I have experienced a landslide of the mind.
The summer solstice has brought some rather challenging upheaval and with it came a test of my philosophy that I did not pass. Or rather I did pass, in seeing my own anger in itself at a situation. I slapped a bannister, if you can imagine, a bit like how I would be slapping my forehead against a brick wall – or rather it seemed like I was doing that with my words. It was a landslide of emotions that I’ve spoken of before. In my line of work, I see lots of minor experiments with pressure and aluminium cans and this felt oddly familiar. In the moments after, as the dust settled and my life had been relocated and shifted with such fated force, I realized the futility of the emotion of it all.
Despite everything, the person I blame for the upheaval of my living situation is myself in my reaction to it all. I did the right thing, and stood my ground for something I believed in with conviction yet my emotional response was a failing. Where a thing needed a tempered level of apathy, I popped like a shook up coke can.
The situation is inconsequential, of course. I am the only one to blame for my own emotions and reactions to stimuli considering all my talk of philosophy and what not.
“You need to sort that temper out.” – X
Of course I do, hence my philosophy in training. Of course being temperamental is probably the only impression I’ve given this week considering the two incidents. Is this what my philosophy boils down to? Losing my temper when pushed to it’s limit, with familial bonds being pushed to the edge of my own reason?
I’ve been told that I did the right thing and that I’m not in the wrong and that it was understandable, how I reacted. Yet, I cannot understand myself. It feels like a disservice to the self in the end my own standards. I am grateful to the support I received but in the end the only person who’s opinion matters on the intricacies of my own mind is me, and I failed myself. In the stoic sense, it’s a lesson for me to learn from and move on. I’ve already moved on quite literally to another accommodation and foresee myself here for some time, at least 3 weeks. But, that, in the end, inconsequential to the philosophy within.
“My soul, will you ever be good, simple, individual, bare, brighter than the body that covers you? Will you ever taste the disposition to love and affection? Will you ever be complete and free of need, missing nothing, desiring nothing live or lifeless for the enjoyment of pleasure? Or time for longer enjoyment, or amenity, space and climate? Or good company? No, will you not rather be satisfied with your present state and take pleasure in all that is presently yours? Will you not convince yourself that all your experience comes from the gods, that all is well and all will be well for you, all that the gods see fit to give you, now and hereafter, in the maintenance of that perfect Being which is good and just and beautiful, which generate all things, sustains and contains all things, embraces all things as they dissolve into the generations of others like them? Will you ever such as to share the society of gods and men without any criticism of them or condemnation by them?” – Meditations 10.1
For now, the focus, is as ever, the moment and moving forward in the moment. It’s all I have in my control now, and all I will ever have – until the time it isn’t and then, will be time to learn once more.
Z3N0
Z3N0 