Cwik Trip: Preparing For The Journey
Make sure you have a full tank. Check the treads and tire pressure. Do you need an oil change? How are your spark plugs? Do you have wiper fluid? Good blades?
Intuition and concepts constitute... the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge.
Fill Your Tank
Well, another Dadism has crossed my mind. Hardly unusual when you consider I’m a Dad, but I do find it interesting how that works. I’m sure at a later date I will investigate a bit further into why that is. For now, let’s begin.
It seemed apt given the struggles I have brought upon myself the last few weeks to take a step back and attempt to find what I may have missed. Something had gone awry in this head of mine. Wiring crossed, appointment or obligation missed and unfulfilled. Something.
There’s always something. I’m convinced that’s unavoidable. Unless you’re going through life never missing a word, never missing an appointment, unable to forget anything, ever. In that case I would still assume some level of misery. It’s a blessing, at times, to forget.
So I went back to the beginning of April. An event was in progress that culminated in an entirely new way of living for civilization. I wonder what that was? I felt busy, stressed, as though I was failing in the here and now. What time did I have to really partake?
Looks like I should have made time.
“I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom;”
What an interesting beginning to a read about the Resurrection. I paused on the quick and the dead part. I often do this when a phrase piques my interest.
The quick.
The dead.
How odd. Only people who are nimble or the dead ones are judged? That couldn’t be it.
I realized then, despite the connection not being solid, that was what I was missing. It wasn’t being nimble. I am not nimble, not anymore. Quick, perhaps, but only of wit.
We’re on a journey. We’re taking a trip through life and time. Through space and season. And I haven’t pulled off the highway in a while to fill back up. I haven’t check my tires and pressure. I haven’t changed my oil in a while or filled up my tank.
I haven’t been taking care of what I need to take care of to ensure I can continue.
But how does that opening to a call and response tie in?
I am not sure it does, beyond “the quick and the dead.”
I knew there was something more to quick than my modern interpretation. And my etymological gas tank was DRY in this case. I had no idea what it may mean.
It’s an Old English translation, of course. From Cwik, which is alive, animated. Ah, that’s a relief. An easy etymological track. And just like that, the tank was back on F, not E.
And just like that, my morning is centered. Why would something as easy and QUICK as understanding the reference to cwik and the living give enough fulfillment to allow a morning to go well?
That one, dear reader, is… quick and easy.
As a religious individual, my values center on truth and growth, by and large. In other words, knowledge and understanding. There is a hunger circuit in the brain and it can be stimulated in a few ways. Food and discovery. Revelation. Learning.
Which is wonderful.
Road Trip Through Hell
When I start journeying through the bowels of hell, a hell I manifest myself, it means I have veered off course. I am unable to see the guide posts and the path forward.
Those guideposts are vital. They have been put there by those who have travelled the path before. And since I have not, I am not aware of what I may see. But the guide posts hold that knowledge. They tell us what to expect. They tell us what lies ahead and which path leads to which end. They are the pillars of growth and understanding.
And I have been omitting a continued journey into the unknown, choosing instead to travel where I thought looked familiar, which time and time again sends me to my own hell. I have already created it, and I have already forgotten that it is of my creation.
And this hell I am speaking of is my own hubris. My own lack of intellectual humility. Why should I read the writings of men long dead if I am the arbiter of all that is good and moral?
Well, I’m certainly not that. But from time to time I seem to forget that’s the case. I stop reading. I stop learning. I stop studying. I stop listening.
And that begins my leisurely jaunt through misery, suffering, and fire.
Which is NOT desirable. I do hope I can avoid that in the future, though I know I cannot avoid it completely. I am human. I am HEAVILY flawed.
Returning With Purpose
But I think that’s purposeful. In my mind that’s my calling in life. That’s the plan He has for me. And I say that with the utmost gratitude to Him for it, not with malice or resentment.
It is difficult, but He knows I will pull through. He has given me what I need. He has given me my wonderful Eve, my help mate, my rock, my wife.
He has given my my purpose and my meaning, my kids. My girls, my boy, my all encompassing reasons for living.
And He has given me a PURPOSE and DRIVE and the ability to endure. My life has been a search for understanding. And when I reach an understanding I find I am not fulfilled, I am not sated.
What I need from my intellectual endeavor is mastery, it’s an elevation to intuition. There’s a pull, an attraction towards mastery and intuition that I am unable to resist. The level of comprehension necessary to have an immediate ,or as close to immediate as I can muster, understanding of a situation or idea that falls within the same domain.
That’s a pipe dream. Of course it is. I have never understood that drive that compels me forward until now. There have been clues, there have been inklings and passing fancies that point towards the answer I was seeking but they were either missed or ignored.
And given I need that understanding, that requires another level of education. It requires more rigorous edification.
And that is what He has blessed me with. A living curriculum in what matters to me. A crash course in what I need to know, what I need to understand. A comprehensive comprehension that will enable me to write, with full confidence, what I need my children to know about life going forward.
And so I am thankful for that.
And thankful for this latest trip into hell.
The trip that reminded me to prepare for the journey ahead and to occasionally hit the off ramp and refuel.
To use what others have left to assist on my journey.
So the next time I feel myself heading off towards to abyss I will remember, I must remember, to take the off ramp and stop at the Cwik Trip.
That way I can restock, recalibrate, and avoid that highway to hell.
Loving Regards,
Dad