(Why ‘Getting Directions’ is being written.)
If, for whatever reason, you’re unsure about yourself – your life to date, who you are – then it’s probably inevitable that you’ll try to find things out. You’ll try to find out what’s made you who and how you are – what’s been formative.
At its most simple, it’s all about looking back to get directions.
And ‘Getting Directions’ is my response to that situation.
It can be interesting to look back. In parallel, it’s interesting to look at what you’re doing – to look at yourself looking.
I’m finding it generates more questions than I first imagined. Any directions you might believe you’ve found are going to be undermined if they’re not honest, if they’re not true. But truth can sometimes be slippery.
On the whole, we’re all pretty happy with what we can think of as a working idea of truth – it’s true that the sun is above our heads and the ground’s below our feet; that sort of thing.
Even basics like that can be debated* but for day-to-day life to be viable we all need to work with a notion of truth that’s practical. And that notion of ‘practical truth’ is what we all have, whether we’re aware of it or not. After all, we don’t discuss or doubt the truths of day-to-day life all the time.
With that as the background, ‘Getting Directions’ tries to look, truthfully, at what’s made me who I am and how I am. I’m looking for what feels true even after it’s examined closely. I’m looking to understand what matters.
I’ve found that being truthful inwardly, and knowing that that’s what you’re doing, is a very different undertaking than generally agreeing that the sun is up above.
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‘Getting Directions’ is being written and published** in short parts, as a work-in-progress.
The intention is to be truthful throughout. But, often, in life and in ‘Getting Directions’, it’s only hindsight that reveals mistakes. Given that there’s someone reading ‘Getting Directions’ as it’s being published, that means its mistakes will be/are public.
I’m reading and tidying up each part before it’s made live, of course, but that’s all.
It’s being written and published in this way with the hope that it’s a fair reflection of how life is lived. Which is to say it’s sequential only to the extent that events, memories and thoughts occur one after another, it’s messy and it includes mistakes.
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* Is it true about the sun being above objectively or is it only true insofar as it’s believed; is it true only because everyone else in your world believes it to be true … and so on. It gets labyrinthine, and quickly veers away from day-to-day life as it’s experienced. If you start considering Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’, or postmodernism, or the issue of perspective, or any or all the rest of whatever might get included in any philosophical exploration of truth, it’s perfectly reasonable to find yourself glazing over.
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