Dear reader, skimmer, guru, monk, alchemist, wizard, sage, warlock, shaman or other form of seeker of knowledge. This is my first online entry. Before I being this journey, I wish to give some insight into my mind.

Now, I wish to explain why I took on the painful task of writing a blog, something I have much of my life thought an impossible task to accomplish for a person like myself. Not because I dislike writing or because I lack ideas. Quite the contrary. I enjoy writing and have always been more than glad to be blissfully lost in my own thoughts and theories. The problem lies in connecting these thoughts and theories, to transcribe thoughts — abstract shapes, colors, feelings and symbols — into language, into words. To attempt bringing the vastness of the imagination into the limited realm of letters and words.

Vast what now?

Often it feels as if my imagination is a vast primordial ocean where ideas rise to the surface — forming shapes — for a moment and then crumble back under the waves, only to be forgotten or built back up again later; perhaps in another shape, in another place or in a completely different manner. Sometimes the shapes form more solid and longer-lasting structure, like islands from volcanic eruptions. These are the main concepts in my mind, frameworks of how everything in our reality works. From my subjective point of view anyway. These masses of land I actively build upon, organizing the landscape of knowledge, constructing buildings to house the most valuable ideas. Paths and roads connect related concepts. I actively seek to uncover what shapes and structures they eventually turn into. What kind of grand-framework will they eventually produce. How the universe works. A theory of everything.

All the floating bits — natural and man-made objects — that float on the surface of the ocean, sometimes forming beautiful and intricate shapes, only to dissipate a moment later. These shapes are creativity, fleeting new ideas or frameworks of knowledge that I observe, sometimes only for a fraction of a second, unless I actively keep them in my mind. For the most of my life, I’ve never dotted these shapes — thoughts — down or dared to utter about them to anyone, afraid that I would not be understood and that I would be regarded as weird. I simply held them in my mind, hoping that eventually, if they were good enough, they would solidify into permanent structures, and that someday I could hold the entire picture at the center of my attention at once. To finally observe reality in all its beautiful intricacies, shapes and forms, where everything fits together, where everything makes sense in relation to everything else.

Ocean through a straw

The problem arises when one actually tries to map that vastness of knowledge. How does one begin to map even a part of that vast ocean in all its shapes of waves, floaty bits and islands? It doesn’t matter how well or poorly one knows their own mind. Putting its contents into words and sentences that would even begin to convey the tiniest fraction of the vastness of that ocean seems impossible. To try and compile that content in a shape that another mind could understand. It all seems like a pointless undertaking.

Inside ones mind, limitations of language do not exist. Complex concepts are used instead of words with little effort. With another, communication can feel like trying to channel an ocean through a straw. This can be frustrating, laborious and exhausting. It is just as rewarding.

This blog is not an attempt at mapping my internal world of frameworks — that ocean — onto a readable format, but rather an attempt at learning to communicate what I find there, what is on my mind, so that I can learn to condense my thoughts into text. A format that I don’t have to actively remember. As this is the requisite to learning or conjuring complex concepts. One needs to be able to fully observe their own thoughts. Doing this purely inside your own mind is extremely difficult, as thoughts are often delicate, fleeting, shapeless, intangible, yet brilliant. I find holding them all in place at once — without losing one or multiple — to be difficult beyond measure.

And so, to truly build on this ocean of mine, I need to channel it through a straw.

I’m not a teacher

I have no grandiose goal of becoming a teacher, a guru or anything like that. The inspiration or push for this writing project is quite completely selfish. It is simply a tool on my personal journey to self-actualization. A way for me to work on something that is hard for me. One of the things that I know I should work on. The thing that my mind will do its hardest to procrastinate, ignore and forget about, again and again if I’m not careful. I’m not writing because I naturally want to. I’m not writing because my instincts are telling me that it’s a good idea. I’m writing precisely because my instincts are telling me not to, because they keep telling me that I’m not good enough and that I should be afraid to find out if I actually am capable of this or not.

If someone finds this, reads it and gets something out of it, I’ll have already done something outside of my intentional scope. Perhaps the pain and efforts I undergo on my journey to becoming more aligned with my true-self will somehow help someone else on their path. Perhaps by communicating my thoughts out there — by turning those small clusters of islands, with their winding grass paths into words — will lead to nuggets of knowledge that someone else might find useful, and can use to build their own internal frameworks upon. If these writings of mine help someone else, I’ll be glad, very glad. But I will not try to fool myself or you into thinking that I’m writing from the goodness of my heart. In the end, I'm writing to myself.

-J.M.J Rapids