How I Learned To Forget What I Know

I found a small precious stone in my pocket today. I don’t know how long it had lived there in the darkness of my obliviousness. Had it been there always? Had it been waiting patiently, or impatiently, for me? Who can say? How can I know? I live in a world that doesn’t ask these kinds of questions or believe in unexpected treasures in one’s pocket. Yet they are hopeful sorts of questions, aren’t they, in a world like this one?

Given my druthers, I’d go through the day pondering things like this and nothing else. I believe Life is made of treasures appearing to be of small significance. I am the one who searches the back of the bookshelf where the tiny pamphlet by an unknown author disappeared through the crevice of important books–the one dusty and dog-eared in which a nameless reader found Something.

I presently (still, though my world is changing) live in a world of books. They line my walls and to enter the room where they live brings me so much inner satisfaction. I feel cozy and warm. And yet, and yet, they contain nothing I can ever really need. It is agreed, where I live, that books are the repository of great ideas and it is important, they tell me, to collect these great ideas as if they were going to go away someday.

The world I live in is full of books in many ever-changing forms. Full of ideas put down somewhere after having been thought by somebody. I’ve been told how important it is for me to know these ideas, to hear them, to read them … to STUDY them. “They will make me more than I am.” I did wonder about all this kind of thinking when I first started on this human journey and then I realized this was not to be questioned so I gave up and simply evaded the issue, even with myself, and got on with things. I read and I studied. And I studied and I read.

Sigh. How lonely and unfulfilling it is, merely attaining externals. It leaves me feeling empty somehow.

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