March 27, 2005- This may be the final entry for a while as I am heading for Georgia tomorrow and have yet to work out how I can update while I am gone. My packing is just about done. I have to stuff my sleeping bag into its sack and then I'll be ready to go. Still have to complete my taxes and get them in the mail but that will be a job for this afternoon and tomorrow morning.
I question that I have been asked frequently is, "Why?". Why am I attempting to do something like this. Basically, I am over 50 years old and I still don't know what is important to me. I am surrounded by people, each one trying to convince me that their causes or ideas are of such importance that I should invest time and energy and I frequently follow along. I went to high school and college because my parents felt it was important that I do so. They also influenced my career choices leading me to choose a career path that offered a steady, reliable, albeit low income stream rather than a high unstable cash flow. Environmentalists are trying to convince me to save the environment whatever that means. They cannot even seem to agree on what saving the environment means.
For some reason, certain people feel I should worry about national and world political events. True, there are wars, political duplicity, alliances, and betrayals but that has always been the case but the lack of mass, instantaneous communication made allowed most of the world to remain ignorant of what once would be considered local events. Despite our mass ignorance at the time, civilization has somehow muddled through. Does knowing about an event elevate its importance and if so why?
Many around me feel that it is important to make some type of contribution and they are eager to enlist me in helping them make their contribution. I have to wonder who is making a larger contribution;: the political activist who goes out everyday trying to persuade people to accept his or her point of view, the gentle hearted person who goes out of his way to help a neighbor, or the cloistered monk who is fervently praying for the world and its people. Each feels that he or she is making the important contribution and each may be unable to recognize or dismiss as irrelevant the contributions made by others. I want time to think, without the influence of other people, about the type of contribution I want to make, if I even want to continue to make one.
We are bombarded with competing and conflicting messages. It seems that more people are interested in scoring political points than they are in finding the truth. I read both the Wall Street Journal and the Courier Journal each with its own political bent and I find it difficult to believe that I am reading about the same events. Spin and public relations seem to be the rule. Recently, a police officer was shot and killed on duty. People have used this personal tragedy as and example to support the case for and against gun control, to call for investigations into how the justice works or doesn't work, and to call for in increase in government funding for mental health agencies.
Business adds to the clutter and confusion, spending billions of dollars per year trying to persuade us that we absolutely need their latest offering. I realized that I had to get away when I spent weeks trying to decide a really trivial issue. The issue was whether I should replace my old, unreliable pda with a new one and once having decided to get a new one, deciding which one to get. By the way, I think I made the wrong decision but that's another story.
The list goes on but I've written enough demonstrate the idea. I need to get away from outside influences so that I can decide for myself what is important to me and decide how I am going to proceed once I make that determination if I do make it. I realized that I don't need to hike for 6 months to do so. I could live in a cave or on a deserted island with my own thoughts just as well but the work part may be missing. Perhaps I have been influenced more than I thought by medieval monasticism. The idea of eating simple food and doing simple work seems to me to be the best way to clear the mind of clutter and improving mental and physical fitness. I may be wrong but I am willing to find out.
Posted by at March 27, 2005 05:57 PM