“Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn”
― The Dream Songs
Hall Arts Plaza, Dallas, Texas
I have never completely recovered from the time when I realized that the cotton in the aspirin bottle was not necessary and you did not have to replace it after you extracted your tablet – a belief that, as a child, I structured my entire world around.
No, you don’t have to replace the cotton. But was replacing the cotton and the subsequent “structure” created around that perceived necessity a bad thing? In my clumsy stumble through life, I have come to realizations similar to yours, I think. I have learned to reflect on those “discoveries” and try to decide if I really should be disappointed or simply content with the idea that whatever “crazy notion” I had seemed to work up to the point of discovery. As far as being made fun of and/or chastised for having those “crazy” notions, I think we need to just remind ourselves that so long as we were not harmed and we did not harm anyone else, then maybe having such a delusion was a justifiable means for us to cope with whatever life was throwing at us at the time. Sometimes a little “fluff” helps.
The cotton was only one of many “rules” that I thought we needed to follow or the chaos of the world would swallow us. When I discovered the fluff was only a cruel joke I realized that there was nothing to protect us from the void.
I’ve been fortunate(???) enough to have been taught at an early age that there is very little protecting us from “the void”. I don’t know if it’s faith or some sort of built-in “instinct”, but my concern over such a thing is very low. I’m not without a survival instinct, but I have faced death and not been very afraid. I think there are things/situation that we cannot always avoid where “the end” is a strong possibility despite our best efforts. Somehow I’ve managed to achieve a state of being where concern over such things does not weigh heavily on me. All I can do is hope that others can reach such a peace, too.