Monday, October 20, 2008

On Being a Tyro

1
Tyro is just the classicist's way of saying 'beginner'. Who's not a tyro? He, who thinks he's not, is the fist to be deemed so. What do we know about anything? Beneath our knowledge empire, lays a shaking basis of decaying assumptions. On that I will not complain, for that is the best we can achieve. We, humans, are but a group of arrays of inexorable emotions – we are sadly pathetic. I've been observing, for a long time, the behavior of words such as: reason, rationality, just, genius, etc. They are the instruments whereby we convince ourselves about the notion that we are what we are, actually, not. Such words help us feel better about our tragic being.

2
'Superficially naïve', this is how I prefer to describe myself. I'm motivated by my desires, and very often clung to stupid notions. Worse, I'm tremendously skillful in convincing myself that what I'm thinking about and practicing is reasonable and useful: I am self-deceptive. Yet, I find the awareness of this these facts mysteriously valuable. Further, being comfortable in confronting those states of life, is even more mysterious. I'm able to recognize an intriguing object of thought, and I'm also able to exercise a sort of mental treatment on it. To illustrate, I know that I'm stupid, and I can deal, mentally, with that. What one might think, if he read my words charged with weakness?