What Is.

It is profoundly disappointing to feel that some things simply are.

That I can admit yet another tautology into my repertoire: It is what it is.

My tendency, and the tendency of liberal academia, is to say: 'Well, maybe it isn't quite what it seems it is.  Because if we shift our perspective slightly, if we apply a different lens, if we look at it through another set of ideas, we find that what is actually isn't quite what we thought it was'.

Relativism abounds.

I'm more hostile to it than ever.

Because some things simply are.

Reality is out there.

This realization is most painful when it comes to the reality of my own heart and mind.  I simply feel certain things.  I simply think certain things.  I am something.

I am not a blank slate, I am not raw material, I cannot fashion myself into whatever kind of being I want to be.

The mastery I can have of myself will never be the mastery of the natural world, of raw materials.

It can only be the master of self-knowledge.  The mastery of understanding myself, knowing who I am, and being that way more consciously.

Consciousness does not help me make myself, willy nilly.  Consciousness helps me know myself, so that I can become that thing more fully.

I am something.

How painful.  So painful.

Other people, too, are something.

They feel and think certain ways, and I can't do anything about that.  That hurts, too.

Because I don't understand why other people think and feel what they do.  I don't even understand why I think and feel the way I do.

But I can no longer pretend that I'm not already something.

I am.