The inevitable is always somehow around that great corner of life. There is an old French saying, “What must happen, will happen”. This somehow seems to mirror the consensus prevailing around us. People, astute people at that, seem to think, nay – know, that the occurrences of the future will come to pass in the future.
But is that the real truth? Is there an inevitable; will the control of keys mandate a control of power? When one steps unto a freshly paved boulevard in Canada, how does one now that it, the pavement, will not open up and swallow him alive? How does one know that his next step will be forward and not backwards? Is there an inevitable or is this inevitability just a figment of our overworked and obviously under producing imaginations?
In my years of practicing psychotherapy, I have come across individuals who have denied the inevitably of the inevitable. Their personal experiences had led them down the path of the impossible, to a La-La land that we “normal” people could not possibly envision. They knew of an alternative reality, a realty that is neither here nor there. They saw sounds and heard colors. One patient, a wonderful South American coffee barista, described what he heard when the coffee beans met the grinder. But he did not describe the sound of the grinder; he described the sound of brown. It was a soft delicate sound; quite unlike the way the philosophers had represented the color and it had captivated him. Did he lie; did he tell me falsehoods and untruths? No. He did not lie. He had seen a higher reality.
You wonder, well, what is he trying to tell us? Am I haranguing or instructing? Am I helping you lead a better life, or am I placing a stumbling block in your path to stub the toe of your mind? Dear readers, I don’t know. I have simply brought you a rare medical case and I exclaim to you now, that in a way we are all medical cases. Your senses convince you of an inevitability; an inevitability that is frightening, but at the very same time utterly intriguing. Shall you forever remain a vassal of this brazen gambling of inevitability? This is a question that one must ask themself. This race horse called Inevitable can either rule you, or you can make the step and have it propelled into a factory and manufactured into glue. This hypothetical glue would keep you strong and firm, molding you into the first rate person that you know you can be.
But you fight and you struggle. You do not want to be known as that lunatic who bathes in the reality of colors, knowledge and truth. Medicine, dear readers, is an art not a science. So I urge of you, take the step. Our friend the barista did and he became a more fulfilled individual. An individual not held back by the petty boundaries that we in society have set up for ourselves. He flew to higher and higher heights. He touched the shady sun and felt the icy moon. He frolicked in the sky and drove the chariot of the tress. He was not insane. My friend the barista was a superior man, living in an alternative, nay superior reality. May we learn from him and keep him propped up on the pedestal of the mind, glamorously unafraid.
How do u not know the author? someone anonymously emailed it to you?
ReplyDeleteOkay, so the question now is: what do you, Yedid Nefesh, think of that post?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what to make of this.
ReplyDeleteYou jump from pre-determinism vs free will..to David Hume not being able to trust that the world will function as it has..to a Barista that quite possibly had a little too much LSD...
To imploring us...to try some as well..?
:-\
@ altie: someone sent it to the professor who sent it to me but i dont know who.
ReplyDelete@sibaw: great question :) I love his writing style so thats a start. But in response to this article, i must admit that it is a pretty extreme vision, as extreme perhaps as the one of Existentialism (i talked about it in my Sartre post). Because I believe in G-od, I believe in that balance between both believing that I am defined by my action but that my free will ceases to exist when the higher power might decide to make the unpossible happen.
and about that barista being high, he might have been, or he migth really be on a different level. We hear it all the times with crazy creepy rabbi stories who didnt eat, didnt drink. If we're not up to comparison, we cant compare (but i highly doubt the barista was on that level, probably psychotic)
My response was too verbose to fit into a comment. See my post here for my take on that piece.
ReplyDelete