We see things as WE are, not as THEY are. This recognition is key to success with creating a life of our own design. Why? Because the ability to envision, evaluate, assess, project and correct, etc., is remarkably and extensively determined by our subjectivity. Let me tell you what I mean. (And please don’t be distracted by the detail in the next couple of paragraphs. The turning point is just sentences away!)
Are our eyes impartial? No. And we don’t sense sound and taste, for example, with impartial ears and tongues. Are our minds impartial? No. We don’t sense phenomena objectively. Sensing is a feature of our subjectivity, not an objective process.
Our grasp of what’s going on is a comprehension based chiefly on the automatic, reflexive grab of biology, education, conditioning, experience, unfriendly or friendly persuasion and the intoxicating mickeys life slips us. We were inserted, fitted, hammered and seduced into the mix of things that exist interior or exterior to us. And this comprehension becomes a significant piece of the mind’s “I” with which we interpret and engage life.
Parents do their best to shape their children in a particular, thoughtful way, as do schools. Amid this careful rearing and schooling, however, something else equally impressive and equally influential is going on. Children’s senses—their eyes, ears, bodies and minds—are also connecting to, for instance, color, sound, vibe, heft, authority and countless other phenomena that also knuckle-mold their “take” on life.
In virtually every social situation, young children have a feeling for who has the power, who rewards and punishes, who and what should be avoided, as well as for what is of value, what is esteemed and what they say, in effect, sucks.
Also, on much of the turf where they observe, play and interact, children sense that it is a mistake to appear clueless, unknowing, curious or unsure. Inadvertently, involuntarily and uncontrollably, then, a reckless (or anxious) certainty and hard-to-deal-with willful cockiness may replace the inquiring mind. We could say that youngsters, by virtue of what they have sensed, already have a point of view about life or a mindset though they would not be able to articulate it as such.
By the time that significant choices need to be made, this is the subjectively owned furniture occupying the mind of children turning into teens and teens turning into adults. The old furniture stays put unless the pieces are consistently upgraded by, for example, the conscientious acquisition and virtuous practice of wisdom and judgment.
Yet, in part because of the inadvertent closing of the mind mentioned above, most of this furniture remains unexamined, untested, unevaluated. We tend to put more attention on trying to get what we’re supposed to want than on creating a life of our own design.
However, as we begin to exercise our freedom to mediate this subjectivity, exciting new possibilities for intellectual happiness and for life and lifestyle emerge. This is what comes of taking a fresh look at the subjective manner in which we recognize ourselves, our resources (including our minds) and our moral, civil and rational character or identity.
It always was and probably always will be evolving wisdom, aptitude and the clash of wills that inspire and guide humanity’s long journey from its brute state to the poetic light of the heavens. We don’t get from that place where we were originally inserted and situated into a life of our own design without going through the changes. No one can make them for us.
Fortunately, every step of the subjective redesigning and repurposing, though perhaps challenging and time-consuming, is intellectually, emotionally and aesthetically rewarding. Pragmatically rewarding, too.
We often hear that the aim of the examined life is to substitute truth for myth, to try to provide explanations (for phenomena) that aren’t based on false cause. In this case, truth does not refer to an absolute. It refers to what is left when we eliminate the mistaken suppositions and errors in our thinking, listening, reading, writing, etc.
The truth is not a final certainty because there is no place to stand outside the world and no vocabulary vast enough to describe all that was, is and will be. Indeed, there may never be a theory that reconciles the messy complexity of human issues into a neat simple truth.
But acquiring a relatively bigger picture by revealing holes in the myths and suppositions (the stuff we’re ‘sposed to do) in favor of more pragmatic truths is an enlightening endeavor. And an effort both ennobling and humbling in light of its vastness.
This process is infused with feelings of joy, delight and good faith. Something almost magical seems to happen when we see a bigger picture and begin to take up an unreservedly creative, morally principled and unique, individual command of our subjectivity. Indeed, when we see a bigger picture, we are bigger persons in the sense that the furniture of the mind, once cluttered, cobwebbed and unmovable, becomes amenable to design and purposeful arrangement.
With this transformed realization of ourselves, we feel inspired, vibrantly alive and in command of the way in which we wish to live out our lives. And as I said at the conclusion of my last post, when we undertake this journey, our transcendent or willed display of thoughtfulness, connection and affinity puts us on the right side of history.