* consider yourself lightly; consider the world deeply*
The fourth of the twenty one tenets of "The Way of Walking Alone".
There is a lot to think about in just this short tenet. To consider yourself lightly, you have to be self aware. Self aware. Aware of who you are, where you are in life, your importance to the people and places around you… et, ad nauseum. That is a lot to ask today in a society that seems to reinforce the identity dilemma that we all face growing up. Girls wanting to be stick thin supermodels, guys wanting to be jocks and rock stars. Very few people grow up wanting to be… themselves. Isn't that a strange? We grow up wanting to be someone else.
There may be those that know themselves, find their ambitions, hobbies and everything in between and know exactly where they want to take their lives. This is good… but most often times… they are very much a bore. Taking everything so seriously that they cannot enjoy themselves, and those around them cannot enjoy their company either.
The world is all around us. And where we are when we are born into it, for the most part, dictates how we will spend the rest of our lives. Whether as coked out drug fiends in the inner cities of New York , to a rich boy with nothing to want living in the Hamptons
In this way, I believe that Musashi is trying to show us that everything is not as serious as we ourselves make it out to be… and that the world is just not some obscure, abstract and out there entity, but something that surrounds us, and if we misjudge or do not look at with a word to the wise… we may end up just another victim of this 'cold, cruel world.'
No comments:
Post a Comment