Story of the Book
I once began writing a book when I was 10. After writing several pages, I made a decision. I went down the hill from our
house to the aging mansion at the bottom. I walked up the
stone path and went in through the side door. I made my way
through the halls, past the east wing, the library and into my
pastor's study. There he was at his desk, in his sunlit room on
this warm afternoon.
I greeted him and nervously expressed my desire to read the beginning of my book to our congregation. He began speaking about many things unrelated to my request and his words became muffled in my ears. My eyes drifted over to the corner of his desk and fixated on his clear plastic and green ant farm.
He asked me something.
I pulled my attention back to him. His one eye moved about as he asked me again, "why?"
I could only think to say something that would persuade him,
"Because God wants me to."
On Sunday, I read my story.
The Problem of Women
As a woman, I would never claim that there is a “problem” in general with being a woman. But, let me clarify the problem I see. As women, we have problems that we have to solve, to understand and overcome. I admire my own kind. I love my own kind. I love women. So what is the problem? I don’t believe we grasp the power women hold, we tend to think of our womenly qualities, sans power. How do we understand this potential power, or how do we even harness it? I see it is an unused source of energy. The narrative that exists is that we need to be given power or that we don’t even possess it. This is not completely true. We have far more than we are aware of, but it is untapped.
In the words of Simone de Beauvoir “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” I will take this very famous quote of hers and maybe take it in a direction she never intended. We don’t necessarily understand our nature or the possibilities of it. And yes, our surroundings will influence the way we interact with our own person, sexuality, gender and so on. We can easily be swept along the waters of a very strong culture and never think about where it takes us or we can leave the current and ask ourselves: Where are we going? What is this even for?
We can become the women we determine ourselves to be.
Problem solving our lives is a gift, we don’t need to go along with the trends of society, whether liberal or conservative, religious or irreligious. We have a choice to step out. We can determine something of ourselves here, we can choose to solve the problems. There are inevitable hurtles, and many of them have been leapt over by those who have gone before us and have given us more freedoms than we ever knew before. Simone de Beauvoir’s work has been very influential in the various feminist movements which have given us more liberties in society than before.
I believe that women are powerful and I believe most of that power is unrealized because we believe a narrative that contradicts its existence. We can solve this problem and I believe we need to. You may wonder why?
Simple. Because no one else will.
Poverty of Language
Language is one of our greatest attributes as a species. It is creative, engaging, forms alliances, etc. And even though that is the case, language cannot capture all intention. When we create, our thoughts are given an opportunity to be more deeply understood and explored.
It is difficult to know how to give language to impressions and art has the power to capture the impression without words.
Quality of Community
How can one qualify community? Without differing perspectives and ideas, without other’s examples for living, without dialogue we begin to petrify into a static state. We no longer seek to become, we just are. It’s an age old story that is on a loop. I say this, but have to add that others aren’t necessarily the answer to evolving our lives because we could easily surround ourselves with placaters. We are all seduced into entering a house of mirrors which only serves to form an echo chamber of ideas. This mineralizes in our lives and we become unmovable stones.
I believe the more resolute we are in what we “know” the less we know when we die. Being open to our own fallibility is an insecure plane to exist on, a plane of constantly knowing that we don’t know or will not know enough. When I was 20 years old, I knew truth far more than I do now. I was impenetrable to other ideas, I knew the absolute, the overarching, the objective Truth. Yes, I knew. But I didn’t. We want an amount of certainty in our lives to feel like we aren’t free falling through existence and we can grasp onto something substantial. But, there is a caveat to knowledge, it is a living thing. It will always expand and leave us more room to learn.
Enter others.
From others, from a community, we would hope to strive to surround ourselves with those that would challenge our ideas, not to be contrarian but because the pursuit of knowledge would be what both parties were engaged in finding. And it is the playing with ideas and the struggling back and forth of minds that has the potential to generate new knowledge.
When we settle into our nook into a society that soothes our ego, a social salve if you will, we become protective of it. It brings a sense of peace to the anxieties of life that every human will encounter. Unchallenged and happy.
I understand it, I’ve jumped back and forth many times, for it is a very seductive path to follow. The community can either affirm who you have been or it could be an impetus toward greater self and overall knowledge.
Excerpts: Ugly Cry
“I woke up to an another world. The streaks of dust-speckled sunlight made my eyelids glow and for a few moments I didn’t know a thing about a thing. The world didn’t have to inform me about the past and I didn’t need to think about the future.
I lay there for maybe five minutes without thoughts, without words, just nothing. It was as soon as my legs moved off the bed and toward the floor that gravity seemed to care about me too much and the weight of my body seemed heavier than most days. I stood with a stiffness that each step was able to loosen for me.
I found the bathroom and didn’t eagerly look for a mirror, but there it was anyway. In the reflection I had to remember, no other way but to notice. Those eyes aren’t from laughing, they aren’t even good at seeing, as I consciously put on my glasses. My face was swollen from a one- minute cry. It always reacted so abrasively. I always looked fatter and older after a cry, it was never a romantic look like I read in many books, it was quite ugly on me.”
Exponential
I remember sitting in a Linguistics course in college and learning about the creativity of language. Language is something that we constantly use to convey intentions and ideas.
“Language has a creative character: it is typically innovative without bounds, appropriate to circumstance but not caused by them – a crucial distinction – and can engender thoughts in others that they recognise they could have expressed themselves.”
—Noam Chomsky
The more people we come across and the more complex a society we build, it inevitably demands a more nuanced and developed language to engage with it. In short, language means progress. The term “Logos” has a varied meaning among philosophers and became very significant within Judaism and Christianity. Logos (the Word) became synonymous with God. God spoke and everything was created. The Word (Logos) became flesh. There are very strong associations with the divinity of language. It isn’t just Biblical, it is a defining aspect of our humanity. We passed on our knowledge through oral tradition for thousands of years before they ever developed a written language to ensure that it wasn’t forgotten. Language was protected, written language even more so. We speak and things happen as a result of our words. Most aspects of evolution within a society happens because we use language to express ideas.
I began reading The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch and it has furthered this thought on exponential language. Ideas, words, and thoughts are all creative acts. As ideas are shared, they interact with eachother, and much like a any mixing of elements, it creates something new. We have the ability to do this to no end. Deutsch posits something incredibly significant though. Yes, we may have the ability to constantly evolve, but evolution doesn’t necessarily mean improvement. We can go infinitely further if we use, as he calls it “good explanations” to do so. I’ve only just begun reading his book, but he is laying the groundwork for something profound. We can evolve to extinction or we can use good explanations and create new knowledge and evolve to the infinite.
I can’t say that I grasp everything he talks about in his book but it is at the very least thought provoking and definitely earth moving.
Sojourn
A trail of children followed her and she moved the earth around them. She built a home, a city, heaven.
If she ran, they followed in step. They wanted to know where she was going and join the adventure. She allowed them in sometimes. And once in a while they found a clue under a rock or a lost story from a broken branch.
They knew they had to follow her. They wanted to know what she was seeking but she hadn’t a clue. It was her greatest fear to understand what it was. It was the search that she sought.
One day she was a woman and a trail of women followed her. They wanted to know where she would lead them, wanted to know what she was searching for. She opened her hands to show them her palms, they gently lined her creases, they made assumptions, they created a story of who she was and it was good. She grasped their hands in hers and led them to a mountain. They stood before it and began to climb.
