Wednesday, December 30th 1998, afternoon

The year has ended, and people everywhere are reviewing what they've done and how much they have accomplished in the past twelve months. Many of them will be depressed by the results of such a question. Many more will be prompted to look at what they've done in the span of their life. Of those, quite a few will be even further depressed by that answer. It's a sad thing, because then they'll have to figure out what they are still living for. And that is a hard question to answer, in this age. Our own government is blatantly untrustworthy. This is not to say that it has been worthy of the people's trust for a long time; it hasn't.

Well, there isn't too much that one person can do in the face of the monstrosity we call the government. We can go out and vote, but what real difference can a single person make? One vote among millions makes no difference whatsoever. Now if someone were to encourage others to vote with them for someone they all wanted, that would be more likely to make a real difference. But who takes the time to organize that?

Regardless, that subject makes me depressed. And since I don't have an immediate answer to it, I'm going to move on to a different subject and let this one stew a bit more. Politics were never my strong point anyway.

Back to this 'new year review' so to speak. What do I think about that? Well, in review of my own life, I'd characterize that with one word, stagnation. It's funny how many different forms of non-activity or activity can represent that word. After all, whether you are stagnant or not depends on if you're moving towards your goals or not. If not, regardless of how much you are doing, you aren't getting where you want to go. You are getting somewhere all right, to coin a phrase, 'a little bit older and deeper in debt.'

And that summarizes exactly how I feel about the past year. Probably about quite a bit of my life if I were to look at it in that fashion. Have I been making progress towards my goals? No, at least not enough. Which begs the question, why not? For me the answer seems simple enough: because of my classes and my work. I have to put so much time into doing work for other people that I don't have time for my own pursuits. I am curious, is this is my own fault or a problem created by the society I am in? Well, I am loathe to think that this lack of progress is entirely my own doing. I know that when I am able to work towards my own goals, I have much more fun doing it. I can also work much longer hours and do not feel as drained when I am finished. So I am inclined to believe that it is because I am required to do work by others that accounts for much of my lethargy when I am not working. I think this 'draining work' is the source of my stagnation.

If this is the case, how can I change the circumstances? How do I give myself the impetus to move forward when I have to perform for other people? Gods, I suddenly feel like a little white mouse moving through a maze.

I need to find what it is that I am looking to get out of everything I do. As far as schooling goes, I cannot merely sign up for classes, go, do the homework, and hope to get by. At work I must find something new within it that is in line with my personal goals. Of course, that also means I must be clear about those goals themselves. That's not the problem for me, though.

My problem is, how do I find the new ideas to make my schooling and work involved in attaining my goals? It is all well and good to talk about something new and different, about discovering a 'new way.' It is something else to actually find that way. Maybe I need to get out more, go to new places, try new things. But then how do I do that? It is winter and the last time I went for a walk, I felt like my eyebrows were going to shatter.

Maybe I need to spend more time with people. I do love long nights talking about philosophy, spirituality, society, or anything else that stimulates the mind. But sometimes people wear me out, just like a long day working, when all they do is complain or just talk about mundane stuff. Frankly, do I care how some professional sport turned out, or which team is going to do well? No. Do I care if there is some prick who is making your life a living hell, if you are not going to do anything but suffer it for the money? Up to a point, yes. But after that point, it sounds like the whole situation is slowly killing you, and you have just accepted that death. This has always been a sore spot with me. Do you tell someone in that situation exactly how you feel even when you know it will hurt them and not necessarily help, or do you leave it alone?

I've never known the answer to that question; maybe someday I will. It is not the point, though. The point is that sometimes being around people drains my energy, so much so that I can't stand being around anyone. Even those friends who I love to philosophize with can become draining.

I suppose it is when a situation holds no meaning, no potential for growth, that I become frustrated with it. And if I don't get out of that situation, it starts to drain me. But then there really is only meaning when you are searching for meaning. Here it is again, back to the internal versus the external. We always try to see problems as originating from circumstances outside us when they really come from inside. In the case of meaning, it is definitely an internal thing. You can't get a meaning out of a situation if you don't find the meaning there in the first place. That sounds confusing even to me. Let me put it like this: you can't find something until you know what it is.

Funny, isn't it? We're all scrambling everywhere looking for faith, love, truth, anything like that. But we can't find any of them until we understand what they are. But to have that understanding, we must know what they are. So therefore we must have already found them, right?

To go into this further, let's begin with the idea of looking for something: a truth, a goal, a wisdom. That's it...looking for a wisdom...that is the quest. That is how it starts. So one is looking for wisdom (about what doesn't really matter, as it is wisdom about something). The way...that is what they are searching for...the wisdom of the way to do something. Living their life, or getting along with their spouse of twenty-three years, or defeating an opponent, making a chair, sealing a contract. Searching for the way to do something is within all of those. The minute details are unimportant because it is the searching for wisdom of the specific way that is the process I want to look at. I've been over that process enough times, that's for sure.

So you are looking for this 'wisdom of the way.' Obviously, if you are looking for it, then you don't have it, right? That must mean that it has to be somewhere outside of yourself, external. At least, it is our belief that this 'wisdom of the way' is something external to ourselves. Is this in fact the case?

Let's step back, though, to the premise that this 'wisdom of the way' is within us all the time. In fact, it is only and singularly within us because we are the only ones who know what to accept as true when we find it. We are the only judges as to whether we believe something or not. Trying to change someone's mind about something they strongly believe to be true is evidence of this fact. So if we are the only ones who can realize the wisdom, and that realization comes from within ourselves, then the knowledge of the way must be within ourselves too. It can't be an external thing. The wisdom must be within us all this time, and that is the end of the path I want to come to.

But that begs more questions. If it is within us the whole time, where is it, and why can't we find it when we want to?!! These are the two I still don't understand. It must be somewhere we don't or can't think to look, or it is something that seems so blatantly obvious we ignored it. Or it is something which we would rather not have be true. We ignored it at first and have to go about a long business of deciphering a path until we can mature enough to understand it. Maybe that's it. We are not mature enough to be able to handle these realizations at the first moment of revelation.

If that is the case, why aren't we that mature? Is it something in our biology? I highly doubt that. Why would we evolve so that we hold knowledge inside of ourselves but cannot access it? Not that I think everything has to make sense, but that doesn't even come close. And what about those times when you immediately know the answer to a problem, or 'know the way' to the solution, without having previous knowledge of that problem? I wonder if the quest for external answers indicates there are external factors that promote the internal findings of such wisdom?

Enough of this questioning. I don't know how to progress from here. That's all right, though, because I have remembered something important. We make meaning. We don't just happen upon it. Maybe you do have to go somewhere, or do something to completely realize new wisdom. But it's always within yourself. So if I'm not finding it, it's because I am not looking hard enough for it.