LIFE Through sheer force of habit we continually use the word life without qualification, but quite often we clearly mean different things when we say it. Basically, there are two types of life, social and biological. When someone says, "Life sucks," they're talking about life in society. No one would ever say something like that and be talking about plants and animals. It wouldn't make any sense. But there is something about life-in-society that makes us understand what someone means whenever they spew forth with such negativity. Life in society and biological life are clearly different dynamics, to be sure, but there is at least one thing that they both seem to have in common. They both seem to be going on in a manner that is completely outside of our personal volition. I know I've mentioned this before, but not in this particular context. Life brought me here whether I wanted to be here or not. My desires don't seem to have any bearing on it whatsoever. I woke up one morning and found myself here. Yes, I guess I could leave if I really wanted to, but I don't. And do you know why I don't want to leave? Because of stuff that I've learned while wandering around in social life. I've been told that leaving voluntarily is a bad thing to do. Not knowing any better, I believed it. I still believe it. (Well, actually, I don't think it's bad, just undesirable.) There seem to be inexorable forces at work in both arenas of life. There are all kinds of social forces in operation, and just like their biological counterparts, they have been evolving for thousands of years. They have a certain momentum, and momentum is pretty hard to withstand. Do you know what else Life is like? Thinking. It seems that whatever you say of Life also applies to thinking. For example, like Life, thinking is completely involuntary. You can't keep it from happening. It's going on outside of your own personal volition. In the same way that you would have to kill yourself to stop yourself from living, you would also have to kill yourself to stop yourself from thinking. In the same way that you didn't ask to be here, you also don't ask to think. It's just happening, like Life. We also speak of Life's unpredictability. There is even a verse in the Bible that refers to it:
Boast not thyself of tomorrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth. (Proverbs 27:1)
The same may be said about thinking. We never know what kind of thoughts might suddenly go flying through our heads. They seem to be flowing all by themselves, regardless of what we may do, unless of course it's something extreme, like ingesting drugs. Both thinking and Life are like a river on whose banks we are somehow just sitting, watching the inexorable flow. This leads me to think of one way in which thinking and Life do not seem to be alike. While observing the stream of consciousness, an item of interest may come floating by that prompts us to say something like, "I just had an idea." The truth is that we simply noticed an idea come drifting by, and either from an inability to accurately describe what really happened (or because we don't want to go to all the trouble) we take the easy way and just say that we had a thought. Then again, maybe we say it because thinking is Life, Life that is close to us, so close that we think it is ours.
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