Last night was the first meeting of a book club that my friends and I started. I have to say, I have excellent taste in people. I really do.
We met at my friend's house at 7:30 with a bunch of Chinese take-out and sat down to discuss Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig.
Our discussion ended at 11:30, only because one of our dear friends was starting to fall asleep, and not because we were done discussing. It was an amazing discussion.
I admit I had only read half of the book, because I purchased it on Tuesday, to try and finish it, and lost it on Wednesday night. But the parts that I did read were really interesting. But then, everything I read is really interesting.
...To me.
From that little group discussion (it was just four of us) I took home a whole heap of points to ponder for the remainder of the week.
These are just two conclusions that hit me the hardest last night, which I would like to ponder on for a moment:
1. Being different is not the same as being unique.
Now hold up for a second, and let me explain this. Number A: No one is different. You may enjoy thinking that you are, but really, when it all comes down to it, you're not. Some of us, like me, relish and cling to the idea of "I'm different." But we're not. We all want the same thing: we all want to be happy. That's really the be all end all of why we do the things we do. We're all here, experiencing, learning, growing from our mistakes.
What is so appealing to us about the idea of being different? I think that it's really the idea of being an exception that appeals to us so much. That somehow we can use our "difference" to explain away why we don't do the hard things. "I can't go to school because I'm different from the other people there." "I don't need to buckle up, I'm different." We really do (well, at least, I do a lot) use the idea of being an exception as an excuse for a hard thing. But there is no difference. There is no exception. We all have to do the hard thing.
But we DO have the ability to be unique. That, like I've said before, we're the only "us" who have ever been...we are a truly original perspective, a brand new prism through which the shafts of experience and thoughts are bent in a way that we can call them ours.
2. True self-discovery comes from experience, in interaction with others.
The hermit in me hates that truth. But I have realized (soooo very recently, it hurts) that the key to understanding yourself is to forget yourself. That you only learn who you really are from how you act with other people. There was a Pirsig quote that we mentioned last night "Between the subject and the object lies the value." And my friend Sue quipped, "See? I don't understand that, what does he mean there? Is it the verb?" And my little grammarian heart skipped a beat because Sue had hit the nail on the head. The Subject is the thing that Acts, the Object is what is Acted upon...thus, the Value is in the Verb. Value = Action.
Pirsig spends a lot of time discussing quality...the idea of quality, and how knowing quality can't really be taught. That knowing quality is inherent in man. That we untimately know a good thing when we see it. So. After we decided that value equals action, Sue wanted to know if Value and Quality were the same thing. I disagreed. I think that quality comes in to play in the decision of which action we make. Quality, which is ingrained in our consciousness...and even our subconscious, is our own grasp of truth - of good - that impacts the verb we choose. That our quality determines our action, or our value. Or rather, our perception of quality will be what determines our actions, and our actions prove our value.
And action, moving, progression, are not things we find in wandering circles in our head, grabbing at truths and good that we already know. I spend far too much time groping around inside myself for a new perspective on the old things, when really, all I need to do is start groping around outside of me. There are 6+ billion other perspectives out there that I could and should be tapping into. You can tell me things about myself that I might (and most likely will) never come to see by myself. What a vast potential of untapped resources lies in wait at our fingertips, if we can get past the end of our nose to reach out for it! Truth, self-discovery, are all found outside of the self. So much of life that is crucial to progression is found outside of the self. Which makes sense. Progression is moving...how can you move inside of yourself?
The Pirsig quote that hit me the most, as far as that idea goes: "It is a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, 'Go away, I'm looking for the truth,' and so it goes away. Puzzling."
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