of mankind).
Et-cetera.
Along the lines of “everything has been thought of; there is nothing new.” If we allow this, then the question becomes: When was the last time man thought something truly profound?
It might be said that moments of clarity are rare, and vary in magnitude. Small ones occur more often, to many. (The smaller price on a tag showing the price per lb allows us to be savvy shoppers at the supermarket, for instance.) But truly profound moments might be considered a dying breed. How many times can man discover gravity?
The assumption here is that our moments must be on display to the world to be profound. If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound? If a lucid dream explaining life, the universe, and everything comes to us, but flirts away from our consciousness, then what consequence does it have?
I spent the day hauling firewood across our yard, piling it close to the basement door. Afterwards, I collapsed onto the wood and surveyed the view from atop my new pile. All day it’s been dreary and overcast. But I was warm and content: watching the cars roll by down the valley on Route 74, listening to a noisy squirrel across in the woods, enjoying the cold, flat surface of the wood. The smell of the wet, split wood. I leaned back to watch the sky. It was a uniform gray, punctuated only by a wispy thread of smoke from the chimney of our house.
The moment felt profound, not for anything that might have happened, but for the physical exertion and feeling of contentment, clarity. Another dreary February day. The state of mind of a low dose of LSD. A break in the seasonal affective disorder. A moment of profundity.
The lucid dream, the moments of clarity, are lost if we’re not watching for them. Are we? I’ve come to the conclusion that profundity doesn’t need an audience, and that expanding on these small moments is the best path towards a healthier life. How to go about doing that is the challenge!
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