Introduction
This reflection shows that using simple methods, and simple, near at hand, examples can lead to productive philosophical insights. In that respect it is a very practical reflection. It shows us that we do not need to look far beyond our own lives, or own worlds, to see something of philosophical significance.
Reflection
We do not need to travel to see things. We do not need to know a thousand people to have a rounded view of people. We do not need to look to the complicated to find the answer to our question. Life comes to us—in all its forms, in all its simplicity. If we adopt 'Miss Marple' thinking—the close observation of that which is to hand—then we are graced with more than enough information to solve anything that concerns us. Look closely at what there is. Do not be mistaken thinking that the more complex the view, the more likely the answer to what seems a complex question. Most questions are simple anyway—they demand only simple solutions. We are advised to look closer before we look further.
It is first thing in the morning, I have just made bread—I had run out. I am looking through the window realising something. It has rained hard in the night. I have a large pond in the garden—it teems with newts and frogs and dragonflies and all manner of other things unidentified. A week ago I took it upon myself to dig another—it would, I thought cure a boggy area nearby, and I rather like digging holes in the ground. It turned out well, but not as planned. It will not hold water at the level I thought, it has altered the drainage of the land (already confused by ground work), and it has disturbed the level of the other pond. I have banked up the edges of the other pond to try and remedy some of this. Now, after the overnight rain, the banking has held back water somewhere else and the garden is flooded where previously it was not. Then I remembered that I had done something similar at a previous house—digging, water levels, flooding. And I realised a number of things: one thing leads to another, something corrective often causes further or additional problems, hydraulics are difficult to come to terms with, and although our lives change and we progress in some ways, in many ways we learn nothing and repeat things as though the repetition is in itself novel. How strange, I think, that I have done this again. Why don't I learn anything? My mother used to say admonishingly, 'You will never learn!'. Then I realise that being fresh to the world, enjoying its novelty means doing things just like this. What is there to learn? There is no end product. There is no ‘wrapped up’ version. Life is so marvellously incomplete. Memory of things does not introduce a completeness, it only introduces a known catalogue, and that is fairly pointless. I went to the trouble a few months ago to learn Jimi Hendrix' 'Little Wing' on the guitar. Yesterday I thought I would try it out, only to find I had almost completely forgotten it. I was rather disturbed by this. I felt as though I could retain nothing, could build nothing into that ever growing picture of what I think ‘being me’ is all about. Today, after looking out of the window, and thinking about my pond, I feel more comfortable with my loss. Yes, today I will set to and 'learn' it again—at least until the next time.
Comments
It is difficult to accept that, in many ways, we ‘learn’ nothing—that life takes us around in circles or leads us down blind alleys. Sometimes we go around in the same circles and again find ourselves staring into the end of a blind alley that years ago we witnessed before. Our memory systems are not constructed in such a way that we have an accessible chronologically ordered set of events displayed from which we can pick. Often we are confused by which is yesterday and which is ten years ago—‘it only seems like yesterday!’ We forget things and so we retrace steps we do not realise we have trod before. It all gets us nowhere. From this, sometimes, as here in this reflection, we realise that this is what life is—a process which has no end result and which is filled with repetition and confusion. In life there is no line from one point to another—birth and death are not parts of our life, they are outside it. Our lives are merely the process of change, and realising this, reminding ourselves of it if we have forgotten, refreshes our understanding of freedom and meaningful action in a world which is not constrained by any true parameters.
