Vanity Blog #5: If Only I Knew German

My words fall on deaf ears but I continue talking all the same, for I have something to say. What I am trying to communicate might not be new or even revolutionary but someone, someday, will listen and it will be good. These words are old ones and I pair them together in an attempt to make people listen. I hope that they will hear what I have to say and will take that message and understand that it is an individual who is talking. My goal is not in the words. It is in me. The same message could be seen if someone took the time to look into my face long enough. The message is me.

We, as people, exist not to bear witness to the events around us. We exist, rather, to be the perceived. the problem is that the perceived does not exist without the perceiver. There must be a person to bear witness to our actions and words to turn them into something of value. My continuing search for an audience is for this and this alone. We exist in a infinite loop of both tasks. We have to be such. The infinite needs us to see it and be it. It is all so much easier with help, and I take no ones hand to help me toward my end. That leaves me with leverage, and my leverage is that I do not look until I see what I want. I talk until someone will listen. The present is as such as well. It is an infinite loop of that which will one day become "history". We are now at a point in this 'present' where we can say that truth is only that which you can make another person believe. The strength and validity of our truth is measured against how many people believe it to be true. And the methodology of creating that truth and honesty is repetition. Say something enough times to enough people and it becomes, for those people, the truth. This is why I keep talking, because for those people, it becomes grander than actuality. It is truth.

We misinterpret the naming of a thing with knowing it. For instance, how do I know a chair? Well, what is a chair? Is it the word? The sound, "chair?" The image in your mind of four legs, a seat and a back? Or is it wood from a tree that sprouted into being from a seed that traveled from tree to tree for millions of years, each tree's survival dependent upon a fragile ecological balance, a perfect combination of minerals, sunlight, weather, and, ultimately, sub-atomic particles that have been zipping around since the Big Bang? Add to that the billions of years and infinite forces needed to create the conditions needed for human beings to exist, chop down the tree, haul it to a mill, carve it into smaller pieces, send it to a factory, shape it into a chair, ship it to a store, purchase it, stick it in an car and drive it home so that an equally complex ass can sit on it, and you may begin to know a chair. In other words, when we truly look deeply into the one thing, we see it is, in fact, the all, and, of course, contained within the all, is the one thing. So, that nothing becomes everything. That nothing can be anything. I'm sitting on a chair now. What is that chair? What am I? And how should I refer to it if I don't know it? For though I know its name, I do not know its substance or being.

Even with this profound lack of knowledge of both truth and the existence of anything there is a place in this world for us. When we truly believe that nothing is anything without us, it occurs to me that the world might just be better without me. For without me NOTHING become ANYTHING. So, all those SOMETHINGS that I put value and merit in pale in comparison to the vast omniscience of the capability of NOTHING and ANYTHING. And that, my friends, means EVERYTHING.

I believe that voices of fear, both from without and within, can only be banished by putting trust the voice that comes from one's own heart. Be still. Listen to it. If it speaks of love and compassion for others, for the world itself, it just might be the voice of God--or a reasonable facsimile. If, however, it snarls with fear of the unknown, fear of losing what you have or of not getting what you want, then it just might be the voice of Adolph Hitler--or a reasonable facsimile. But, be still all the same, and listen. It has something to say, and if you believe it, it is truth.

So, when that voice comes to you in all its glory and form, give it is due. Then, and only then you may toss it away in a moment of derision and laughter. You probably have better things to do than listen to that nagging voice in your head anyway. Or instead, you may choose to be sane and make an appointment with your friendly-neighborhood-head-shrink. He will not tell you anything you do not know, and the most you hope to gain from any of those encounters is from giving this poor man a story to tell his wife when he goes home that night. Or a punchline to a joke that you will hear five years later in a bar. Something that would start with, "What do you do if you hear Adolf Hitler's voice in your head?" The punchline is almost unnecessary at that point, because the opening line of the joke sets it up to failure. It would be traded around bars and clubs for years until someone inevitably answers the question and says, "you listen". I would listen. I wouldn't follow the advice, and I might not believe it to really be Adolf Hitler, but on the off chance that it was indeed kosher, I wouldn't want to miss out. Would you?

Every voice, no matter how derisive or despicable the source, has something to say. And naming the voice or object does not define it. So, even some carbon-copy Hitler voice in your head might have something to say. Though, in the end of it, I think I'd rather have FDR. I don't know German.