A cloud shrouded sultry August morning…

Another day begins. I realized that I inadvertently missed an appointment yesterday. No matter the note written in my day-timer, my memory is no longer as reliable as in my youth.  I imagined the appointment for today’s afternoon. Therefore an apology is called for. I will apologize and made amends. Also I’ll need another appointment. To be human is to be mistaken.

I read somewhere about fallabilism. (from Medieval Latin: fallibilis, “liable to error”) It is always possible to be wrong. Nothing can be proven with complete certainty. If meaning is derived from context, when a context changes even a bit, the meaning shifts as well. What I thought true, no longer ought to be relied upon… Food for thought.

It is very difficult hold my expectations for life loosely, to no longer insist upon being certain. Even when I know such openness is a key to sanity, to a life-well-lived, I continue to crave the security of being right all of the time. What do I want? What extreme measures am I willing to take, or allow others to take in my name, to have what I want? Is “having” feasible, reasonable, or could/would that be monstrous?

Such ruminations are relevant to these times, here and now in America.

The first verse of the 81 verse of the Tao Te Ching seems unusually comforting today.

Vs. 1

The way you can go
isn’t the real way.
The name you can say
isn’t the real name.

Heaven and earth
begin in the unnamed:
name’s the mother
of ten thousand things.

So the unwanting soul
sees what’s hidden,
and the ever-wanting soul
sees only what it wants.

Two things, one origin,
but different in name,
whose identity is mystery.
Mystery of all mysteries!
The door to the hidden.

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu, trans. Ursula K. Le Guin

Notwithstanding naming and language is a bid to control circumstances – what more shall I do than to affirm that I err in part?

*header image of Buddhism Hungry Ghosts