Scholar at her easel

opens paint pot coral pink,

paints within number nine lines.

Sun rises, briefly seen red.

I’d like to know.  Everyone I’ve ever met seems to want to as well.  But it takes a lot of work, mostly a lot of guess work, to get to know.  So there is all this uncertainty about life, about how life works, about how to know.  What to do?

Trust me.  It’s easy.  Just trust those who do know.  Of course, finding someone who knows how life, the universe and everything works is rather tricky in itself.  Still, it can save a lot of work for you.  You don’t have to reinvent the wheel so to speak.

Luckily many of those who do know have written it down in books.  Some explained it all really well.  Or perhaps they only explained it verbally to the few hundred or few thousand who came to listen to them, but some of the listeners wrote it all down and left it recorded in books.  Some of them, like my guru, had it video and audio taped for posterity.

Politically speaking, some of them become pundits on CNN or Fox News or in newspapers.  Some of them on TV are so well known they only need to go by their first names – like Oprah or Dr. Phil.  Or Rush. 

Knowing how it works is a necessity that cannot be avoided.  Aye, there’s the rub.  One either has to figure it out for oneself, or one has to take someone else’s word for how it works.  Neither alternative is without its faults.  If one truly does try to figure it all out on one’s own, then one does literally have to invent the wheel.  If one accepts someone else’s word, then one finds oneself in blind faith obeying a set of operating procedures.  Turn crank A, depress the valve, and press button B in that order.  Remember always, thou shalt eat no pork in months that end with the letter “R”.

And where is the joy in that?  Where is the moment of watching the sun set and just enjoying the shifting of color and light.  Where is the fun of making up a shared story with your four year old grand daughter or inventing new rules while playing a game of crazy eights?

This business of inventing the wheel again or blindly following someone else’s prescription for the good life gets to be a heavy and numbing necessity.  It lacks spontaneity.  It lacks fun.  It lacks quickness.

It lacks the confidence that life is enjoyable.  Wanting to know – when it becomes an obsession – is the very root of the problem.  If I want to know so badly, then I buy into the idea that there is a correct or perfect way to exist in life.  I buy into the assumption that a particular way of getting up in the morning, of eating or avoiding certain kinds of food, of living by certain values is somehow going to shape my life so that I do not waste it.

This is interesting.  There is a moth trying to get through the glass window in the door.  It probably flew in last night when we were all coming in from watching the 4^th of July fireworks.  This morning it is trying valiantly to get outside.  It is getting rather worn out from all the effort of bumping up against the clear glass window.  I wonder if I can gently open the door and get it back into its more usual surroundings.

OK, I’m back.  I used a piece of note paper, the one on which I had made some notes for this blog entry, and the moth – probably panic stricken at sight of such an enormous white expanse moving toward it – summoned up the energy needed to flutter back outside.  I hope it can get some rest in the morning sunlight and go find a good breakfast.