“One should use common words to say uncommon things”
― Arthur Schopenhauer
One of the qualities that I have been working on in myself is to have the clarity necessary to speak deep truths in a simple way. Understanding is wonderful but if I can’t convey what I understand in a simple way to others than it is next to useless. What’s more if I can’t explain it simply do I fully understand or am I just intellectualizing? In these days of internet connection, knowledge is easy to come by, understanding much less so. It is the difference between having a warehouse full of food and feeding people.
Blessings, G
“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer
I believe that many men do mistake the limits of their vision as being the absolute limits (which is as good an explanation as any I’ve heard for how some of the fundamentalist views I occasionally hear espoused can still be held by more people than I care to think of) but every man? If this was true than the only way that we could expand our limits would be by random chance and never of our own volition. How can you expand a limit that you don’t know exists? It is only because we know that Reality is so much bigger than we can imagine that makes it possible to continue expanding our fields.
Blessings, G
“Treat a work of art like a prince: let it speak to you first.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer
Two of my favourite activities are walking through libraries and walking through art galleries. I listen carefully with my eyes and with my being and I hear stories… Pictures where every emotion is on display captured in the moment that tells you what came before and what comes next. The eyes on some of the paintings can tell you volumes and will if you are open to it. They may be royalty yet if so they are equitable, not caring so much about whether you match up but whether you see. Abstracts in their dance of colour and design are raw form and emotion and can help us connect to our own internal rawness if we but let them.
A library is much the same but somehow more solemn. Oh most art galleries dress it up better but books go the extra mile. Art asks us to look and understand. Books need that extra effort, they need us to open them and turn pages. They sell themselves to us first with cover and title and then each page has to reach out and connect with us enough that we turn page after page, squeezing the juice out of the writing. I walk through libraries and hear the voices of old friends and strangers wanting to make my acquaintanceship. They wish me to take them home so they can show me a good time.
Perhaps in retrospect the difference between the two experiences is the difference between a romance and a hook up tho of course one can always lead easily to the other.
Blessings, G
“One should use common words to say uncommon things”
― Arthur Schopenhauer
I find myself of late having little patience with jargon. Don’t get me wrong, when speaking of technical things with others in your area of expertise then use what words you have available. However if you wish to communicate then use language that everyone present understands. Far too often I hear people using terms that only those ‘in the know’ can understand. What they communicate is not so much information about whatever subject they are discussing as information abou the way they see themselves. Which may be fascinating if that is the topic at hand but rarely is.
It is possible to convey the deepest of thoughts with the simplest of words. “Who is the Master who makes the grass green?”, “Light acts like a particle and a wave at the same time”,”Shared joy is increased, shared pain lessened.” Albert Einstein said famously “If you can’t explain it to a six year old, then you don’t understand it yourself” Yet, still in every field of endeavour you find people using the vocabulary of their field in order to hid rather than illuminate. Of these bricks, babel is made.
Blessings, G
Window on a New World by G A Rosenberg 
Echoes by G A Rosenberg 
Down the Rings by G A Rosenberg 
