Was thinking about people, people in my family, events that have happened, what the future is bringing, what someone has said or done, the cause of why I am here today (geographically not philosophically) and many other things. And, it struck me that one event, word, occurrence often is the polar opposite of the other. Why?
We were watching a series called “Gold Digger” and were, obviously since it’s a movie, steered in a certain direction. What was interesting was that each character had their own story, like in real life we all have our own lives, and yet how the real story wove through all the different lives. And, the ultimate truth was stated at the beginning but no one believed it, not even the characters themselves. It’s a really good, thought provoking story and Julia Ormond is superb in it. She reminds me of Simone Signoret, the French actress and activist.
Going back to the story, the “steering” by the author and director, unless you resisted this steering, would make you intensely dislike each character but one; yet if you did resist you would see the “why” for that character and then you had to want to embrace and comfort him or her.
I like this kind of mental puzzle and challenge, and often I find something I had not thought of before when contemplating it. Viewing an old subject one degree differently puts the subject in a new light and often makes me go “aha!”
I am re-reading “Reading Lolita in Tehran” and finding so much more in it this time. I must have really skimmed it before -perhaps I never read it? Just heard it talked about and read articles about it? So much in it is leading me to speculations about myself and my family growing up, which on the one hand is strange on the surface, but on another not. Persia when I grew up, was a modern country, very civilized and cultured in the Western arts, literature and music, and the education for the privileged and more affluent was very similar to ours, of a very high standard. So why not speculations? We were young women at the same time in similar worlds. The author talks about her real memories of the country before the Revolution and how it was then, and her students’ memories which are all second hand memories. To me that is something of significance to all of us, because living an event and creating our own memories of this is different from reading or hearing about it, or seeing images of it. It’s the difference between “being there” and then seeing an image of “there”. One is three dimensional; rather more actually, sight, hearing, smell, touch, emotion. The other is flat.
It is the pursuit of Why the is always fascinating. I like to know Why – even when there is no benefit or real point to the knowledge. And, it’s not because I think myself more knowledgeable or superior in any way, it’s just interesting to understand then see the links in the chain from cause to effect.
As you have more experiences in life, you have more stored memories of those experiences which then lead you to expect or anticipate an outcome based on those experiences. That is a known fact of human behaviour. What floors me is that most people I meet do not use these stored memory experiences! They do not ask Why and search their memories! Why not? Most of the time they have the answer already within themselves but they refuse to find it – why? Fear? Laziness? It cannot be ignorance because it is within themselves. So what is it?
Why?