“Hold every moment sacred. Give each clarity and meaning, each the weight of thine awareness, each its true and due fulfillment” (Thomas Mann).
THERE IS TOO MUCH FUZZINESS IN OUR IDEAS. What should be sharp and clear is often indistinct and cloudy. We need to bring some clarity to the business of living — and also of loving.
Clarity in our thinking. Since our actions are the consequence of our thinking, it’s essential that what we think be as clear as possible. Sometimes, however, we don’t work very hard on this goal, even concerning vital topics. Alfred North Whitehead once spoke of a particular philosophy as “an adventure in the clarification of thought.” If you know the philosophy of which he spoke, you may doubt whether it made anything clearer, but still, his expression, “an adventure in the clarification of thought,” is interesting. How long has it been since you embarked on an adventure like that? How recently has your thinking on a significant subject been clarified?
Clarity in our relationships. Sometimes our relationships lack quality because they’re ill-defined. We haven’t made the effort to know the other person clearly, nor have we given them the chance to know us clearly — so the relationship is foggy. Our interactions would improve if we clarified them with openness, humility, and courage.
Perhaps we find it difficult to relate to others clearly because we don’t experience things clearly ourselves. And maybe that’s because so much of our experience now is “synthetic.” Cut off from the clarity of the natural world, our minds are fed primarily by the flickering images on our digital devices, big and little screens alike. As wonderful as these media are, they can never present more than a vague representation of original reality. Out of touch with sharply defined reality itself, it’s no surprise that our thinking falls out of focus. We would do well to “clear up” our intellect and our imaginations more often by directly experiencing the creations that call to us “out there” — beyond the doors of our dwellings. Things that are clear in themselves can help to make our minds more clear.
There is a poignancy in all things clear,
In the stare of the deer, in the ring of a hammer in the morning.
Seeing a bucket of perfectly lucid water
We fall to imagining prodigious honesties.
(Richard Wilbur)
Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com
