| Current mood: |  pensive |
rock epistemology
Sometimes I think it would be nice to be a rock. Because I believe that all things have a presence or a consciousness at least to the degree that they know themselves. They are in themselves. And it seems to me that rocks have a very slow, patient, and self-contained awareness. They're not interested in Becoming, they don't go looking for change; they just accept Becoming when it happens to them. They don't bother with the future, and only with the past as the past is part of their selves.
And unlike people, their self-identity doesn't stretch out to "owned" things, or to "relations," jobs, friends, loves. The lines we draw of "not-me" are very fuzzy. One of the stages of development in very young children is actually the realization that there are "others," things, people, not-me. And there's only this small space of flesh that we utterly reject the "other" in. That we refuse admittance.
I don't believe we refuse admittance to the mind and self-image; in fact, I think that's part of what love is. The willingness to let the "other" in part determine who you are and will be. It would be lonely to be a rock, and boring, if you were a being that ought to be a person. But if you were a being who was perfectly happy to be exactly you, you would be content. You would let the universe roll over you, and you wouldn't need will the way people have will, want and wish that stretch and grab. You would contain and be.
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