I wrote a couple of pages yesterday and left it to cook overnight. Sometimes it turns out well done and other times my ideas can still have some salt but the words miss their mark. I get caught up in clumsy, compound, run on sentences that lose their way. They feel good in the moment but the second time around, I know gibberish when I see it. Nonsense gets a cursory second thought before I hit the delete trigger. I keep telling myself that any time is a good time to begin again.
I had been chewing on an old bone when something digestible would have been the better call. In the last half century I have come to grips with an uncomfortable, unavoidable observation; emotions and feelings are unreliable. Joy, anger, sadness, pleasure, fear; you get what you get. They are not decisions. But many people use those feelings as their compass, following that energy as if it was their fate or destiny. I choose to think those emotions are just momentary weather updates in an unsettled climate; and I don’t trust them. Feeling good or feeling not so good, I don't want to be on the wrong end of a leash. If I take the time to weigh and measure, to check my numbers before I take comfort too soon or lash out ill advised, everyone is better served.
I feel better, not that feeling better is actually better but I said something in a simple paragraph that I wrestled with earlier and lost. I might lament the time lost as a failed effort or I can rationalize (think about) the value of processing ideas and words before throwing them at the page. Then what I do is a choice, as much as possible. I don’t think we make near as many choices as we believe we do. Google, FB and Amazon together have enough data on most of us to predict with accuracy, how we will decide on any circumstance. If they can do that for 80% of us with 80% accuracy, what does that say about free will decision making? In a few years with a better algorithm it will be 90% & 90%. But free will and decision making is another can of worms, best left for another day.
I had been chewing on an old bone when something digestible would have been the better call. In the last half century I have come to grips with an uncomfortable, unavoidable observation; emotions and feelings are unreliable. Joy, anger, sadness, pleasure, fear; you get what you get. They are not decisions. But many people use those feelings as their compass, following that energy as if it was their fate or destiny. I choose to think those emotions are just momentary weather updates in an unsettled climate; and I don’t trust them. Feeling good or feeling not so good, I don't want to be on the wrong end of a leash. If I take the time to weigh and measure, to check my numbers before I take comfort too soon or lash out ill advised, everyone is better served.
I feel better, not that feeling better is actually better but I said something in a simple paragraph that I wrestled with earlier and lost. I might lament the time lost as a failed effort or I can rationalize (think about) the value of processing ideas and words before throwing them at the page. Then what I do is a choice, as much as possible. I don’t think we make near as many choices as we believe we do. Google, FB and Amazon together have enough data on most of us to predict with accuracy, how we will decide on any circumstance. If they can do that for 80% of us with 80% accuracy, what does that say about free will decision making? In a few years with a better algorithm it will be 90% & 90%. But free will and decision making is another can of worms, best left for another day.
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