What stands before you is not so much a choice as a difference in fogs. They more or less overlap because you are still you no matter how badly you want to put on that suit or that uniform, and no matter how much you want to escape your life. When you walk into the fog, you won’t be able to see the future any more than you can right now, and yet you are tasked with making the decision to move in a direction (or stay), ultimately being responsible for the direction you head, but ultimately changing nothing.
So, when one fog is just you more focused and a bit more committed, and the other is you as your old frightened habitual self, which do you choose? Let me make the decision harder. It sounds like the latter is the less appealing of the two, doesn’t it? No one wants to be frightened. No one wants to be habitual. No one wants to be old. But let me remind you that you are not able to tell the difference between the two states, because you are still you no matter if you drift left, right, up, down, in, or out.
You see, even though one fog is familiar to you, and flawed, the wisdom that you developed about that fog was OVER TIME, so you are comfortable with it. You got used to it AND LATER figured out that it was bad. Standing at the edge of some fogs, though, might feel a bit strange, and it might feel good to visit an old friend. Like a cozy blanket, or a hot cup of something on a cold day, or ice skating, or something fun. You might even find the return to what you lost as something erotic, exciting, and invigorating. You might covet it like hell covets fire, and grab it like a viciously greedy child. You might enter the fog in a run, thanking God that she gave you a second chance, and pretending that what you are leaving behind is deadly and chasing you even though you never once looked to see if that were true.
Yet when you look into that fog, your wisdom percolates. You see the confusion there. You see the fear. You see the cruelty and hatred. But, you know how to tickle it and make it laugh. You know how to avoid its pain (for the most part). You know how to make the best of it, how to have a good time, and how to include it in everything you do. Suddenly you realize that your wisdom leads you right back to your desire, and you think that because one is the other, that you are right to return and that this time things will be different.
You see the other choices you have. They are all unfamiliar. You cannot understand them. You have a guess, but you know your guesses are usually wrong. You have the feeling that you could be making a mistake, because you have nothing to go on. There could be pain in there. There could be unhappiness. Certainly, you cannot confess to be a scholar of the unknown, nor a friend to it. You cannot claim that you know how to make it laugh, nor avoid its violence. When you consider moving in that direction, you find no friends, no comfort, no assurances, and no success. You don’t know how to move there, what will happen if you go there, and who is waiting for you there.
Moreover, while I’ve been describing this decision you have to make as if there were only two directions to go, you know that the fogs are intermingled. For everything that you see that is familiar, it is completely unknown to you, and for every unfamiliar area, there is more familiarity than you imagine. It becomes questionable whether or not you can move in any direction without moving in all other directions. If you move up, you are moving right, left, down, diagonally, in, out, through time, out of it, and more, all at once.
Yet, as our bodies move, so do our minds. Sometimes our minds are better at separating the fogs–as I have done and undone with this writing–and will do the work that we wanted to do but could not do with any efficiency. If we move toward what’s comfortable, we will just IGNORE what’s new; if we move toward the new, we will just IGNORE the old. If we move, period, our minds will do the work they want, creating the reality they want to create, and shaping the fogs the way they want them to be shaped. It is that that we see most of the time. The shapes our minds have made. The words our minds have projected. The experiences our minds have labeled.
Who am I? I am a man whose mind covets what’s familiar. Yet, this morning, I realize that tendency is flawed for two reasons: It will never get what it wants, and I know better. So, am I then to move in the opposite direction? That mind, too, will be disappointed. There is no movement but movement everywhere. There is no goal but all goals.
As if sitting in an unfamiliar space weren’t enough, contemplating it and finding that any effort, hell, all this effort, leads toward everything, and yet does not need to be done.
What then? Sit and listen?
It shall tell me nothing but the nature of the stories I am telling myself for no reason at all. And nothing will have been done.
In the infinite indiscriminate fog, I run to and fro, trying to escape to a direction when there are no directions at all, and trying to define an experience when there are no definitions at all.
All I wanted was an answer to this question: should I follow through or not? and this is what I wrote.