My Take as a Questioner about Reality

The largest takeaway from this class has truly been an eye-opening reminder to take steps back from the reality we're engaged in OFTEN. While this might be considered something very obvious and assumed that we all do, I'm afraid many of us (myself included) just don't, frankly. "Eye opening" in that we've seen time and time again through the countless examples and illustrations we've explored that there are both morsels of truth and falsity in every single one of them and that when it comes down to it, we each hold an individual responsibility to take everything with a grain of salt and make what we will of it.

The poem by Wallace Stevens that Dr. Robin read for us last week completely captivated me. For me, it didn't tie up loose ends for me, but instead showed that all those loose ends are connected by the same question of how and whether we should question reality. This poem, along with everything we've learned thus far in the course equipped me with a perpetual tool that I can and will use to help me navigate through my life and the way I perceive it.

I wonder, have I lived a skeleton's life,
As a questioner about reality,

A countryman of all the bones in the world?
Now, here, the warmth I had forgotten becomes

Part of the major reality, part of
An appreciation of a reality;

And thus an elevation, as if I lived
With something I could touch, touch every way.

The poem bears the question of whether, questioners of reality are mere skeletons—not actually experiencing the substance of our lives and are instead too focused on doubting it, maybe taking it too slowly for how fast it moves.

I like to think that one of our greatest gifts and abilities as humans is the ability to question—to think for ourselves. At any given point I think there is a binary at work: the external reality imposed upon us without much realization, if any, and the fuzzy reality we determine ourselves. A lot of times, in various contexts, both realities can look identical, thus reinforcing the fuzzy existence of that second self-constructed reality. This happens because as impressionable beings, we adopt and adapt to our predominant culture, surroundings, and modes of existence. TO QUESTION is to give power to ourselves in breaking from an external reality, giving us power to determine our own reality and making something meaningful and authentic for ourselves—to actualize and nurture individuality that is often lost in heavy, subconscious participation in an overbearing system of hybrids and oversimplifications, likewise, over-complications of things in our lives. I think the key is to strike a balance so as to not question to the point that every day feels like an existential crisis, but also giving yourself room to have unexplainable things happen and room to process it peacefully.