it’s late and i shouldn’t write when it’s late. i get all philosophical…

Things being as they are, out and about in the big, wide world, what with folks arguing about this and that, here and there, what and what not, it’s got me to thinking. In particular it’s got me thinking about thinking in a kind of meta-thinking way that gets rather circular and confusing after just a few moments of effort. So here it is: the problem.

See, we all have ideas about things. Some of us have big ideas about small things, or small ideas about big things, or big ideas about really big things. Moreso, we all have some very normal ideas about some very odd things. Or (like me) some of us also have some very odd ideas about what some might consider are very normal things. It’s really a game of mix-and-match, here, so… well, you can mess about with the dozens of iterations therein and figure out where you happen to sit, stand or otherwise occupy on the multiple axes of size and scale and depth of thought, and we’ll just get on with thinking about it, shall we?

The bottom line is that we all have our own little eclectic collection of ideas, and whatever the blend of these ideas happen to be gives us a kind of individual and unique perspective on reality.

This, by the way, shouldn’t be news to readers. You should have figured this out already. This is pretty basic thinking about how other people — even people you think are similar in a hundred other ways — think differently than you, kind-of-thinking. It’s a cognitive development stage, I believe, and if you haven’t got this figured out by now, and you are older than five, you need to talk to someone. Preferably soon.

And it’s not my point.

a little boat on a big sea…

My point, and what I’ve been thinking about, is how this perspective seems to anchor us somewhere, someplace, sometime in the vast fabric of every idea ever thought in any place in time and space. If we think a little bit more (I know, I’m pushing it here) and consider the idea of all of this reality spread out like a vast, open, seemingly endless metaphorical sea, then each of us — extending that metaphor a little further — has a little boat anchored somewhere in that sea, bobbing around in the waves but sticking to one particular spot. That little metaphorical boat is anchored there in our sea (that is itself also a metaphor for all of the ideas spread across space and time) and it doesn’t move — or at least not without a whole lot of effort on our part.

That boat is where each of us wants to be. Wants. Each of us has a little boat, floating out in that vast sea, and to each and every one of us, every single human being that existed ever, exists now, or will exists, our own little boat, floating about on that great wide sea of time and space and ideas… that boat is our dream spot. It is where we yearn to go. It is our ultimate destination, our perfect reality, our absolute mind-bent-on-it-irrevocably hope-to-be-there, live-there, forever-there place in the whole wide sea.

Got it?

But not all of us are on our boats. (Ah, that’s the trick isn’t it?)

In fact, arguably, most of us (while we have a pretty good idea of where our little metaphorical boats are floating in the metaphorical sea of ideas) are nowhere near our boats. Many of us are swimming around in the ocean, but not alone: we’re linked together with others, others who are also looking for their boats, linked by loose affiliations and hopes for survival outside of our boats, but linked, tied, and cojoined. We’re all out there in the sea, strung together, sometimes by choice, often tangled into a web of something that we can’t quite see or feel or even sense, but something that we can’t quite break free of either. Swimming. Trying. Pushing. Pulling. And always yearning to reach those damn little metaphorical boats.

swim hard little human

And that brings us back to our problem: each of wants to get back to our own boat. Wants. Desires. Craves. Aches with every beat of our hearts. Each of us wants to be on our boat, to be floating in the sea, to be dry and happy and exactly where we want to be. And each and every one of us will, at some point, do something, anything, everything possible to attempt to get back to our own boat.

But there’s the other trick: since so many of us are linked together in different and confusing ways, some people are swimming one direction, others paddling in another, some are hanging there and not wanting to go anywhere because they’re already clinging to the sides of their boat, already where they want to be, and simply trying to climb aboard. Some are pulling harder than others on their own, while others have managed to convince people nearby to swim in a concerted direction, maybe because their boats are all in the same direction or maybe just because they were really persuasive. But everyone is pushing, pulling, or just plain treading water.

And there we are, most of us nowhere near our little boats. Many of us will never reach our little boats.

At some point we’ll each be at our best trying to reach our little boat. At some point we’ll each be at our worst. And all the while, dragging others along, sometimes willingly, sometimes not, often pulling those others away from their own destinations or being pulled further from ours. But all of us will spend our entire lives, do things that are good, bad, ugly, and downright evil in the attempt.

All of us. No matter who you are: all of us.

Think about that. I dare you to claim you’re the one and only exception to this.

and now, back to the point i was trying to make…

And now this is where I pull back from the metaphor and remind you that this all started with me thinking about thinking and ideas, and how our unique and individual perspectives on the universe, our electic collection of ideas and beliefs, formed in a hundred billion unqiue and individual stories across hundreds of thousands of generations, culminates in a moment of time, here and now: because I can’t say how any one person came to think what they think, why they think that, or whatever. I can have an opinion about it. I can judge it. I can evaluate it. It’s what each of us do, everyday to everyone to whom we talk. (Should we? That’s an entirely different philosophical question, of course. But we do, anyhow.)

But each of us is anchored somewhere. Each of us has that little boat of ideal ideas (or at least what we think is ideal).

it’s all interconnected… somehow, right?

And that particular somewhere (and somewhen) might be here and now, but they might also be somwhere completely random, inexplicable, or eclectic: in rural Saskatchewan in 1956, in seventeenth century France, in ancient Greece, or on twenty-eighth century Mars. That where and when is tied to ideas. And those ideas might be good or evil, dark or light, left or right, strong or weak, compassionate or malevolent, absolute or flexible, soft or hard. But, each of us is anchored. Anchored to something, somewhere, some time, some ideal moment of thought and morality, hope and aspiration.

Each of us is anchored, seeking that mooring out in the vast sea of every idea ever thought, trying to reach it: Sometimes helping each other and sometimes hurting each other. We can. We should. That is not the question. But always… always… always our efforts (we should not forget) will be counter to someone else’s desires, our pull, effort, swimming, tugging, yanking, yearing towards our own boat will always drag another someone further from their little metaphorical boat. Always. But we are forever trying anyways.

We just are. Or so I’ve been thinking.