Layers

One hard truth I sometimes struggle with is how there are always layers of understanding.

I’m not sure where the opposite belief comes from; that is, to believe that if you keep talking and reiterating you will somehow bridge a gap of understanding. It’s almost a bad habit. So easy to slip into.

Long ago playing a video game, computer family room, and a visiting sibling so asked, “Why are you playing that?”

It perplexed me because I never thought why I wouldn’t play it. It’s fun.

But the inquiry continued: “You aren’t going to get anything out of it. It’s all in this little screen. Little box. You aren’t actually accomplishing anything. Don’t you see how boring that is? Don’t you want to see the real world?”

At the time I couldn’t comprehend it. I was accomplishing things, the video game said so. Look at the pixels.

The only response was to keep stammering about how it’s fun and I enjoy it, and that’s it. A disappointed look followed and they left to enjoy the rest of the afternoon. I’m pretty sure at the time I couldn’t conceive the reality painted.

Of course now I see. And if I repeated the same truth to those who love video games so much, well, hey, maybe I’m just bitter or too fixated on “accomplishment” instead of Hanging Out and I guess so. It still feels like work with extra steps and no effects, but nevertheless it’s fun for some. Maybe the infinite novelty machine works if you find the next mindset; maybe there’s a truth behind this “truth” that allows you to play games again. In any case, this innate dividing line spanned between lives, an inability to understand is reason why there’s that phrase “pearls before swine.”

One can persist otherwise. Persist and formulating all the Ordained Labels, special exceptions of definitions on Oxford’s page 257. Stare into someone’s eyes, emphatically point and gesticulate and feel the inertness, take on this failure in fitting spectrums of realities within our vocals and convenient symbols.

Sometimes clicking around on Wikipedia or reading comments about philosophical takes, formalizing arguments to political endgames, whatever, so one may be reminded how little one attends to their own logical understandings, bolstering their rigorous justifications, of how society should function, economies should work, we should this and that.

But you reach a point, maybe everyone eventually does, where you don’t care what should be done. You look at what is and understand it’s not changing anytime soon. You stop worshipping these perfected forms and arguments and utopias in your head and instead wonder, “what am I going to do today?”

To realize that, even if you somehow cracked the divine code on the Law of Layers, more often than not, you’re still going to grab your tray of soggy fries and crinkled wrappers and bring it to the trashbin.