Rest Awhile or Stop?

Every time you pass through the woods, you realize you are going in circles, or squares, or rectangles, or some other geometric shape that you couldn’t care less about. You figure that there are signposts you notice at intervals, and then you suddenly miss them. You go through the exact same feelings at different points - nostalgia, anger, frustration, joy, ecstasy.  You realize that these emotions could be, in some sense, classified into two different (mental) blocks. You also notice that the lengths of feeling these emotions are unusually long. What is fascinating is that you don’t notice this, until a fellow traveler tells you so, and if the fellow traveler is someone you (deeply) care about, you tend to seriously reflect on their opinions. But it’s not just the views of fellow travelers that matter. You could learn about yourself from writers and artists and poets too.

The “normal” view of the world is that the journey through the woods is a fascinating one, and you should work on making yourself better prepared to make the most out of this journey. There are specialist travelers (like hikers!) to help you make the most out of it and then there are other travelers that love you and hold you, when you slip on that rock and are about to fall off into that trench.  There are even better friends you make among your fellow travelers, who pull you off a muddy ditch and help you clean yourself, as you get back on your voyage. The idea of opting out of this whirlwind tiring journey through woods is not one to be considered. It does not exist.

You are as not free as you think you are. Duck Foucault, this is not about him. For all the greatness that you think you have acquired in the years of learning how to become an accomplished jungle wanderer, all that it takes is for a dear fellow traveler to tell you how you are close to madness. You can be reduced to nothingness – all it takes is the ability to know how deeply, deeply weak that shell is, which carries the coat of years of shining brilliance of your traveling skills. And then as you confront the reality about this shallowness or hollowness, you confront your own madness. The obvious solution is to take a break from this wandering around in the jungle. It would be a lie, a blithering one at that if one were to not confess that perhaps, for all that is worth the pain or not, maybe this going about in circles, squares, rectangles, octagons, decagons, and what not, perhaps needs to stop.  The dynamic flow of fluids should perhaps not rest, but cease.