Rendered Mute

I’ve been locked away in research and writing, and so being time-poor meant I needed to stop writing my blog. A little while ago I suddenly got this brilliant idea that I should keep studying and by some twist of fate got accepted into a postgrad philosophy program that I had up until then admired from afar, and I don’t think I’ve had a full night’s sleep since.

Those who know me well accept that I have this penchant for study, I have a number of master’s and a Doctorate, and so of course the assumption is that academia comes easy to me. But this is not the true picture, the truth is that I have an insatiable curiosity. There is nothing as exciting as suddenly coming across a writer, a passing thought or theory, that triggers a question and suddenly without too much effort, a whole new world opens up, a world that had been there growing and debated, while the rest of us carried on in complete ignorance. Aristotle was really on it when he said, “the more you know, the more you realize you don't know”. This position makes someone with a lot of questions begin to realize that they are on an endless journey; but just sometimes there is a deep yearning to arrive at the destination, sometimes you want to know how many pages are left before the story reaches its conclusion. And I think that’s where I might be right now, and I must look to my current program as a cause for this predicament. Philosophy of course is the one area where the answers aren’t at the back of the book, but add to this, classes that are led by academics who are considered some of the world's leading thinkers, and we have secured a ticket to join Alice down the Rabbit hole. The trick is in ensuring that it is a return ticket.

Sometimes I will be in a social situation and sit in on a conversation, and somebody will say something that to me has no basis or is so generalized and sweeping that I become mute, not knowing where to begin to respond, which first word to use that will allow me to enter the conversation with any meaning, and so often I choose silence, waiting for the discussion to reach its natural conclusion. Right now, I’m at the pinnacle of not knowing where to enter the conversation, or even what direction I want to take it.

My grandmother was a convent-raised catholic, my mother had a leaning toward Buddhism, but when it came to deciding on my religious education, my father the atheist, carried the strongest vote. In time, and with a changed family structure, my grandmother’s fears that her unbaptized grandchild was tainted with original sin, won out. And each week I was sent on my bicycle to meet with the parish priest for little finger sandwiches and an in-depth bible exploration, an exploration that for me, and unfortunately for the priest and my grandmother, didn’t lead to any sudden finding of faith. However, this did whet my appetite and in adulthood, I embarked on a study of various religions with unbridled enthusiasm, and with each, I found something of value, yet each had basically the same story ending, an ending that I had already found hard to accept while I had been eating those finger sandwiches. So, I ventured into psychology, and needless to say, the exploration of the mind (if we can agree such a thing exists) offered its own unresolvable challenges. Next, I aimed to answer simpler questions with degrees in business and finally in education, and while these allowed me to earn a reasonable living, new questions still kept appearing. And now I find myself in the throws of thought and floor to ceiling reading about ethics and the nature of knowledge, reality, and existence itself, which has led to rendering me mute.

While I think I will still discuss the Butch-femme dynamic because this is one of the few things that I embrace without hesitation, for anyone who may read this I apologize in advance, for my primary purpose for using this blog format is for my own selfish need. I write to help me again find a voice that has been smothered by the often-profound ideas of generations of great thinkers, and hopefully, in writing, I will find a way for their words to eventually assist me in finding my own.