Q & A
6/28/14
On June 28th, 2014, I had one of those nights where my brain was sprinting a million miles an hour in every direction. Something was in the air that night, something good.
During that Summer, I had gotten into the habit of walking in Hudson Park along the river every single night. Every once in a while I would sit on a bench next to a homeless man sin
ging jazz or next to a couple enjoying the warm sticky breeze and I would write. I would write music, or I would write a bunch of random words. Whatever came out of my brain went into my humidity dampened notebook.
Nights have always been my private time to collect my thoughts and process anything and everything. I used to walk around my hometown at night years ago doing the exact same thing. I would share everything with the trees and the concrete sidewalks that I walked by.
Last Summer I got to share everything with the Hudson River. I always felt like the river liked when I wrote there. It became a part of my stories without me ever having to mention it. I shared my thoughts and ideas, and it would listen and give me advice in return. It was a very peaceful and brief relationship.
The other day, I came across the notes that I took that night on June 28th. I had written about a bridge I used to walk under in my hometown. That bridge had witnessed snapshots of my life and I tried to remember everything that the bridge would remember of me. Every scene that transpired while I walked underneath it. Th
ere weren’t many, but there were some very important ones.
That bridge saw bits of a young romance. It saw two children start to figure out who they were and grow into young adults who thought they knew more than the rest of the world. The bridge also saw the frustration and confusion those two kids felt when they figured out that they actually knew less than the rest of the world. It saw them realize that no one really knows what they are doing and it helped them learn that anyone who seems to have life figured out is a liar.
That’s who I am to that bridge: one of those foolish kids trying to make something out of nothing.
And now, years later, I am a friend of the river. I can’t decide if the river knows the same person that the bridge knew, or if the person I was when I walked under the bridge no longer exists.
Questions & Answers
When you know the answer to a question, it shouldn’t be too difficult to put the answer into action and obtain results for the problem, correct? I wish it were that simple. I feel there is a mental block I have created for myself that has reverted my way of thinking, somewhat, to not being satisfied. To wanting more, to be greedy in a way, an unconventional way at that, but still a greediness that melts away my contentment with what I am doing about what I want in life.
Who do I think I am to know the answers to everything anyways?
I suppose I am in a period of convalescence? Of returning to full contentment and satisfaction with who I am mentally and how I am mentally approaching my life. However, my question is, how did I defer from my contented mindset in the first place? That is the one question I do not know the answer to.
I started to attack the answer before I asked the question; I tried to think backwards. In math class growing up, I was taught to approach certain problems backwards to help find the starting point of a problem- it is sort of a heuristic problem solving strategy that helps find a means to an end. However, recalling information from my studies in psychology, if my own understanding of my issue happens to be faulty, my attempts to resolve it will also be incorrect or flawed. So it is somewhat of a gamble to assess my own mind and my own problems, if in fact I have a problem after all!
“The human mind, once stretched by a new idea, such as, thinking backwards.., will never regain its original dimensions.” ~Oliver Wendell Holmes
At the current moment, I don’t even remember my original dilemma. Maybe I just needed to explore my brain and get to know the complex routing structure of my brain a little better. I needed to revisit the processes of my own cognitive functions and abilities to become content. Either that is what was causing my discontented feelings or the maze my brain just created and worked its way through caused me to forget any discontented feelings or problems that I had. I very well could have distracted myself from the problem and burrowed myself deeper and further away from actual solution. Hmmmm………
Isn’t that what we do with many problems we face each day? We distract ourselves, consciously or subconsciously, in order to escape the quandaries and conundrums that we in fact do not have the answers to so that we don’t become stuck endlessly searching for an answer that could very well not exist at all. It is the only way we can move forward. We are comfortable with answers and uncomfortable with not knowing- that is probably why horror movies are scary; we never know what is going to happen next. We fear the unknown.
Horror movies are my favorite genre, because I like to get stuck on the unknown. That is possibly also the reason why I am so stuck on my own vague problem. If the problem itself is vague, then the answer must be even more so. Maybe I imagined the whole scenario just to satisfy my innate craving for something unknown.
Question number two: I wonder if I will ever know? It’s an endless cycle.
On twitter the other day, I came across a post from @paule_steele that seems to sum everything up perfectly:
