So I’m appearing a little extra shaggy today, isolation mode, lots of time at home, still trying to get outside when I can, but a little bit more on the whole hermit side of things now with so many events being shut down.
And my thought for today is that we really can never understand anything until it’s in the past.
I mean, maybe not even then, fully.
Maybe we can never really get a full picture of anything.
But certainly not in the present.
So a few days ago, I was thinking about how the novelty wore off things have sunk in, and the new situation is now sort of become the new normal.
And yet I realized that this is not quite right, because it hasn’t really sunk in.
Some kind of initial moment of “wow” novelty has worn off but I think even overall the sense of shock has not worn off yet, and I think it won’t for a while.
So it’s been a few days now, it’s been over a week, that all these measures have been in place, and I guess you can be used to it in some sense, that we’re now- it has become normal, but I think in terms of understanding what this really means, we’re still nowhere near.
And it makes me think about how every time there’s something new, there’s always this kind of state of shock, and the word “stupidity” comes to mind, because the idea that this word stupid comes from same root as a word “stupor”, being in that kind of numb state, “uhhh…”, not really responding, just being in that kind of a state of numbness.
And that’s kind of what happens every time something is shockingly new.
If you’re suddenly thrown into a new situation, it is like being stupid.
Because you’re just kind of like “What? What’s happening? Whoa.” And it seems like the whole idea of this insult of something being stupid is that it acts like that maybe all the time.
But it seems like now this is what’s come to all of us.
We don’t really understand.
At least I’ll speak for myself.
I don’t understand what’s going on.
I can’t really register all the effects that will come out of this.
I can sense, I can understand, on some level, this is a situation that unlike anything that’s ever happened in my lifetime, and the world is in a state that it has really never been in.
And so I can understand that this is very significant.
While at the same time I don’t want- we have to be careful not to over-exaggerate.
I mean, still, the fundamental things apply, of course, that it doesn’t change absolutely everything.
We still have to carry on with the things that we need to do.
And the world has changed in many severe ways throughout history, so- and yet many things still fundamentally carry on.
So don’t want to take it too far to say like “Whoa, it’s a whole entirely new world.” But clearly I can see, and we can all see, that this is a situation unlike any that we’ve experienced, and we really can’t say how much is changing, or what is going to be different, or all the different things that will fall out of it, out of this situation, based on the way that everything is reacting, everything has been affected.
We just don’t know.
So it makes me think that this is kind of the default state anyway.
We never really know what’s going on.
We can only figure out what’s going on later, by looking back and thinking “Oh, those seem to have been some of the most significant things, and this is how we can understand it in a relatively clear way, by looking at these particular things.” And, you know, those were the things that are really important; the other things were not so important, just extra detail.
We can maybe make a picture and put it together after.
But when we’re in the moment, we just have so much going on, so much new, that we are not able to make sense of it.
So it seems like somehow we have to live in a state of being stupid.
We have to be stupid, because we don’t really know what’s going on.
We have to somehow make the best choices we can, anyway, based on the fundamental principles that we believe will hold, and our best impression of the current circumstances.
But we simply never know.
It’s a bit uncomfortable to accept that, and really- because it’s so comforting to feel like “Oh, I really understand, and I have a handle on the situation.” It seems like every time we start to feel like “Oh, I have it figured out”, that’s when it’s time for a shock.
And now it seems like that’s the way we’re all feeling in the world.
We thought we knew, in some broad sense, what was going on, and then we realized nope, that’s not how it goes.
So I will do my best to adjust and see what I can do.
And my thought for today is simply to remind myself: I don’t know what’s going on.
I don’t know what will happen.
And that’s OK.
#stupefied #toomuchchange #stillsinkingin