Walls to outside existence
Ξ May 10th, 2009 | → 1 Comments | ∇ General thoughts and ideas |
I work in a drive-in lumber yard. A customer with a large trailor drove in a few days ago. The inside was lined with plywood, causing it to look nearly like a miniature, very portable trailor home. As I watched the customer walking around inside, I observed my mind temporarily shut out the existence of most things outside the walls of this trailor. I did not forget them, I just stopped thinking about them–or at least my mind began to lean that direction, if only for a few seconds. The walls on every side of this (again, rather large) trailer had no windows, and seemed to unconciously block from my thoughts the objects and conditions outside of them. Please don’t think I’m psychotic or that there’s something wrong with my brain; the observed effect was extremely slight, yet it showed evidence of a more relevant tendency in the human nature. We sometimes surround ourselves so thoroughly with airtight shelter and modern conveniences that the world outside our walls begins to fade subconciously into nonexistence. We do not forget, per se, about the objects and circumstances outside our square walls; we just cease thinking about them. This is never wholly true, of course; how could we ever cease entirely to think about close friends and family, certain world circumstances, and some previous experiences? But how do you see the world as a whole after eight solid hours of work (with an indoor lunchbreak) differently than during a relaxed walk around the neighborhood? Or better yet, during a hike in the closest mountains? My proposal is not that we should seek to break away from the indoors or modern conveniences altogether; it is that amid those inevitable and necessary hours or days spent in the mental or physical walls that shut out existence beyond them, we owe it to ourselves and our friends to, when reasonable, escape into the much bigger and more broad world outside those walls–to consider the big picture. Only then, I believe, can we come to understand the big pictures that are happening in our lives, and ultimately, the big picture that makes up the purpose of our existence.