Standing on a bridge, I began to wonder about the relationships of things to other things. How do we decide what something is without comparing it to something else? The answer is, we don’t. Everything becomes what it is in terms of how it relates to everything else. For example, we can know what hot is because we can compare it to cold. If everything were always hot, we would have no word for it. But since everything is not always hot, we have reference points we can compare “hot” to in order to give it a definition. And once we have those two points--hot and cold--we have an infinite variety of points in between, and each of those points get their meaning because of their comparison to the two original points.
So, two things are needed.
Each “thing” defines the other thing by being its opposite, or if not
its opposite, at least by being “other.”
If we only had the emotion of love, it would simply “be” and we might
not even be aware of it, but because we have hate, we have two points. Then in between those two points run a gamut
of other emotions as they relate to the two primary emotions on that particular
line.
Therefore, we know what hot is because we know what cold is,
and vice versa. We know what love is
because we know what hate is. We know
what high is because we know what low is.
And so on. We know what light is
because we know what darkness is. We
know what full is because we know what empty is . . .
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| Galls and their reflections. |
But I got thinking.
What if we had something that couldn’t be compared to anything else? How would we know what to call it? How could we define it? How could we discuss it or think about it? The answer is, we couldn’t, at least not in
this already-formed world. Anything new
that comes into this world, anything new that gets “thought up,” has an
infinite variety of things that already exist to which it can be compared, and
therefore, it can be defined, named, discussed, and thought about.
Still, there had to be a first thing, because if there
weren’t, then any other “thing” that came along would have nothing to which it
could be compared. So, the first thing
was just a thing that was “out there,” but it had no name, no definition, no
understanding. It just was. But then there came along a second thing, and
once that happened, everything exploded.
When the second thing came along, the first thing had something it could
be compared to, and vice versa. Each
could be defined in relation to the other.
Each now had properties that the other did not, and once these
properties were compared and established, an infinite number of sub-properties
grew in between the two primal things, and so everything was born.
Where did the second thing come from? I think it was just the first thing looking
at its own reflection in its own mind. I
think it fell in love with itself, and the second thing was born. That is what I think happened. Once it began to consider another, then “otherness” was
born.
So, in the beginning there was just one thing. It was infinite but impotent and unknowable. Then a second thing came along. It was finite but a catalyst and a definer. Then the third thing came along, and that was any point in between the first two. That was us. We were the third thing. We discovered what we were by looking at the first thing and imitating the second.
But these galls flying over the river, with their
reflections being even more beautiful and defined than their actuality, do not
care about such things. It is enough
simply to be.
