Footprints in the Sand

There is a difference between finding footprints in the sand, and saying, there is an invisible man walking about...than finding footprints in the sand, and saying, I imagine someone was walking here before me. The difference between a person interpreting a stranger's laughter, as being laughed at, as opposed to seeing it as an unrelated shared joke. There are nuanced differences in the million ways we can say things, in the million ways we could interpret things, in the million statements we could make. What is interesting then, is which ones we choose, and which ones we don't.

Our experience of events and encounters, is heavily laced with our own history, of the perception of our experiences. I say, perception of our experiences, as opposed to what we would more readily refer to as experiences, because I believe how we join the dots of our existence, deeply edits our reading of our experience. 

In other words, we already have a script that we are squeezing our experiences into. We will do this consistently and determinedly, even when the script becomes entirely inadequate. So, when people say I saw it with my own eyes, or something to that effect, I am not utterly convinced by what is said, though I won't entirely dismiss it; but I wonder instead what the script was. The script that the seen was being filtered through.

What is the risk in admitting, that the way we see the world, is just that. To speak about the way we see the world, or the way we feel the world; as opposed to, attempting to speak about the way the world is. We are hooked to the is-ness, to wanting to makes statements about reality like compulsive hecklers, with a case of ontological tourettes. We would rather this than be left alone in our worlds of feeling, and having to work those out, and having to make decisions about what we do with them. 
 

This becomes a dialogue about what is going on inside our heads, and why we are behaving in particular ways when we could be behaving in another; or why we are interpreting in a particular way and not in another. 

We are all interpreting, and once we have owned up to that, we can begin the journey of finding out how much of that interpretation is based on fantasy, wishes and fears. How much of what we say is just ontological tourettes, that says everything about our compulsion to make statements about external reality, and maybe not much more than that.

At what point do we try to reinforce the scripts we have already written? Do we glue those understandings together, in order to protect our own penmanship? Do we find communities of people, where our understandings can be maintained, and remain unquestioned? Do we keep ourselves separate from the encounters that might threaten our original account, our understanding of reality, our understanding of who we are?