What is it to experience the world?

What is it to inhabit a world that comes into being because it is perceived? Such a world is a world unavailable; it is not the world of living – the everyday. In this way of seeing things, there are two worlds: the world that might be what we think it might be – the world we allow to be, the world we bring about by perception; and the world in which we are, which may not be as it seems, but nevertheless is — the world as it is perceived and experienced. The world of everyday is affected by what we suppose the world beyond the world of everyday to be. If the world beyond the world of everyday is rational, coherent, serial, dependable, then we are part of an environment which is rational, coherent, serial, and dependable. Knowing there is, or even might be, such a world, makes the irrational and inconsistent lives we lead feel less troublesome – a little.

What does this world of everyday bring? Sensuality, perception, awareness, exposure certainly, novelty, a lot of un-wiseness, naivety, failure, point-missing, looking one way at times when looking another way would have been better, not-learning and more not-learning, failing to grasp the point, repeating previously recognised errors, falling into previously discovered traps, loving into emptiness sometimes, loving into loving sometimes, realising occasionally, realising more but only seldom, feeling like a leaf in the wind, feeling afraid of not being even though being is confusing and disheartening, feeling afraid of not being even though it is clear that not being cannot be a harm, wishing for more than is available, hoping, realising how capricious is the fortune of life and living, recognising inconsistency of self and not learning from it, not learning, getting nowhere, feeling elated — absorbed in another, wishing to feel elated — absorbed in another, trembling, missing, seeing dark where there is light, feeling darkness when darkness cannot be felt, going backwards against the flow of time, losing track, having no sight, sometimes seeing only beauty, sometimes seeing nothing, recognising the good in others and knowing it is unattainable for oneself, recognising the bad in others and realising how close it lies to oneself, striving and failing, failing, being satisfied with doing the best one can and being dissatisfied with only being able to do the best one can, hoping to discover an answer to unaskable questions, not knowing the question, having to accept, having to tolerate not being able to change the world, being part of change, feeling in flux, knowing inconsistency, knowing pointlessness, being aware, being fearful, feeling exposed, not being sure.

If it is any, or all of these things, then wishing so much for truth, a single truth, something which can be known as true, and yet sensing despair for there is no truth to be had, only exposure to that which is. And am I happy with this — the very antithesis of the creation of a manageable world? How I wish it were manageable — but do I? Would manageability solve anything? What do I yearn for? To be in love more — it is the only remedy to the exposure.

What is my experience? A jumble — a mix-up, beginning to end — a mix-up. Love is the only place where we belong and this is the most unmanageable place of all. I believe the world we perceive is rational — it is coherent with the B-series, the series of before and after, but we inhabit an unusual part of the world. In a way, we make the world by being conscious of it and, somehow, we learn to pay for that. Life is a mix-up, it is not ‘pure’ anything. We can conceive ‘pure something’ but it does not make it be. I would like things to last — and I can conceive of lastingness — but they do not. I hanker after the ‘pure something’ which is not available. Even though I know it is not available, I still wish for it to be. I yearn for things to last, even though I know they are all corrupted by change. That’s mix-up, and that seems like life. But I am not content for life to be simply a way of coping with what it seems to be.