I'd Rather Sit this One Out

We are all fools who attempt to tell the meaning of things absent the slightest understanding of what it is we mean nor what could even be meant by someone or something. Very superficial are we.

I just did that. I cannot help doing it, it seems.

As humans is it our only pastime? Or is it just the source of everything we think, say, write and do?

We see tracks of a bear in the woods. We think, this means a bear has been here no longer ago than it has been since the last rain. We start to reason.

Someone asks my religion. I could name a few, but really, it is Texas Tech sports, with an emphasis on football.

I send everything through that filter first. We are a tough team who take on opponents manned by superior athletes who are much better funded, equipped, supported, recruited, and publicized. And we hope to overcome all that with a lot of stubborn grit. It began I believe in the minds of early pioneers to the High Plains of West Texas who settled in with not enough water, frequent winds, tornados, and dust who more or less willed a college from the treasury of the Texas Legislature to be built where none was more unlikely. Today there is a law school and a medical school on that campus.

Now we know my religion we can wonder whether it could be possible to escape it. The question is: can one live knowing a language without following it? Might we see the same animal tracks referred to above and without a name know instantly what is shown? Might it be we would actually know much more from sighting the tracks that way than by the reasoning process? Can one live a satisfying life with no attempt to derive meaning from it? Whatever that means? I am reminded the answer is, no.

Suppose one could see that meaning has no meaning? Even for a second see it? It was education that trained me to think that intelligence is meaning derived from a process, reasoning. That is not what great artists tell us, nor scientific geniuses nor is it what anyone else who is seen as superior has experienced on the way to greatness. All seem to tell it that reasoning has to be transcended to enter a zone where they do their thing. And my own somewhat limited experience bears that out. I never learned anything well by thinking it through. Trained to do it, I begin there each time, like a religious person will begin at the earliest teachings of his or her religion. Filters. Like Tech football. Such filters are not beneficial but actually blind us. To get to excellence in a field of endeavor one has to transcend limits of reason. Some have described it as looking with one's entire being. Reason has been a big handicap for mankind. And, it has caused much unnecessary suffering to all living things on Earth. Reason is equally grounded in good and bad, success and failure, good and evil, etc. So, it is just as likely to shit on you as to pull you out of shit. But there is a field out beyond right doing and wrong doing. We meet there in songs of rejoicing. There greatness bends rules. Ignores them. Plays with them. Fulfills them. If I cannot dance with you in that field, I'd rather sit this one out.

Ahhh. There you have it! It is in learning we can sit this one out we find freedom from language. Language should serve us, not the other way around. It feels like, live and let live.