Just made a strange experience … at two o’clock in the night, but nothing to frighten you. Read on. The background is, that I used the the last two days mainly for “tidying up my thoughts”. Most people will think this is a strange activity, and that my flat would need it more. Anyway. Practically it is, sorting through my mindmaps that contain all the “operational” information and decisions in my life. They are sort of an externalized part of my brain’s memory, slower but more precise. When tidying it up, I write down some latent decisions and re-structure stuff into life components, projects, tasks and journals. And I finish some blog post drafts with thoughts that troubled me lately … hence the several posts here today.
I did this “thought cleaning” a few times already, with the gap of some months in between. After it, mostly I have a good impression of the current state of my life. The same happened now, and the impression came just yet, after reading through my blogroll’s posts since long.
The crazy thing is, for the first time in life my mind feels both free and complete at the same time. Let me explain.
Most of my life, I had oriented myself towards a doctrinal system (a form of Christian fundamentalism) to feel “safe and complete” in mind about my conception of the world. Then, practical problems and critical thinking made this system more and more unliveable; that was around 2005-02. It coincides with my entry to the blogosphere, meant to think out loudly my critical thoughts and questions.
Since then, I felt more and more free in my thought life because I left more and more human authorities alone. But I did not feel complete at all, there were all these nagging questions and doubts. There are more than 200 blog posts since then, most of them detailing an aspect of this stuff, and together they document some hundred hours of reading and discussing. Nearly driving some of my friends mad with all my bugging questions 🙂
Ok, and what’s different now? In the last weeks, I found my position regarding a few of the most heavy questions (see posts “Why God might be silent“, “Deriving joy from meaning“, “Helping this world at system level?“). These answers also granted me a better basic mood and new motivation. And even better, these were the last bits to complete my position to the basic questions in life. Not that all this is necessarily true (it will develop), but for the first time, I feel “complete” in mind again. That feels good.
And now, looking through all those philosophical and theological blogs that had a huge influence on my thoughts before, I noticed that I got independent of them since my last visit. I still value most of them, but I have my own position now, for the first time a complete one. Which allows me to be independent.
I really don’t want to seem proud. I rather view this as a normal development: everyone, when becoming an adult, finds his or her own and complete position. This position is the basic set of answers that they will use for the years to come. It may be logical or not, well-founded or clumsy: because it’s complete, because it’s a closed system, it can be defended. Adults normally don’t leave that position, as there’s no force that makes this necessary. Except for crisis experiences.
Now that I found my own position, only God can correct me. (I hope he will if necessary, as he did in 2004/2005.) I cannot see big problems in defending my position against people’s logic. This part of my adolescence is now about 10 years too late, but in compensation, very detailed and, as I think, well founded. And, as a special but unintended attribute, it’s a “free” (in the sense of “unique”) position: I have yet to find somebody else who holds a like set of answers regarding the basic questions of life. I seem to be a free thinker, but not as an end in itself: I just searched the answers.
With this part of “adolescence” finally finished, it seems that the next step is ahead: applying it, and teaching it. Also a normal development: every adult should be self-confident enough to teach his position to growing-ups, and to discuss it with other adults to publicly display its quality. There’s even an idea in my head how to apply and teach this stuff in a style that concords with the actual content (see also the post “Adult loneliness“): founding a mobile, high-power, educational-transformational community with native people in a developing country.
Of course, it feels good that these hard times of troubling myself with questions of all sorts are now over, for the most part. And I’m grateful to God for this!! But also, I fear that, if I err in an important issue, I am uncorrectable now. Which I really do not want to be … so if you think I am in error, talk to me and use good logic, and I will hopefully be able to see my error also and change … again.
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