kodalai | My place in the universe

Today's Engrish message:

THE VERY LARGE SUN RISES EVERY MORNING.

Technically true and grammatically accurate in every detail! And yet!

This is something I've been, not exactly thinking about in an active sense, but peripherally aware of for some time -- maybe for some years. Three things that affect who I am, and what I want to do with my life.

1) That I have studied history. When I look back over my academic interests, recently and over the long term, there's an underlying theme that runs through each of them: anatomy, psychology, history, literature, philosophy, chiropracticy. All of them are various approaches to try to learn about the self, or about the self's culture, which is an extention of the self. Of them all, psychology and history have been the most informative, the latter because of the perspective it results in. Having studied history makes me aware -- makes me unable to be unaware -- that of all the things that make up our culture, our society, our values, our science base, and our identity, how very little of it is anything we had to do with. How much of it can be traced back to the cumulative effect of generations on generations of people who never foresaw this end (or rather, this continuation; the present day is hardly the end.) How much of who we are came about, not just by accident, but by incident -- for no greater reason than because it happened to be that way.

2) That I am a reader and writer. It is the basic pattern of how I interact with the world. As the cognitive psychologists would say, it is my basic underlying schema. It even affects the way I dream, forming and telling stories (with certain structural and value assumptions which are a product of my culture and society, of course.) Whether naturally or by practice, and irrelevant of which, it is my great strength and ability in life, and whatever I ultimately choose to do with myself it will have to do with telling stories. Nothing else would be a true application of my potential.

I have come to believe that the one way in which we do recognize, control and influence ourselves is through our stories. It is through our stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves (since so very few people study history, after all -- and even history has to be told in a story that reflects our current values) and so redefine ourselves from day to day. Stories are not just passive entertainment, although they are that as well, they aren't only that; as well as reflecting ourselves, they change the way we see ourselves and thereby change ourselves.

3) That I am the daughter of a well-educated, liberal, humanist couple, who raised me with the basic assumption that in the course of my life I would strive to make a positive impact on the world. The question was never really whether I would or not, only how I would choose to try to do so. And as I have grown and studied over the years it's become more evident that the way I would try to exert this positive influence on the world would be through telling stories and writing.

Studying history also puts a perspective on things that makes me think, not exactly that the things we do have no intrinsic value, but that they have less absolute value than we think they do by right of their transitory nature. It is not that I don't think saving human lives, as a doctor, or a fireman, or a volunteer rescue worker, or a soldier, is not a great endeavor, certainly it's one of the greatest; but in a hundred years everyone you saved will be dead anyway. Being a great statesman, you can accomplish great landmarks of law or international diplomacy -- which may be rendered moot within a few decades anyway. Even being a great scientist, and making a once-in-a-lifetime scientific discovery, may be rendered obsolete much faster than you think. Without denying the intrinstic value of these contributions, given their transitory nature, I can't really believe that they have more value, or writing has less value, as a practice in and of itself.