It's not about being a bad person again.
It's that I have this problem with reason. Look, of course it's helpful to be able to reason through problems and find solutions. To work out what led to such and such a mistake so that one can try to avoid it. To consider the likelihood of an interpretation of events being accurate. All that kind of thing.
But there's this tendency to feel that we can think our way to happiness or to to heaven. By which I mean a best possible outcome all things considered. We can't. There are too many variables. Too many unknowns. And besides, it may be that bad things can lead to better things - but they might not in the acceptable time frame. How do we decide for eternity when we struggle to decide for now?
The biggest problem is that we can't even foresee how we ourselves will respond to something. That, we think, will make me happy. It doesn't. so we think, oh I'm not happy because of something else - like, because there's a pandemic. I was right in thinking that thing would make me happy. It's just this damn pandemic. Or we think, that didn't make me happy - but not because I was wrong in thinking it would make me happy, but because it's not actually all that I thought it would be. If it was what I thought it would be, I would be happy. No! It doesn't make you happy because you think that something outside will make you happy, reliably, like an equation. Me + this thing = happy.
Reason should tell us this. But it doesn't. Because it likes equations. It likes things linear and logical. It doesn't want an idea like this: this thing might make me happy if at the time I have it I also feel like being happy due to various unconscious processes and life events outside my own control.
But that, I think, is what life is like. You can't shine a light on things and expect it all to make sense. Most of it, most of what matters, is always in the irrational shadows.
Comments