Thoughtless

My negligence in blogging reminds me of a quote from Thomas Paine. It's from The Crisis essay III. Honestly, I love the first three pages of it. It's smashing. I won't quote it all here because I don't wish to bore you all to death. I know what it's like to open a blog and see that the entry is 3 pages long. It's a serious time investment. But please indulge me by reading a couple of quotes.

"In the progress of politics, as in the the common occurrences of life, we are not only apt to forget the ground we have traveled over, but frequently neglect to gather up experience as we go. We expend, if I may so say, the knowledge of every day on the circumstances that produce it, and journey on in search of new matter and new refinements: But...it is pleasant, and sometimes useful, to look back, even to the first periods of infancy, and trace the turns and windings through which we have passed...

"Truly, may we say, that never did man grow old in so short a time! We have crowded the business of an age into the compass of a few months, and have been driven through such a rapid succession of things, that, for the want of leisure to think, we unavoidably wasted knowledge as we came, and have left nearly as much behind us as we brought with us: But the road is yet rich with the fragments, and , before we fully lose sight of them, will repay us for the trouble of stopping to pick them up."

I think that sums it up well. I really don't take time to meditate and learn from my experiences. I expend the knowledge of every day on the circumstances that produce it. I don't take the time to learn from what I experience.

Honestly, blogging and writing in journals, I think, is a powerful way to learn from experiences. So I'm going to begin to think more. I'm going to attempt to pick up the fragments which litter the road.

For those of you who got this far and have a little more patience, here is another little gem from Thomas: "There are certain circumstances, which, at the time of their happening, are kind of riddles, and as every riddle is to be followed by its answer, so those kind of circumstances will be followed by their events, and those events are always the true solution. A considerable space of time may lapse between, and unless we continue our observations from the one to the other, the harmony of them will pass away unnoticed: But the misfortune is, that partly from the pressing necessity of some instant things, and partly form the impatience of our own tempers, we are frequently in such a hurry to make out the meaning of every thing as fast as it happens, that we thereby never truly understand it; and not only start new difficulties to ourselves by so doing, but, as it were, embarrass Providence in her good designs."