Revolt

If there's one thing you should know about me it's that I keep everything. Literally, everything. I'm not a pack-rat by any means but I keep a lot of sentimental miscellanea from all aspects and junctures of my life. My grandpa was an accountant who always did my family's taxes and after he passed away I received my check in the mail and never cashed it. To this day, that check hangs on my cork board. I keep receipts from important purchases, not for superficial buys, but for example, I have the receipt for my Moleskine worn and mostly faded inside the pocket of my Moleksine. In high school I kept shoe boxes of movie tickets, pictures, and love letters..."love" letters from past relationships. Don't worry, I've long since thrown all of those shoe boxes away. The point I'm trying to get at is that all throughout college I was careful to keep all of my writing materials. I have a litany of books from different generations, movements, and even countries, all from the different classes I took. Along with these books I've kept my notebooks which hold all of my color coded, neatly written, highlighted, personal-dialogue-along-the-margins notes. If there is any one thing I am passionate about it is taking notes. 

While preparing some materials for my tutoring session today I rifled through stacks of notebooks, some of which contained my penmanship that I found both familiar and unfamiliar upon looking at it. Side note: It's interesting to see how much your handwriting changes, how it is still changing, and how much of yourself shows through the swift movements of your hand. I think now more than ever I see myself in my writing. Or maybe now more than ever I'm oddly aware of certain eccentricities that I never noticed before. 

In one of my notebooks I kept a handout which contained an excerpt from Education and the Significance of Life by Jiddu Krishnamurti. An outstandingly bold green caught my eye, I read the passage that my 18-year old self highlighted and smiled because I knew what I had thought was important then was wholly insignificant in comparison to the passage several lines below it. And my intention for this blog was to just share this passage with you but of course I got sidetracked. I think everyday we make decisions that change the rest of our lives, master of the obvious, I know. But really, I think a good handful of us make decisions that please other people, more than it pleases us. We're constantly searching for something new, at least I know I am. Be it a lack of adventure, or a crave for change, it seems no one thing is ever enough to leave me satisfied and I have yet to decide if that works for me or against me. Anyhow, passages like this are few and far between. It's seldom that I ever read something that clarifies and puzzles me, that answers questions but poses new ones...when I read this passage I felt it, and it shook me to my core. 

"Revolt is of two kinds: there is violent revolt, which is mere reaction, without understanding, against the existing order; and there is the deep psychological revolt of intelligence.  There are many who revolt against the established orthodoxes only to fall into new orthodoxes, further illusions and concealed self-indulgences.  What generally happens is that we break away from one group or set of ideals and join another group, take up other ideals, thus creating a new pattern of thought against which we will again have to revolt. Reaction only breeds opposition, and reform needs further reform."