I am not my assumptions, my opinions, my beliefs, my fears, my joys, my angers, my decisions, my finances, my jokes, my retorts. I am none of those things.
Assumptions
It seems that people are not just wedded to their assumptions, it seems people are welded to their assumptions. And welded to everything else about themselves.
Why
Why are people so attached to their assumptions? Why are people so attached to every thing else about themselves that they are willing to assume their survival depends on defending, and even perpetuating, their assumptions? Why are people willing, and sometimes even eager, to defend their assumptions and opinions to such an extent that it might bring them great harm or even death?
I don’t mean to imply capitulation to any and all influences we may encounter. Being one’s own self does signify a steadfastness to the truth of who one is. But all those assumptions and opinions are not me.
All my assumptions and opinions and all the rest… it all arises from somewhere. Perhaps from within me. I don’t have surety about the origins of my assumptions and opinions, but regardless of their origin they feel as if they arise from within me, from within my brain and my mind. And I can assume that because it feels like they arise from within me, I would guess the tendency is for most people to do the same. And since these assumptions, etc, feel like they arise from within me, I might normally accept that I should take responsibility for them, own them, defend them as if they are me. But just because it feels like they arise from within me does not make it so. I can only speculate about their origin.
I know that music on my radio does not originate from within the radio, the radio is just a mechanism to transform and transport radio waves into whatever sound that is embedded in those waves. Music (recorded or live) at the radio station is transformed into radio waves which then emanate from a transmitting antenna. My radio, using its receiving antenna, “hears” the radio waves and transmutes the radio waves into sound. I hear the sound. But it would a big mistake to conceive that the music is originating from within my radio. Even a device that plays recorded music (such as a tape recorder, or an MP3 player, etc.) is not the original origin of the music. All the sounds and music were placed into the device from elsewhere.
Is my brain and mind like a receiving device that is transmuting ideas received from elsewhere? It certainly seems so. Why do so many people seemingly have the same or similar thrusts of ideas, compulsions, fears, joys, angers, and so on, all at the same time? While we are under the impression all of these thoughts are our own, the objective reality appears to be that they are a shared and communal commonality.
I do not believe that I am simply regurgitating things that are in the atmosphere around me. I put my own ‘spin’ on these thoughts, and I am sure these thoughts are all influenced by whatever culture I live in, the people I interact with, my perspectives, prejudices, beliefs, etc. My mind has the unfortunate flaw of assuming that all its assumptions, opinions, thoughts and ideas have originated solely from within itself. But they are not all originally mine, and they are not me. I do not own my assumptions, opinions, beliefs, and so on. And they do not own me. Or at least, they should not.
All these are floating within and without, like clouds in the sky or leaves floating by on the surface of a river. If I stand by the bank of a river and watch my opinions and beliefs and assumptions, and all the rest, float away down the river, I do not run after them trying to rescue them from the current. I do know that more will assuredly rise sooner or later, so why should I chase these old ones? And even if I could chase after them, all I would get is wet and messy. I just let them go.
What is your relationship to your assumptions? You can let me know here.
The illustration “Shoe of Cromwellian shape embroidered with small crystal beads; dainty white shoe; wedding shoe, dating from nearly forty years ago” is from the collection “Ladies’ dress shoes of the nineteenth century” by T. Watson Greig, published in 1900 in Edinburgh, Scotland.
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