



Bringing together meaning from the "relationships and connections" established with the people in our lives. Understanding our own identity. Seeing the impact of not just people but thoughts and books. Seeking for the intellectual insight and understanding of why our life story came to be.
Wisdom , learning, knowledge, advice on fish, have all been recorded and can be found and learned. Maybe "understanding" is different than "knowledge"? Perhaps to gain understanding you have to add experience to knowledge.
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"With all thy "getting" get understanding"
Said Solomon Proverbs 4:7
Our minds attend to one thing at a time. If you put on a pair of glasses with one lens red and the other green you will not see a "fusion of color" when you look around but you will see a "flashing of red and green". One moment everything will be red then the next it will be green. First you will see something in red then something else or even the first object, depending on a mental choice in green. Actually the ear works the same way, it makes a choice as to the particular sounds that it hears in a particular instant. You hold thousands of instantaneous impressions in suspension just long enough to............make a choice.
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The mind chooses to focus on one object to the exclusion of all others.
Deliberate choices.
The reality is that humans can only focus on one thing at a time. Of course this gets a little complicated when you add the fact that we can't stop thinking. We are always thinking. Thing about something and the choice it represents is one way to understand what our agency is. The reality that we have to constantly chose what we think about is agency. In fact the ongoing process of making choices about our thoughts "creates our individual world". In each choice we express a preference and the process builds up a world that we really do prefer and even love. We judge ourselves in the process. Each moment and thought provides a foolproof test of our character.
Aristotle pointed out long ago that a shortage of knowledge is an intolerable state and so the mind will do anything to escape it even to the point of inventing knowledge if it has to. Good reason to search for knowledge. Good reason for the search to be ceaseless. A good answer to the question, "what do I think about", since in fact we have to make that decision. The best choices are good things. Truth. Knowledge are good items for thoughts...................................
Emerson suggested that there is one mind, common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same, and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is, or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent.
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Maybe this is too "out there", to put by a picture of a "favorite room", imagined of course, but it sort of follows some thoughts on "why we might read" anyway.............." to see with others eyes and be more than we are". (Night time for better or worse is often time to ponder. )
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There is no great and no small
To the Soul that maketh all:
And where it cometh, all things are;
And it cometh everywhere