There is something incredibly irritating about walking three miles into the forest only to have the peace and tranquility disrupted by someone arguing loudly on their cell phone. Two solutions immediately spring to mind. Firstly, bomb the nearest cell tower out of existence, secondly join that ever-growing band of the vengeful but content. On careful consideration, the latter is probably the most efficient and intellectually satisfying.
I miss real silence, that security blanket that wraps us like a shroud when swaddled in our bed before sleep. Yet it is an illusion, silence seldom truly exists except in the depth of the earth or ocean and even then the faint murmur of heartbeat, the normally unrecognized bristling of hair will infiltrate our eardrums and confirm we still live. So, in truth what I miss are the small insignificant sounds of existence that the constant droning of modernity manages to obscure. Layer upon layer of almost indecipherable sounds, a bird call mixed with the rippling of water, the wind singing as she dances through leaves and branches, mingled with the sound of an apple landing ripe and ready beneath its mothers outstretched arms.
All life is but a quest, a search for the intangible on a never-ending mountain slope. At each new level we face a decision; do we accept the elevation as our goal but a rest place before continuing? This conundrum is the core of being. We crave comfort, predictability, acceptance and that most human of needs companionship. Quests are by their nature solitary, universally difficult to accommodate within a relationship. Settling for the predictable, the understandable is ever a more acceptable choice than continuous uncertainty, comfort is enticing and decidedly more desirous than transience. Personally, I have ever been inclined to choose blind alleys as my way forward, oft admittedly sidetracked by promises of comfort or seduction and a hereditary directive to follow the easy path. Yet still I am inclined to enter an unknown without definition or conclusion, armed only with a sense that there is more, possibly out of reach, but so tantalizingly close as to suggest a plausible route to the summit.
Daily Abstract Thoughts 