I labored intensely over what to title this blog, mostly because I’m a slight perfectionist when it comes to some things. I wanted something to accurately summarize what I’ll be doing here or what the underlying philosophy of my writing will be. I came up with Stranded Together.
It plays off the cliche that every person is an island unto himself or herself. From a sensory and experiential standpoint, this has merit. We can never truly experience the world as anyone but ourselves. We can never describe the world so that another person can know and understand exactly what we are thinking.
But too often, people simply leave it at that. We’re stranded from each other, therefore meaning can never be fully realized, and therefore our connections can only be tenuous at best. They feel no further need to explore truth or to explore the greatest connection that we have: that we’re all in it together.
Stranded, but Together. This underlying connection is what unites us as a species, as components of humanity. We are a collective, though not necessarily in the Jungian sense of the term. We are all in a common struggle to understand the world around us and to express our understanding. Expressing is part of the act of understanding: just by saying what we think we understand, we come to grasp it even better. In doing so, we reach a deeper knowledge of ourselves.
But this doesn’t work in monologue. We need dialogue with each other. We need sounding boards, listeners and fellow island-dwellers, if we are to understand the world around us. Every experience is completely unique, and all is chaos. But the chaos is beautiful, and deep down, everyone feels this.
That is the philosophy that supports my reading and writing, though not always prominently. It is part of my world view, which I will expand upon in the future. I will use this philosophy and this blog to look for stories and writers that I connect with, capsules of language and desire for understanding that resound within me. In time, I’ll be starting a literary “blogzine” as well to encourage others to explore this theme even further.
0 Responses to “Starting Out”