Life is like that

I know that someone has asked you "do you know [insert name here] ?" The truth is we don't really know anyone.  Let me rephrase that, if you truly know one or two people in your lifetime you are quite fortunate.  If you let yourself be known by those people then you are equally as fortunate.
 
Knowing someone is power.  Being known is surrender.  It's like a type of love, perhaps.  I'm not sure how it goes.  It's hard for one to surrender control over one's intimacies, one's foibles and idiocyncracies.  There are truths to ourselves that we only begin to realize as we grow and there are those truths that stay with us for as long as we live.  Life is like that.  A distant hill that resides in our close conscious.
 
I've never been one to surrrender myself easily or completely.  Which is why, I guess, that the meaning that life holds for me is different than so many of my friends.  I live for myself mostly, and for others minimally.  Yet it's been so long since I realized what it is like to relax that life has jumbled itself into many little mini-knots.  Life is like that, a gordion knot that takes a sharp sword to sever.
 
But what do you really know about the people that you call your friends?  Do you know the color of their eyes, the shoes they like to wear?  Perhaps you know their preferred foods and movie choices.  Do you know their worst fears and their highest hopes?  Do you know when they are feeling poorly versus when they are not?  Is it possible that you don't know your friends at all?  Life is like that, never knowing what should be obvious.
 
Mostly what I'm trying to get at is do you even know yourself?  Up until about 4 years ago I thought I did.  Now I know myself much better, and in some ways that has diminished my abilities to maintain independent thought processes.  In knowing myself I have lost some creativity, some individuality, some mystery and some, if not all, of my spontaneity.  Life is like that, as you learn you adapt.
 
Right now I am listening to flamenco music and reacquainting myself with those neurons that used to write and write, never thinking of surrendering to the doldrums of conformity.  I need some inspiration from time to time and it's been a long while since I had any.  When I read, and I read alot, I don't feel inspiration.  I feel identification and justification.  Life should be subtitled "looking for in all the wrong places." 
 
I also get frustrated at the reason we humans know nothing.  We are programmed to accept what is told to us as truth.  That acceptance is wrong.  It fosters a sense of security in thought and provides a warm cozy blanket that blots out all originality and novel ideas.  The truth is not that syrupy sweet.  I refuse to swallow the party line for or from anyone.  I refuse to memorize tables, charts or graphic notations.  Where is the learning in that?  There should be reawl application of learned processes, not rote recitation.  No one agrees with me, not on a large scale.  University used to be a place that fostered new ideas and approaches to problems.  Not any longer.  University is where adolescent children go to be groomed socially for whatever station in life they have carved out for them by their parents money and standing.  Life is like that.