April 6, 2003
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Updated for Daylight Saving Time (see end)
This quote has been over at the bottom of my left module for months:
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers divine. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it may contradict everything you said today. ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood?’–is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood….”
–from Self-Reliance
—Ralph Waldo Emerson—
I’ve always liked it because of its closing sentiments, the bit about being great and misunderstood. Inconsistency has never seemed to me to be a virtue, but I can see the virtue in being able to change one’s mind when a situation changes or one gets a new perspective on it.
One of the things about living with people, interacting with others, that I’ve never enjoyed and sometimes resented, is the necessity for explaining myself, my statements and my motivations. If anything ever drives me to become a true hermit, that will be part of it. It isn’t that I don’t think about that stuff. Introspection is my specialty. Articulation is a different matter. Language often falls short of expressing what I am thinking. Duality, either/or, is built into our language and I’m a both/and thinker. Trying to express that can be confusing to speaker and hearer alike.
I woke this morning with a new perspective. That came as no surprise. I had done a guided meditation yesterday afternoon. It included suggestions designed to impel me, in a relaxed and open altered state of consciousness, to look at things I had been denying, and to bring to the forefront of my mind some things I might not have paid much attention to. I had been attracted to that CD because I always wonder what’s in there that I’m not seeing. [ecchhh! This paragraph beautifully illustrates for me what I hate about trying to put things into words. It doesn't say quite what I mean, and I don't know a better way to put it.]
Things were going on here in the house when I finished the session, and I didn’t get a chance to reflect on and process the results immediately. That happened overnight, in sleep as it often does. I began to notice the changing perspective as I watched Meet the Press. I’m still unable to adequately articulate what I think about what I saw and heard. I could quite easily express one part of it or another, but not the gestalt, and gestalt it is. Oh how I love to find words that work for me!
Words for my newfound perspective are very hard to find. I’ll be working on that as I go along, as I view things this new way. What I can express is how I feel about it. It feels fitting, appropriate, comfortable. I’m a lot more at ease with myself, with my mind in this frame. The view is broader, more inclusive. I feel as if I have given myself permission to look at things a new way. I feel enabled, empowered. It feels okay. I think I can get used to it
Now, some words on an entirely different topic:
What is so difficult about, “Spring forward; Fall back”??
The time-shift to Daylight Time had escaped my notice until I shifted the mouse this morning and made the SETI@home screensaver go away. Then Windows informed me that it had updated my clock. I might have had a clue when I picked up the remote beside my bed and turned on the TV in time to catch Meet the Press. I’m usually not awake that early.
But I hadn’t looked at the clock, so I didn’t know what time it was until I got up and looked at the computer. After Meet the Press, I tuned the TV to PBS for the Bookworm Bunch, and it was still showing the early-morning GED prep courses. I wondered if someone at the station had forgotten to set their clock forward.
Another hour passed before my toons came on, and then I realized that someone had turned the TV station’s clock back instead of forward. It was 10:00 AM and I heard some sounds of movement from Greyfox’s room, so I went back to tell him about the latest friendly fire incident and David Bloom’s death. I laughingly mentioned that someone at the PBS station had turned their clock back instead of forward.
He looked startled and shot me a wordless question. I told him yes, it’s “spring forward” time. He started moving, alarmed that he was slugabed while time was awasting. Talkeetna has been very short of tourist traffic, and he had decided to set up beside the road near Sears and Wal-Mart in Wasilla today. It’s a long commute, but preferable to an absence of income closer to home. I saw him start to reset his wrist watch just before I turned and went to start breakfast.
In the kitchen, the time change came up again. He asked what time it was. It was ten something. He scowled, sputtered, and said, “…but… are you sure? It should be eight!” Then he went on to say, “Spring forward, Fall back, right?” I agreed. He paused, then he said, “Oh… it’s spring, isn’t it?”
Comments (10)
very nice
hehe, the other day I was wondering what would happen if a t.v. station forgot to change their programming….
I love Daylight Saving Time!!
You are right, Snuggles is a lot of company and gives me something to look forward to coming home to.
I forgot about it this morning too, oddly, my Digital Cable Box sets the time on it’s own as does the computer…I lucked out.
-M
Hmm, I forgot about it too…luckily, my roommates filled me in. But I ALWAYS forget
I wonder if when we shed these bodies, we’ll be able to articulate all that we need to with some other language?
We certainly won’t have need for daylight savings time! LOL
I’m not sure where this kooky language came from down here. Half of it is being too lazy to finish a word correctly. That irritates me terribly!
I guess in the awful heat, and working for years in the cotton fields, they really could care less if they talked straight or not. Maybe they got bored and invented pig latin a la Georgia.
I’m surprised they didn’t find birth control years ago in this state first! I would think as much as women suffered everywhere, they would have.
When we lived in Columbia SC, I knew a black girl from Charleston. She talked so funny, I never knew what she had just said. She used ordinary English words but the meanings were so different she could cuss you out or tell you she loved you and still have no clue.
I like what chastity said. (Above)
As for consistency, foolish or otherwise, I’ll simply have to think more about that. One would say … after traveling to and from my Xanga site, that I don’t suffer from any sort of consistency, other than to be consistent about my inconsistancy.
Oh dear God.
That sounds ever so much like a Wonderland phrase.
Oh! How fitting.
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Day light savings time can go to hell. I want my hour back.
damnit, i hate being understood!. i guess i ain’t that great, after all…..
and i DETEST daylight savings! now it’s dark again when i take my walks. i’ll probably break a hip or somethin’…..
I spent that day w/my parents. Let me assure you, there is no end to the fun in a house with a computer and a vcr and a cell phone and a new cordless that all reset themselves. You’re wandering around behind the old people saying…’don’t touch that…no…don’t touch that…’ Role reversal in the extreme..
I had to wait til I came home though to reset my watch. Damned Timex…if they’d just pick a set pattern and keep it on all of their digitals…but, no. They prefer to update which button to push before pushing what button for how many times…to…aaugh!!!!!
What ralph is saying (ah, dear old Ralph, I knew him well) is: truth is found in context, and the listener must be able to encompass at least a sufficient amount of it to see it as reasonable.
The contexts themselves may vary with the mood of the moment.
As for your sensitivities, a straightforward fast, losing you at least twenty to thirty pounds, would bring the junky chemicals out of the fat of you, which surely must accumulate at a fairly rapid rate up there where so much preservatives must be used for a lengthy shelf life. I’ve been through it and I assure you, though I hardly think you will believe or accept it, that once you get rid of the accumulation of overloaded chemicals, most if not all of your sensitivities will go away. Then get some good plant derived colloidal minerals and some essential fatty acids and/or better yet, buy a Jack LaLanne juicer ($150.00, or so) and juice up some vegetables, and you’ll be a new woman. Of course, you may not be able to tell when your totem man is smoking but you probably won’t care so very much about that then anyway. This from Dr Roadie — no, I don’t make housecalls
so give up your plans to waylay me with a baseball bat to teach me a thing or two.
Incidentally, I mean totem man as a compliment; it seems a nice phrase I made up on the spur of the moment for a good guy, an Alaskan guy. And, watch your blood pressure.