There may indeed be those who’d prefer to have done things differently. No doubt it is a mark of my incurable arrogance that I have never once contemplated doing so. Naturally the entire scheme is absurd, wrought as it is with fancy and denial. What however bothers me more than anything is not its piffling covetousness but rather the casual abandon of what matters. And just to be clear, the only thing that matters is what actually happens. Everything else is unattainable and an unwitting obstruction of reality.
Accordingly the more accurate rendition of this “What if…” scenario is the same as any other: management. Now don’t get me wrong, I haven’t any mystical belief that by the persuasion of a mindset alone one can alter the facts; but undeniably almost anything we do admits to interpretation. I suppose I like to look at the best side of things. And – to be perfectly frank – I view almost anything with a degree of calculation – that is, counting up and working out. Clearly there’s nothing nefarious about the endeavour (it’s too late for that); it’s rather the application of whatever limited intelligence we possess to an assessment of what is before us (we’re always prospective in this regard).
It would be unimaginable to assume that there is anyone whose life wasn’t challenged from time to time. The reason it matters how we meet these challenges is not because there’s some kind of contest “Who has the best challenge!” Indeed it’s never about what was but only about what is. The curious feature about the application of intellectual capacity to life is that it is never a deductive process but rather inductive only. Deductive reasoning links premises with conclusions. If all the premises are true then the conclusion is necessarily true. Inductive reasoning on the other had is perpetually clouded by epistemic uncertainty; that is, the questionable validation of knowledge.
Inductive reasoning is a method of reasoning in which the premises are viewed as supplying some evidence, but not full assurance, of the truth of the conclusion. It is also described as a method where one’s experiences and observations, including what are learned from others, are synthesized to come up with a general truth. Many dictionaries define inductive reasoning as the derivation of general principles from specific observations (arguing from specific to general).
We are no more able to predict the future than we are capable of applying axiomatic truths to our existence. We take what we can get, that’s all. And what we get depends on how we assess it, not the other way around. It is this assessment which of necessity lingers throughout our lives. We’re not talking about a movie or an art show. The material on our canvass is far less remote.
Recognizing as I do the mind/body dichotomy it is useful to think about the absorption of life’s events as the digestion of food. There is a flavour to everything; and not everyone has a similar taste. The object is never to enforce a meaning but rather to disclose its sense.