Given how many words have and are being spoken each day, particularly in recent years, how much of all we’re now adding can be considered original? Isn’t it conceivable that almost everything’s already been said? All possible combinations of thought, perspective and opinion already having been spoken out there into the world by someone, somewhere, at some point.
Almost as if there’s nothing new: that it’s all been thought, done or discovered and we’ve nowhere further to go in our thoughts about reality. That, somewhere in the dark recesses, someone’s always going to have spun a theory or articulated the details of whatever it is we might be struggling with. That someone’s always able to say, “Of course, we’ve been talking about this, weren’t you listening?”
How are we to broach conversations where so many experts or interested parties have been delving deep to chart every particular corner of reality? Aren’t we always going to be cast back as ignorant or uninformed whenever we attempt to expand our understanding? Inevitably wandering into areas where others are already specialists; having taken whatever conversation’s to be had into specific, convoluted places.
Thinking of reality as a landscape surrounded by our thoughts about it, though, isn’t there always going to be a process of sharing those ideas with others? Each person’s perspectives and opinions inevitably sitting within the whole; their unique viewpoint speaking of what it’s like to be the human living that particular life. We might each be touched by different aspects of reality, but doesn’t it all relate?
Rather than thinking we’ve nothing to add – that we’re all simply treading old paths without anything new to contribute – maybe the expansion of our awareness into seemingly unrelated areas is the challenge we face? That, instead of defending our own area of expertise, we need to somehow welcome others into them and find ways to mutually share and appreciate one another’s concerns.
As if the knowledge is there, the landscape already mapped by advance guards of concerned or interested people, yet we still have to find ways of tying it all together. Each of us somehow needing to inch our way towards understanding what everyone else is passionate about – how life is from countless perspectives and all the issues we rightly need to concern ourselves with and help to resolve.
Within that place, how are we to address one another? If the goal’s essentially awareness and change, isn’t it important we communicate in ways that are likely to sustainably achieve those ends? Not alienating our audience or causing ourselves to burn out in the fiery flames of indignant frustration. How else are we to get up to speed with all these specific ideas of progress, plus the history of their development?
Sometimes it just seems that, despite our fine intentions, we might often be pulling at the seams of mutual comprehension; that the meaningful communication needed to address our many problems is buried under so much that it stifles our ability to listen.
Notes and References:
What is the public conversation?
Anger, and where we direct it
Can our thinking match realities?
Is there any end to the power of thought?
Will things change if we don’t make them?
What should be leading us?
Words & relating as paths to change