If I say I like broccoli and you give me some, you might feel annoyed if I say I have changed my mind. "I used to like broccoli but now I don't" or "I only like broccoli sometimes and this isn't one of those times." If I am too fickle and changeable, it will be hard to know me and be my friend.
That is true for me, too. If I can't tell if I like broccoli, if I have to take some and taste it to see how I like it each time, I will add to my decision burdens. If that condition also pertains to too many other aspects of my life, I will be overburdened and confused. So, it is easier to just permanently decide that I like this and not that. I like cheese sticks but I notice that sometimes they are really delicious and sometimes they actually taste pretty bad.
My parents owned a confectionary store when I was a kid. I liked candy very much and felt I was in heaven looking at all the types just waiting for me to eat. They gave me my first allowance of a dollar a week. I spent the whole dollar on my favorite candy, candy corn. Double yum! I quickly ate the whole box. Double yuck! I haven't liked candy corn one bit since then and that was about 66 years ago.
For self-respect and some feeling of continuity,, I have consistently maintained that I don't like candy corn. During that long time since my overdose, I might have been able to enjoy it once again. But it has been easier to simply hold to the image of myself as a candy-corn-disliking kind of guy.
I don't want to think that I don't know myself but actually in some ways, I don't. I have never seen my liver or my brain. I don't know very much about my elbow or my shoulder. I don't know what I can remember and I don't know how to test or see all my memories. I don't know how accurate they are. Truthfully, I can't remember much of what I thought yesterday or how much of that I agree with today.
The Buddha famously concluded that there is no self. I can see that no part of me is what I call the self but every time I look in the mirror, the person I see looks much like the person I saw on my last visit to the silvered glass. Other people treat me as a continuation of the person they knew. And of course, I feel that I am a steady presence even though I can remember that I once liked Lone Ranger and The Shadow on radio but am not now interested in listening to them.
I seem to spend pretty much time and energy trying to be consistent to some degree and yet open to change and novelty to some degree, too. I don't know where I get the idea that I should perform that balancing act. It just comes naturally but not easily. I do make mistakes. I think it will be fun to be with someone and it isn't. I take up a book I started with pleasure but now, I am not in the mood.
Heraclitus said long ago that no one can step into the same river twice, since the water flows along and changes. Buckminster Fuller wrote the book "I Seem to Be a Verb". Yes, I am a process, with some continuity and some changes.
--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
That is true for me, too. If I can't tell if I like broccoli, if I have to take some and taste it to see how I like it each time, I will add to my decision burdens. If that condition also pertains to too many other aspects of my life, I will be overburdened and confused. So, it is easier to just permanently decide that I like this and not that. I like cheese sticks but I notice that sometimes they are really delicious and sometimes they actually taste pretty bad.
My parents owned a confectionary store when I was a kid. I liked candy very much and felt I was in heaven looking at all the types just waiting for me to eat. They gave me my first allowance of a dollar a week. I spent the whole dollar on my favorite candy, candy corn. Double yum! I quickly ate the whole box. Double yuck! I haven't liked candy corn one bit since then and that was about 66 years ago.
For self-respect and some feeling of continuity,, I have consistently maintained that I don't like candy corn. During that long time since my overdose, I might have been able to enjoy it once again. But it has been easier to simply hold to the image of myself as a candy-corn-disliking kind of guy.
I don't want to think that I don't know myself but actually in some ways, I don't. I have never seen my liver or my brain. I don't know very much about my elbow or my shoulder. I don't know what I can remember and I don't know how to test or see all my memories. I don't know how accurate they are. Truthfully, I can't remember much of what I thought yesterday or how much of that I agree with today.
The Buddha famously concluded that there is no self. I can see that no part of me is what I call the self but every time I look in the mirror, the person I see looks much like the person I saw on my last visit to the silvered glass. Other people treat me as a continuation of the person they knew. And of course, I feel that I am a steady presence even though I can remember that I once liked Lone Ranger and The Shadow on radio but am not now interested in listening to them.
I seem to spend pretty much time and energy trying to be consistent to some degree and yet open to change and novelty to some degree, too. I don't know where I get the idea that I should perform that balancing act. It just comes naturally but not easily. I do make mistakes. I think it will be fun to be with someone and it isn't. I take up a book I started with pleasure but now, I am not in the mood.
Heraclitus said long ago that no one can step into the same river twice, since the water flows along and changes. Buckminster Fuller wrote the book "I Seem to Be a Verb". Yes, I am a process, with some continuity and some changes.
--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
