Newness

Life is predicated on a paradox—perhaps defined by contradiction. The true, earnest life is lived in the crunch of contradictory concepts, in the space between the ease of ideas, where the gaze of immanence blanks in the blind spot.

And that spot is a skinny slice of the pie, too, for our self-reductive thrust toward simplification is more clever than we. (It has to be, if we are to survive.) The world is a puzzle, and we crave predictability. The drive to interpret our experience within the meager framework of our own knowledge amounts to less than we would expect: the bright epiphany of a conscious click, when the mind bluffs comprehension, amounts to the assimilation of novelty to the past’s easy distinctions, which in their turn were likewise reduced from their dazzling mosaic. That is, most meaning is gleaned by assimilating perception to past patterns. Striking reduction, that. Life makes sense in light of itself, and we proud knowers, who nonetheless so little know ourselves, walk past the circularity in weightless relief.

So what is human nature? Here is a humble suggestion for you: insecurity.

And what occurs if we simply let confusion profuse? We could stand outside the institutions screaming for our allegiance (that noble raping of uniqueness); stop this shameful cowering in the corners of life where we cling to broken toys of distinctions; the individual could recognize himself as irreparably such and stroll into the mystery of his particularity. What if we see the self’s strangeness in relation to a given situation—and, though tempted to pretense of familiarity, as blind men greet this quiet comer with quiet joy?

...Then we might add a new jingle to our pocket full of rhymes: change.