Jump to content
The Corroboree
Sign in to follow this  
Darklight

Meditations from Mark Pesce

Recommended Posts

This was sent to me by Mark Pesce, who spoke so elegantly at EB3 last year, and will be presenting again at EB4. Thought I'd share it here :)

 


Words have this quality ­ it¹s almost like magic ­ in that they can help you see things that are otherwise invisible. We can name something ­ just like Adam named the animals ­ and because we have a name for it, we can start to understand what it is, make decisions about it, interpret its meaning in our own lives.

We string words together to create ideas. Ideas are always based in real things, even if sometimes they can seem impossibly far away from the real world. People see things, name them, use these names to create ideas, name these ideas, and so on. Pretty soon you have one idea sitting atop another, almost like a house of cards, only the force of the ideas themselves keeps the house of cards standing up. Ideas that don¹t have merit, they get knocked down pretty quickly. Ideas that do have merit, well, they just keep going and going and going ­ sometimes for thousands of years.

Ideas are a bit funny ­ slippery, almost ­ because they can slide around from one very specific meaning into some other much more broad meaning. People may have an idea about one thing at one place at one time, but that idea might come to mean many things at many places at many times. Because they¹re so hard to nail down, ideas have a life of their own, more or less independent of any one of us. Ideas run around the world, doing their own thing.

We live in an age where all sorts of ideas ­ about who and what we are, about right and wrong ­ have the full run of the world. A thousand, or even a hundred years ago, none of us would have been so exposed to so many ideas, so may points of view clamoring for our attention. We are forced to discriminate, to be critical of the ideas we encounter, trying them on for size, to see if they fit us well. Some ideas are like comfortable clothing ­ they expand or contract according to the moment; other ideas are like custom-tailored suits; you have to be just the right size to fit into them. So we go around wearing our ideas, like we wear our clothing, and our choice of ideas helps us make our way in the world.

For every new thing we encounter, our ideas come into play; they¹re like our early warning systems. They sniff the new thing like eager puppies, and make suggestions ­ is it good or bad? Will it hurt or help? Do I like it or not? Every question we ask ourselves about every new thing is answered by the ideas we carry around with us. Even if these new things are fully capable of speaking for themselves, our ideas will chime in, to add to the discussion, debate and decision.

And now, with so many ideas floating around, and so many new things clamoring for our attention, a little war, of a sort, has broken out between our ideas and our eyes. Our ideas are content to keep themselves ­ and us ­ just as we are. But our eyes are constantly feasting on new things ­ new friends, new places, new wonders ­ that our ideas have no place for. Every new thing is a bit of challenge to any idea, because ideas describe the past perfectly, have only a fleeting life in the present, and no meaning at all to the future. So our ideas make us a bit stubborn, a bit hesitant, in the face of the new. What we might soon come to enjoy we often encounter with a bit of resistance; that¹s the force of our own ideas.

In situations where our ideas keep us at odds with the world, it becomes necessary to have a place to pull back, a reflecting pool of silence and stillness, so we can hear our own thoughts, and the gentle tug of our own hearts, away from the storm of ideas, away from the pulse of others. It needn¹t be much, just a few moments when the cares of the day have been surrendered (they will be there for us when we return to shoulder them again), when we can truly be ourselves, and think and feel for ourselves.

This great silent space is the ground for all human action. It is the place where you realize you have fallen in love, or where you discover the dream you must pursue above all else. It is the place where we are most truly ourselves, most naturally in our own skin. No one is watching, no one is judging; we can let the gut stick out, and just feel comfortable with who and what we are.

So who are we? This is not a question we can answer for anyone other than ourselves. The answer is personal; it might even be temporary. You may not be the person today you will be tomorrow, or hope to be the day after that. Even so, in the moment of silence there¹s a lot of power, because, in that moment, comfortable with who we are, we are capable of great things. Miracles.

And now, in this quiet, sacred moment, we decide what we will have for ourselves.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

A very thought provoking read, thanks for posting it DL. :)

Was flicking the idiot box the other night and thought 'hey i know that voice', it was mark doing some IT interview. He's such an interesting person, something about him that keeps people glued to his every word.

He is living in oz yeah?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
gerbil:

He is living in oz yeah?

He is all that :) And yes he is living here. I hope we get to keep him!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this  

×