Forests, Trees, Invisibilities

When you focus on the details you often lose sight of the forest. When you focus on the forest you may often lose sight of the trees. But some things you still have not seen. There is the earth on which the forest is only just a small lining over portions of the landmass. Then, on the smaller level, there are the microorganisms that nurture and sustain the tree. My point is not to show the obvious limitations of a popular metaphor, but rather to suggest that even when you try to keep the bigger and smaller pictures of your world active in your mind you are still missing the bulk of it. Just as much slides past the notice of your eyes, ears, nose, and tastebuds, much also slides past the notice of your mind (and then there are things that are simply imperceivable).

I think that maybe it’s the things that an individual cannot see for her-/his-self that often control/define/betray that person the most. Likewise, it is the stuff that thinkers do not see that often leads them astray into focusing too much on trees or becoming too infatuated with the forest to notice the inner workings of the trees.

I have been trying to understand my life recently and it’s not an easy task. I sometimes wonder why it seems that I have never done any hard work and that I may never have to (even though I have done certain kinds of hard work if you call thinking hard work (and a few months of shoveling cow shit early in the morning). Maybe it’s that I have learned how to prevent most stress from infiltrating my life. Somehow I know how to avoid living in hell, so to speak (and I am, at times, pretty good at finding heaven, or at least a kind of Eden). But maybe it’s also due to the fact a lot of the work in our society nowadays seems predominantly mind-work, paperwork, and softer-labor such as serving in restaurants or working as a Subway Sandwich Artist (a job I wasn’t bad at).

When I have a lot of free time I tend to labor myself with a lot of a certain kind of mild stress: the mild stress of trying to plan a future that cannot yet be planned. It is a future of almost complete unknowns. The only known, if it is one, is myself and who I am. But somehow I cannot keep a complete picture of myself in mind. It always darkens in one place as light is shed on another. And perhaps it’s true that even with someone else’s perception engaged, a clear image of myself is impossible as of now (and maybe always will be). So I am fighting a losing battle in trying to visualize myself, but that won’t stop me from trying. There is always the fear of finding something I don’t like the sight of (perhaps that’s what keeps me from seeing my whole self).

You may wonder why I write all this here. It’s because I have no one else to talk to in my house and I think that maybe you out there are the best people I know to communicate with. Maybe someday we can talk together about these things for surely I am not the only one with these kinds of concerns. I also have this funny idea that trying to understand peoples’ basic limitations may help me figure out what I would like to do with my life after I leave Japan (probably in August).

Until next time.
p.s. of course it's not just what we are and are not aware of that makes us who we are, but how we respond to those things (emotions, sympathy, empathy, lightly, heavily, carelessly, caringly) - and there is no one best way to be, of course.