It’s difficult to know where to start because we don’t want to start from a place of confusion. But admitting that, accepting that, not apologising for it, or using it as an excuse, that is the only place from which to start and that in itself is the best response to the confusion.
I haven’t written on my blogs for almost a month but I have been writing, incessantly, on social media. Posts on Facebook or Twitter, the platforms I use most are very transient. Even if they on occasion express something profound, they are still expressions in and of the moment, immediate and in the context of a conversation, a mood or a particular event.
Sometimes I am pleased with what I have posted. Sometimes I wish I had not posted it. Others who see the posts will, similarly, like them or wish I had not posted them. But whether well constructed like a complex pebble sculpture or put together like a few stones laid together on the beach, they should be washed away naturally by the tides of time and attention. If there is an expression that I want to preserve, maybe to extend and expand on later, then like photographs of the pebbles, I should commit that expression on a blog. But then it will be something else because the context will be different apart from the conversation and the original moment and perhaps part of another conversation and moment.
To post a thing and then walk away from it. Time moves on and we move on. That’s how it should be.
My analogy is not perfect however and I have learned perhaps to my cost (though the cost may have been worth paying) that even if I keep nothing of my past expressions others may unearth them to use out of context and with malice.
I will keep arranging pebbles on the beach and urging others to do the same. This is freedom. Expressing a thing in the moment and then moving on, beyond the expression, beyond our own judgement, beyond the judgement of others.
Hari Om. It’s done.