Vague introspecting

Just back from a short trip that’s been emotionally exhausting but also fulfilling and therapeutic in many ways. And quite an eye-opener; I’ve had to do a lot of introspecting about some of my beliefs, or the things I thought I knew about myself. This was a strange experience because I never thought I had anything like a fixed "worldview". I think of inconsistency as vital to the human condition and I’m always a bit taken aback by the confidence in people’s tone when they say things like "My philosophy of life is such-and-such..." And oh, that old chestnut: "If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s hypocrisy" - when said quality is in fact one of the biggest requisites for being a social animal and interacting with others on a daily basis. We’re all hypocrites to some degree or the other, every day of our lives. (Of course, if you want to nitpick about what manifestation of hypocrisy you dislike, that’s your business.)

Bottomline: I’m usually so fluid and inconstant in my beliefs myself that I never expected anything to come as a big revelation. But it’s happened now.

And yes, all this is very nebulous but I don’t yet want to get into the specifics. Might blog about it at length sometime but the post would be obscenely long, and it isn’t something I should just sit down and type out - would prefer to spend some time over it, get my feelings in order etc.

These days even a two-day break from work means an enormous amount of catching up once I’m back. So blogging might slow down a bit, or be restricted to some of my offical writing.

More later.

P.S. I know it seems contradictory to claim I don’t have very firm beliefs - people often tell me my writing is very opinionated. But then writing is, in the final analysis, a very limited mode of expression, and certainly inadequate as an indicator of what a person is really like. Even the most honest, searching writers tend to be much more confused, ambivalent and inconsistent in their everyday lives than their writing would suggest.