Click, Click, Click

Click, Click, Click
by Scott Bradley

Do you hear it? Listen carefully. Click, click, click.

There is a wonderful metaphor for what I am doing here. Somewhere I heard a funny story about phone-sex for hire. For $3.99 a minute, guys can call up and hear heavy breathing and the amorous cooings of a 'hottie'. Only, if they listened carefully enough, they would also hear click, click, click — the knitting needles of the elderly woman at the other end of the line.

Like all metaphors, this one soon breaks down, and, in this case, seriously so. I do not wish to imply that you are being taken-in, or that I am a fraud. I would only that we all step back, see things as they are, have a good laugh, and continue having fun.

I am no teacher. I have no credibility. There is nothing here to believe, no wisdom, nothing you can take to the bank. These posts are simply an expression of my own necessarily messy pilgrimage. More likely than not, you are more 'together' than I.

I have had this post in mind for awhile, but figured it was not yet time for yet another disclaimer. I fear they may become tedious. But there is a sense in which this is much more than just a disclaimer.

There is a lesson here. If we really can step back and take in a more transcendent view — have a good laugh, and continue having fun — then something has been learned. All these supposed words of wisdom, all these negative critiques of the words of others, are really of no more consequence than the squawk of the blue jay complaining outside my window, even as I write. And now a woodpecker adds his chatter.

But to say, like Zhuangzi, that all this talk is of no more import than the "chirping of baby birds" is not a negative perspective; it is a wonderfully positive and liberating one. Just as Nature, in all its chaotic splendor is wonderfully affirmed, so too, is this human chaos. Its beauty lies not in anything so silly as our attempted formulations of truth, but in the simple fact that we are, as we are. But to see this, we must rise out of our own and collective egoic mire and achieve a more transcendent view.

Call it the view from nowhere in particular.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.