Today I again decided to go down a different road–literally, a different road. Being somewhat enigmatic even to myself–I make a lot of spontaneous decisions–I don’t know why. In many respects, I am a creature of habit. I have eaten at my favorite Mexican place at least 500 times, with no exaggeration. I only go to 2 bars.
But sometimes, I feel the need to break the pattern, to go somewhere completely new. I did that today. And as should be obvious, I am a self observer. I watched my feelings, and in my world–which shrinks and grows prodigiously in cycles throughout the day–this time, I felt something like melancholy, but not really.
When you take a new path–and I am speaking both metaphorically and literally, since I somehow comprehend much of my literal journeying as ritualistic and meaningful–it feels to me like both a relief and a mild ache, like when you stretch and massage tired muscles.
There was this moment when I thought “oh, this is new”, and I felt alone. Then I got to thinking about life itself. I like the line “every new beginning is some other beginnings end” (about hooking up, but let’s push it further, as indeed I think they were implicitly doing as well). Is life not constantly reconciling the need for change with the need for continuity? We want things to stay the same, we work so that things will stay the same, but they can’t and don’t. This is our principle tragedy, and our principle hope.
I was, again, applying this metaphor of wave/particle duality from physics, and I realized that as I traversed from the old to the new, at the moment of transition, I was suddenly filled with compassion and love for humanity. This is the “moment” of understanding, of both being able to relate to others as a sovereign individual, and be connected to them.
This metaphor of surfing is a good one. I dreamed once that that is the way to live, on the edge of a rolling wave, endlessly adapting, unafraid, and excited. The wave is merely a part of the ocean, a form of the ocean. You, on the other hand, have a place and a trajectory. Interfacing the two is the essence of surfing.
This is a bit meandering (Thoreau once approximately said “it need not be long, but it takes quite long to make it short”) but hopefully makes sense to someone. It was a strong feeling, and I thought I would do my best to pass it along.