Heroes Not Zombies

Even heaven is not complete; that is why when people are building a house they leave off the last three tiles, to correspond. And all things that are under the sky have degrees. It is precisely because creatures are incomplete that they are living.

Ssu-ma Ch’ien

This is one of those East/West things, but also, it’s a Right/Left Hemisphere thing.

Do we see the world as a collection of separate fixed objects or as a constant flow? In the former case there’s a focus on a sort of completeness. Each object is a finished article so it should look finished….nothing to change, nothing to add, inanimate and disconnected from everything else. In the later case, however, there are no separate objects….or at least separation is a kind of illusion because any object is a temporary manifestation of the constant flow of energy from which everything emerges.

It’s the “becoming not being” that I have as a subtitle to my blog. Reality is dynamic, flowing and massively interconnected.

The aesthetic which includes this idea of incompleteness seeks to make us aware of this dynamic flow, and by doing that it reminds us that everything is in fact unique. You can “see” the human hand in these creations and they reflect the reality of Nature as no living being is fixed, “finished”, or complete.

Knowledge, too, is always incomplete. Look at the new photos from the James Webb telescope compared to what Hubble could show us…..just amazing! We are never “done” knowing…..something which feeds my natural curiosity every single day.

I don’t see the world as a collection of finished objects and completed events. Reality is more dynamic than that, more lively, deeper, more soulful and more spirited.

Instead I feel I live in a continuously changing, ever evolving flux of multiple flows, where impermanence contributes to making every moment valuable, every experience unique.

Incompleteness keeps reminding me to be humble and I recall how Montaigne would write an essay, then throw in a “Mais que sais-je?” – “But what do I know?”

Hey, I could say a lot more about this, but isn’t that just another example of how nothing is ever complete?