Artificial Boundaries

Yeah so I've been pondering about dreams. I had a strange one last night, Davidson rejected me for ridiculous reasons and I took an odd roller coaster train to Japan in the sky. I also got my housing form from Amherst. All of it made wonderful sense until I woke up. I realize that even in my waking life I revel in the ridiculous. I love the absurd. Probably why Existentialism is so attractive to me, assigning any meaning to life seems trivial when reality is absurd.

When I really think about it, what difference is there between my past and my dreams? One might be tempted to say the collective agreement on the state of affairs but that far reaching at best. How many times do you agree with someones, or someone agrees with your exact account of events? Hardly ever. And there are always private memories that no one but you can confirm. What then of memories? Are they just waking dreams? Waking dreams that sometimes have other participants? When I think back to my life even five years ago, it seems incomprehensible and vague. Yet we spend so much time saying we are a product of something we can barely concretely remember. What use are these facts that we remember? Yes they keep our lives in some state of fluidity, but doesn't that only add to the routine in which we should spend our every moment pushing against?

What's beautiful is that we can manipulate these memories, omit them, censor some or none at all. Don't we already do that? Don't we remember only certain things anyway? In the span of a day, two people could have shared the exact same experience but remember totally different things. We all have different sympathies, perhaps I'll remember the old woman trying to cross the street or the stray dog hiding from the sun but someone else may recall the construction worker eating his lunch or the structural integrity of a certain building. Memory isn't perfect! At our own discretion we absorb and retain certain things. If we derive meaning from experience, and we to some extent can control our experience by the choices that we make and what we can choose to recall, (guided by our sympathies and other factors) then we make our own meanings!

Its scary to think about such things. We are then left entirely responsible for our own lives. Reminds me of an Aesop fable where a wolf goes to his dog friend for some food. The dog tells him he can have as much food as he wants as long as he agrees to wear a collar and chain. The wolf runs off, explaining that it is better to starve free than be a fat slave. I love fables for their telling power, using fabrication to find the truth. In any case, although its a bit scary at first its ultimately liberating. You can see how important freedom is, how intrinsically valuable.

Besides these thoughts the day has been rather boring. I'm going to see Jon in a little while. I'm thinking about tomorrow. About Sunday. About someone.

About the many artificial boundaries we make to prevent otherness.