If emotion can heighten one’s sense of reality and not merely taint the experience of it, then it must be good. The highs and lows of a never ending swing of a pendulum can hardly be considered a boon of grace or a gift to be endeared. It is mechanical like clockwork, a creature owing no loyalty to human ownership. We can speak with high-sounding words, smiling or frowning, but reality has nothing to do with us in and of ourselves. It is separate and set in motion by a creature far larger than an individual frame of mind. We have no claim on it except to affirm that we are alive and somewhat able to draw up the effort to realize this simple fact.

Emotional states enter us by way of reaction to the outer world and the external events it churns into and through our lives. Without strings or tethers to blatantly reveal the nature of our condition, it can be easily presumed in a totally hypnotic fashion that we are free to do and be as we wish. The truth is often perpendicular to our flow of logic, vertical to the horizontal nature of how we think, feel and relate to everything fathomable in our lives. The notion is that if this be understood, depression or some sad conclusion must surely result. An absurdity such as this is typical to our line of reason, but hardly true.

What we find most difficult is to halt the stream of particles which fill our associations from one moment to another and be at peace with the fact that we know absolutely nothing of what is going on. The play of events, written by some unknown author, provide us with some gleam of intelligence, lit up by us actors as we progress through cycles of historical patterns. There is so much to be observed and absorbed, little by little as we can, through the mess and clutter of human litter. In such a state of affairs, the most natural thing to do is usually the least useful. And so the drama is satirical and more of the nature of comedy. Irony is, and always will be, the theme of the human condition.

What is so troubling with the idea of halting one’s frame of mind, and accepting the fact that we indeed are flying blind, is that it requires us to lower our head to the ground and actually observe what is happening under our feet. Everything of greater proportion to us is moving at a rate so slow that though we acknowledge them to be grande and beautiful, they are ultimately too dull to be given more than a few moments of notice. The rhythm of the cosmos, the dance of flora and fauna, and the cycles of human dramas, all seem to be ignored in favour of the quick thrills of modern life. Everything is happening so quickly, we think. Population sizes boom to outrages levels, technology thrusts upwards in an advancing march, and human gossip takes on frontiers never before imaginable.

Life has always been simple and will continue to be so for the common man who wishes to return to the essence of it. Without ignoring the path of something higher, a purpose worth exploring and approaching, the quintessential starting point has always been a lesson of becoming less before becoming more. The nature of perfection is that at its very first step the building block has been done right. If the foundation is sound, the old saying goes, the structure will be solid. The same principle must be applied to one’s psychology and the place we give ourselves in the nature of things. The foundation of everything, from the quality of our posture to the quality of our morals, must be set straight before we can move truly and genuinely forward. There is no sense in thinking we can do otherwise, as if to believe good fruit could be borne without first resolving one’s patterns of past and present error.