{"id":2762,"date":"2010-08-23T03:14:09","date_gmt":"2010-08-23T07:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=2762"},"modified":"2010-08-23T03:18:43","modified_gmt":"2010-08-23T07:18:43","slug":"following-the-voices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/following-the-voices\/","title":{"rendered":"Worlds of our own choosing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Note: All material in this post is under full copyright.\u00a0 Do not use without permission.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

About a month ago, I was walking out of the plasma center when inspiration smacked me square in the face.\u00a0 Two character voices, both of which I’d never heard before, started having the most fascinating argument.<\/p>\n

Knowing that I would immediately forget everything if I didn’t stop and record it RIGHT THAT MOMENT, I pulled out my story notebook, sat down next to my bike, and started writing.\u00a0 This is more or less what I jotted down:<\/p>\n

1st voice: <\/strong>All of us live in the world of our own choosing.<\/p>\n

2nd voice: <\/strong>What are you talking about?<\/p>\n

1st: <\/strong>I mean that all of us choose the world we live in.\u00a0 All of us live in a world of our own construction.<\/p>\n

2nd: <\/strong>That’s crazy.<\/p>\n

1st: <\/strong>Yes, but it’s true.<\/p>\n

2nd: <\/strong>It can’t be.\u00a0 How can it be?<\/p>\n

1st: <\/strong>Because that’s who we are.\u00a0 It’s what we do.\u00a0 We create worlds–if we didn’t, we wouldn’t be human.<\/p>\n

2nd:<\/strong> Now you’re just being crazy.<\/p>\n

1st: <\/strong>In the world you choose to live in, yes, I’m crazy.<\/p>\n

2nd: <\/strong>Look, that can’t be true.\u00a0 We all live in the same<\/em> world.\u00a0 We see the same<\/em> things, not different things.\u00a0 I can’t just choose to look out the window and see a red sky, can I?<\/p>\n

1st: <\/strong>No, but you can choose whether or not the day is beautiful to you.<\/p>\n

2nd: <\/strong>Yeah, okay, but the sky is the same color for all of us, isn’t it?\u00a0 It’s still the same sky.\u00a0 I can’t live in a world without a sky, can I?<\/p>\n

1st: <\/strong>Actually, most people never look up to see it.\u00a0 They live in a world where the sky over their heads is irrelevant–as if it didn’t exist.<\/p>\n

2nd: <\/strong>Yeah, but look, if we were to take the same exact thing–say, a rock–and look at it under a microscope, we’d see the same elements, wouldn’t we?\u00a0 The molecules and atoms are all the same, right?<\/p>\n

1st: <\/strong>Of course.<\/p>\n

2nd: <\/strong>Right!\u00a0 So that means we live in the same<\/em> world, not different worlds.\u00a0 Everything is the same.<\/p>\n

1st: <\/strong>My friend, you don’t understand.\u00a0 A world is so much more than the sum of its atoms.\u00a0 Those are just the building blocks–the true essence lies in how they’re put together.\u00a0 It lies in the story we tell ourselves to explain it all.\u00a0 You see a rock and think, “huh, just another rock.” It doesn’t fit into your story–into your world–except as another set piece.\u00a0\u00a0 A boy, however, would see the perfect, skipping stone; a geologist would see a remnant from the age of the dinosaur.\u00a0 A pilgrim to Mecca would see the rock with which he will smite Shaitan.\u00a0 Different worlds, my friend–their worlds are all very different from yours.<\/p>\n

2nd: <\/strong>Okay, maybe that’s true.\u00a0 We attach different meaning to things–I can accept that–but that doesn’t mean that we live in separate worlds<\/em>.<\/p>\n

1st: <\/strong>On the contrary, my friend.\u00a0 You’re presuming that cold, objective reality is more important to us than subjective truth, and that’s obviously false, because none of us–absolutely none of us–can absorb objective reality without fitting it into some kind of story.\u00a0 We cannot observe anything objectively, for in the very act of observation, we attach meaning to what we see, just to make sense of it.<\/p>\n

2nd: <\/strong>Yes, but–<\/p>\n

1st: <\/strong>This is what it means to be human.\u00a0 We take pieces of the reality we observe and make up stories to explain it.\u00a0 We all tell ourselves thousands of stories every day, simply through the act of living.\u00a0 It comes so natural that most of the time, we barely notice it.<\/p>\n

2nd: <\/strong>Whatever.<\/p>\n

1st: <\/strong>The tragedy, my friend, is that most of us don’t realize that we choose<\/em> the world we live in.\u00a0 We make critical choices every day and aren’t even aware of most of them.\u00a0 We each have the capability to change our world by changing the way we see it, yet most of us never realize it.\u00a0 We go on living in a world that makes us miserable, looking for some outside force to change it, when really, change is no further than our mind.<\/p>\n

2nd:<\/strong> That makes no sense.<\/p>\n

1st: <\/strong>Only because you refuse to open your eyes and see it.<\/p>\n

2nd: <\/strong>Yeah–because what you’re saying is impossible.<\/p>\n

1st: <\/strong>Exactly!\u00a0 That’s exactly<\/em> what I’m talking about!<\/p>\n

2nd: <\/strong>What?<\/p>\n

1st: <\/strong>I’m talking about the impossible–the things that, in your world, could never happen.\u00a0 But what if they’re only impossible because you refuse to believe in them?\u00a0 Because they have no place in the carefully ordered reality you’ve constructed for yourself?<\/p>\n

2nd: <\/strong>I–<\/p>\n

1st: <\/strong>My friend, if only you can let go of the comfortable delusion of certainty and take one step into the darkness, you’ll soon find entire worlds of possibilities opening up to your view.\u00a0 All you need to do is open your mind and take that terrifying first step.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There you have it.\u00a0 A little rough, certainly, but that’s not important–what matters are the ideas behind it all.\u00a0 And to me at least, the ideas are quite fascinating.<\/p>\n

I tried to use some of these ideas in Worlds Away from Home<\/em>, but I don’t think any of them came across very clearly.\u00a0 I probably have to let the story stew a bit in my mind in order to figure out what it’s really about.\u00a0 Maybe I’ll insert a slightly edited version of this dialog in there somewhere, but I won’t force it.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, what do you think?\u00a0 Did any of this resonate with you, or does it sound like so much philosophical hogwash?\u00a0 Tell me–I want to know!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Note: All material in this post is under full copyright.\u00a0 Do not use without permission. About a month ago, I was walking out of the plasma center when inspiration smacked me square in the face.\u00a0 Two character voices, both of which I’d never heard before, started having the most fascinating argument. Knowing that I would… Continue reading Worlds of our own choosing<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[44],"tags":[131,174,83,52,599],"class_list":["post-2762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ds","tag-dialogue","tag-ideas-and-concepts","tag-inspiration","tag-story-ideas","tag-thoughts-reflections","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-Iy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2762"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2793,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2762\/revisions\/2793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}