To be alive and with thought is to feel besieged. As though surrounded by contentious forces; beset by antagonistic voices under lifelong attack.
The more a man’s sense of himself and of life is in his thoughts, the greater the feeling of being besieged. Under civilized conditions the threat is not physical assault – but mental/verbal, which seems to come both from without, and also somehow, from within.
As long as a man is under this sensation, every thought he has and word he speaks is colored by it. Every thought he has and word he speaks is an expression of resistance to the perceived besiegement. Every thought he has and word he utters is a criticism of the attacking forces and defense of his own beset mental city.
As long as a man’s consciousness is in this position, his mind feels there are forces constantly trying to close in on it. A relentless crowd of voices around it, attempting to pen it in – and it fights back, and in so doing makes it impossible for it to see that the besiegement is not as it instinctively feels to be.
There has always been a Missing Possibility in every man’s attempt to understand objectively what being alive and being a human with thoughts about being-alive-and-being-human is really about. The possibility of what it is changes everything and explains everything.
Although words can be put on it, another person cannot tell you what it is so that you will understand it, unless you have already spent a lifetime looking for it, and ten thousand other variables are in place. But the germ of the Missing Possibility is as surely in you, as in any other human who has ever lived, and it would explain everything.
J.