Belief

At least once in my life, I've spoken without really thinking about what I was saying. Also, at least once, someone has challenged the meaning of the word "believe". A doctor suggested that I rephrase to "My understanding is..." He did me a favor. There is less for petty divertors to grab on to. To believe, as another dialogue digested, is to have a practically corporal conviction. It seems that the word would be given too much then, and worse, tangle itself up in dogma and all of the malarky that goes along with it.

So, by nature or nurture, I rest easier in the abstract, the rational, and the logical. I can dissect, and do, words as well as the next man. Only recently I've had to spar with a girl who has a great confidence in her mastery of English. The problem is that there is a point when the words become trees and the sentences and paragraphs become nests of trees and then forests. If I were trying to explain in many words how dark the forest is, and what that could mean, I don't need to be corrected that a "tree" is actually an "oak". The funny thing is that we can all attack each string of bits as much as the next.

When I listen to speakers diverge, cross lines, and present faulty truths, my natural reaction is to restate it correctly. I do this not for their benefit, but for my own so that I don't adopt an error or incomplete truth. This is great, but having a vague sense of how a string will be interpreted gives the option of presenting facts as truths and allowing the audience to misinterpret them.

There is humor in a later illuminating statement which changes the thread of thought back, with timing that I don't naturally possess, but unfortunately this isn't how I usually employ this. Usually, I'm trying to fob off something to get someone to leave me alone. People aren't stupid, so when they see what I've done, they get upset.

Then they're upset and they have all sorts of words for me. I again have to challenge and try to run around their statements to see if they are true. A wiser man than myself once told me, "If it doesn't apply, let it fly." That rhymed. Better still, a man asked me, "Who is worse off -- the fool or the one arguing with a fool?" That is one of my favorite questions I've ever encountered.

The same man who issued the lovely question said, "Stand for something or you'll fall for anything." I don't hold with that statement, but we're all wrong sometimes. Even Einstein could only see what he could from his magical vantage. A great man told me to listen to my heart because my head will lie. He's very right.

My head does lie. Given rationale, logic, and imagination, I can make nearly anything fit; so long as I have the hamster wheel of higher thought, that is. I don't necessarily believe what I see. I don't have to see something to believe it. Believe and suspect are tied closely for me. There is a very stubborn and immature scientist in me or something; maybe I'm just very stubborn and immature, among other things.