Existence is Relationship

 It pains me to read ancient philosophers attempting to explain what we now know as science with reason, like it pained me to read Aristotle or Hippocrates explain biology with reason.

You only understand what makes sense to you.

You can only function in what makes sense to you.

I always thought my relation to existence was my work: what I produce is how I see the world, and I am sharing that world with whoever is paying attention, but the existence of my work is reduced to the relationship of who is paying attention.

Every Thanksgiving we go on an adventure, to accomplish something when most are sitting around filling their stomachs and pretending to get along with their families.  This year was a bust, but some of my daily reading provided some inspiration.  The morning we left I had to backtrack because the morning before I left for work in the early dark, and didn't have a chance to read.  The stoic reading mentioned the Zen teaching of "the glass is already broken," which I use to explain my "I Died At Birth" philosophy, and the Taoist reading mentioned something that shamefully kicked my ass: "There is no such thing as objective reality.  You color everything.  If you want the highest state of being, aim for consciousness without color." 11/22, Day 327

 Both Stoicism and Zen condition you to just do what needs to be done, because it needs to be done; you can bitch and moan about it, or you can just do it.  How you choose to respond to it in the meantime only effects your mood and the responsive mood around you, but either way it is going to get done, so you can just do it, or you can complain that it isn't the way you want it to be.  This is all very relative to how our little Thanksgiving vacation went

Then, the morning of: "There is one thing and only one thing that causes unhappiness.  The name of that thing is Attachment." ~ Anthony de Mello, a la the stoic reading.

I feel like everything at this point is just overlapping too much.  There is too much information, and I am having trouble fitting everything into its right place, so let's just fight about everything.