I was doing the dishes last night and listening to some year-old youtube vlogs of myself doing my monthly status updates. One that stuck with me was me talking about me thinking about \u201cthe packaging problem\u201d, which is one of maybe a couple of dozen open questions that have been stewing in my mind for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are many ways of phrasing this question. We are finite beings dealing with effectively infinite nuance and complexity. How do we ever say anything meaningful? George Orwell said that \u201cevery book is a failure\u201d, and I really felt that very strongly when working on my own books. There\u2019s just not enough time and space to say everything that there is to say. I\u2019m reminded of a quote that goes something like, \u201conly god can speak of the whole of the thing, and it takes an omniscient being all of eternity to say it\u201d. Which rhymes with \u201cthe Tao that can be spoken of is not the eternal Tao\u201d, which reminds me of when I used to joke about my anxious need to explain the Tao, which was greatly relieved by someone responding \u201cperhaps allow the Tao to explain itself\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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There\u2019s a version of this essay that ends just like that. It\u2019s a good place to end. It starts with a question, \u201chow do we ever say anything meaningful\u201d, and ends with an open-ended directive, paraphrased: \u201callow the meaning to speak for itself\u201d. There\u2019s an elegance to it, and elegance is valuable for its own sake. The reader is encouraged to figure out for themselves what that might mean to them. And I do encourage you to maybe pause for a second and see what comes up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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