This morning as I was attempting to define myself (you know, trying to pick out character traits that I want to express, and just my "way of being in the world"-- something I find myself doing almost constantly) I was reminded of something Albert Camus wrote. I'll paraphrase since I can't remember it word for word: "To the extent to which I define myself, to which I accept my life as having certain boundaries-- I thereby limit the possibilities of my experience." Something like that.
So, immediately, I thought, "I won't even try to define who I am. I'll just be FREE!"
You see what I did there, right? I fell into my own trap. I decided not to limit myself, and then I immediately limited myself by defining myself as "FREE." Tsk tsk! Simpleton! If only I could just shut off the internal dialogue and not be so self-involved and insecure. It's really tedious sometimes.
And, the punchline is that there is really no "Self" to define in the first place! The Buddha pointed that one out about 2,500 years ago, chump!
3 comments:
That is very intuitive KP! ...and cutting edge as well. How many people get the concept of limiting themselves when they define themselves as free? Why can't we just not define ourselves? Are we that bound by adjectives and characteristics? It doesn't help that we are taught from a young age to set those particular boundaries so that it seems wrong and very foreign to go outside of them. Great drawing and even better commentary!
Oh great, so now you're a chump!
That's cool, man. 'Twood be cool to transcend all those poopy labels we put on ourselves cuz, like, some o' them can be quite poisonous. Even the nice ones can be poisonous sometimes. Or we start to define ourselves as all the dumb little things we do, and then what're you left with? A bunch of dumb little things.
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