Shifting Sands

Shifting Sands

Like grinding gears, my brain skips. Literally, I feel it. A shifting sensation, something gives way deep inside, as my mind tries to make sense of what I’ve just read.

All I know for certain is I’ve been looking for Truth—with a capital T.

The kind of Truth that’s written for all eternity.

Like E = mc².

Like 2 + 2 = 4.

Like matter and energy can’t be created or destroyed.

Those are the kinds of truths I want; the kind I need because I’m drowning in chaos and fragmentation.

Every book I read, whether philosophy, religion, or science—claims to have it.

But none of them agree on what “it” is.

They can’t all be right.

One religion preaches one god; another, a pantheon.

One philosophy says reality is purely physical; another, purely mental.

Some split the world in two between the mental and the physical —but can’t agree how the halves connect.

Some scientists say life can be reduced to atoms. Others insist we’re irreducible wholes.

I’m desperate to find some solid ground—because I know what it’s like to live without it.

Is it really true that

the phones are bugged?

the neighbors are watching us?

or that license plates are secrets codes?

If I’m going to rebuild a world—my world—I need a rock to stand on.

But then I read page 359 of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

What Robert M. Pirsig says shakes my world to it core.

Languages with Greek ancestry—like English—assume a fundamental split between subject and predicate and it is built directly into the very syntax of the language.

I feel it like a wound. A cut between myself and reality.

But in many Asian languages, that split doesn’t exist at all.

The realization is jarring to say the least. If its possible build a metaphysical presupposition about the nature of reality into the very structure of a language and then you learn that language before you’re even ready to question it. It means that that language determines how you see reality and that no language offers neutral access to the Truth I’m seeking.

My entire quest is doomed before I begin.

That thought sends my mind into a tailspin.

Something shifts—not just in my brain, but on the page itself.

The words start to jostle about.

These very words written before you loosen ready to come apart.