I don’t know you, so I fear you, but I might still fear you if I knew you, so I’ll fear you from afar, thanks.

Nearly all people used to be made up of the sunlight that shone on the plants living in the dirt and drinking the water of the place they were born. I’m made of sun and dirt from everyplace but the place I was born. My water, though processed from its source, is from close by. I don’t know what that means for me – if it means anything. It feels important. Though I don’t know exactly how. Somehow, it matters to me that I am made of dust from Florida, and France, and Greece, and wherever else my food has grown. I suspect most people in America are mostly made mostly of Iowa. I wonder if it changes how they feel. I am conscious mass and energy made of dirt, and sunlight, and water. Why shouldn’t the flavor of the places the sun has shone affect who I am when I consume them?

Academic testing operates on the assumption that the individual being tested would not learn the material they are being tested on without the incentive of a positive marker (A+) or a negative marker (F-) made salient by the accompanying social reinforcement of family, friends, institutions, and employers.

And that is true. Without these artificial constructs, very few people would be attracted to learning scholastic material in the way we teach it today.

Consider this proposition: People do what they enjoy. If what they enjoy requires they learn additional skills in order to do it, they will learn those additional skills to the best of their ability. If people are already doing their best, why test?

But if people just did what they enjoyed, how would anything get done? How would we know what to do? How would we know what our purposes are? Why am I here? What am I doing? What does it all mean?

Ok, that settles it. Standardized academic testing is the only thing standing between the modern world and complete existential meltdown. True or False?

Answer:

Knowledge is not power. It is security.

I see the future through my expectations. They cut through the fog of uncertainty. They are the one advantage I have over the other beasts. The other beasts – with their teeth, and claws, and fur – are better suited to survive, except I can see far into the future and they can not.

Imagine my fear when my expectations are violated. I have lost my advantage. I am at the mercy of the strong, the fast, the hungry. predictability is my fortress and the unexpected is a breach of the palisades.

There must be patterns. There must. I can see them if I just watch closely. What is a break in the patterns I discern? A fluke? An error? Who’s error? I need to understand what is happening. My life depends on it.

If I control all the variables, I control the outcome. I create a world of my expectations for my own survival. I deny my senses when they tell me my expectations have been wrong. My lack of foresight is too frightening to acknowledge. If I am not right, I am in danger.

believes that her weaknesses and oddities make her vulnerable. They are what she should hide.

They are my opportunity to love all of her… But how many oddities and weaknesses will I love? Which ones are opportunities and which are intolerables?

I hate that this is a balance I consider. I want to feel unconditional love. Pure love. I want fairytale commitment.

I want romance not a negotiation. I want authenticity not alteration.

I’m sorry for the times I’ve let my insecurities about what you do – or don’t do – and how I feel – or don’t feel – make me act. I’m sorry I make it about you. I’m sorry it’s about me and that in some ways it does matter – even though in some ways it doesn’t. This is confusing. That’s ok.

I love that we see each other. We accept each other. We grow together as long as we can.

The moment I care, I am vulnerable. I am in danger. Yet I must invest in something. I am a social creature. It is my strength and my weakness.

I care for my life, and that is selfish, but not wrong.

I care for you, and that is selfish, and loving, and uncertain, and confusing.

The gifts you can give me are far greater than the gifts I can give myself. And so I make sacrifices to you. But how much should I offer? How much is safe? How much is prudent? When better to be imprudent? When worse?

This negotiation between myself and ourself feels vulgar.

Even if I knew what you wanted, could I give it to you? How long would you want it? Perhaps I could make myself into what you want. I could become your fetish. Hide myself away from you forever. How much effort will it require to be two people – the one I believe you want and the one I am. How long before I loose the person I am? How long before all that is left is a facade? How many people can I split myself for? How many versions of myself do I need?

Better to show you myself and hope you will love me? But sometimes you won’t. That will hurt. I fear I only have the strength to be one person and become one person. Anyway, the tattered authentic is always more esteemed than the most pristine mock.

One person’s cult is another’s religion.

In my religion, I endeavor to uncover my own ignorance – with the recognition that my ignorance is as infinite as existence. “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

In my religion, there is much doubt. Shades of gray let me see the depth of my ignorance. My only holy truth will be kindness, but my understanding of the constitution of kindness may evolve. “Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.” Until that time, if there is that time, I can know no perfection, and I will sate myself with half truths.

If I knew a truth, I don’t think I would be satisfied with it. My spirit would go hungry from it. My search for truth fills the belly of my soul like daily bread.

I was born a child. I live a child. I will die a child. But every day I grow.

Time and space are made of imagination.

But a good quiche is a fine thing, so imagine away.

why?

My senses let me cast into the future. My mind is their telescope. My imagination their aperture – its limitations responsible for my margin of error.