Do you like me?
I mean, not necessarily even for me. Do you like the concept of me? Do you appreciate what I represent?
And what do I represent?
How can a human be said to represent anything. Each of us is a complex individual made up of a lifetime of experiences that can never and will never be repeated. In a way, communication is a representation of events. And communication is, by its nature, simplification. We use symbols to represents sounds to represent words to represent events or ideas. But when we communicate, we can only get across the barest of gists of what we think or experience. Not only do individual words mean or connotate different things to different people, but the idea of sharing experience is flawed. To completely convey what has been experienced, one must convey the experience and even if that were possible to do so completely would take the same time as experiencing it. We barely have enough time to live our own lifetimes, let alone experience someone else’s as well.
The concept of history is fascinating to me, in this regard. Someone took the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and pared them down into “what was important to remember.” No wonder so many people are desperate to make their mark on the world. No wonder erasure is such a horrifying prospect.
Important questions. How fallacious. Who am I to say what is important and what is not?
Who are any of us?
A question I believe impossible to answer. So why am I asking it?
But, most importantly, how do I turn the comments on?
