Personal additions to the words of Alan Watts

Some personal additions on two subjects he has spoken about.

There are a few things I want to add to, and make note of, that he has said in his lectures. He is someone I only recently discovered, and I recommend him to people out there that feel at an honest loss to the purpose of life. One of his lectures gave me a reminder of mine.

"For all life is an act of faith, and an act of gamble."
"The moment you take a step you do so on an act of faith because you don't really know that the floor isn't going to give way under your feet."

He mentions faith a few times on his philosophy on love. These two quotes are something I want to add onto. He says that it's faith but he fails to mention trust. To me "trust" is defined as initial faith that has been well-rewarded. Faith in someone or something that turned out for the better. So when I walk in my house i'm not making steps out of faith, but rather I trust the floor won't fall beneath me because I've walked it a million times before. And in the same way, when you give someone you love your faith, and it is well-rewarded, you trust them.

For this same reason we can begin to distrust people that have done nothing wrong to us. We can be betrayed by one person so many times and it begins to affect our trust of others. And perhaps we even begin to fear people that don't hurt us. We begin to fear that one day they won't be who we know, someone who knows us. This is something we must be worked out of. I have been the victim of this. The one I love is trying to work on it but she admits that she's scared of me deep down. She's scared because I haven't done anything "wrong" in her eyes. She is scared because she grew to expect hurt.

So with that, whoever reads this and is struggling trusting someone you love, and someone who loves you. Just keep working on it. Know that it'll get better, know you are not alone in this.



Something else Alan said about love is that loving is madness, unsensible. But it is also the only sane option. It's hard for me to explain and it seems like he had trouble explaining it to. Only a few months before I discovered him did I come to the same conclusion that love, is infact, logical. Because it's the only point to life, the only thing we have.

"So we come to the strange conclusion that in madness lies sanity."

So if you think yourself a cynic, I believe you're naive to the good of the world. Because I was to. And someday you'll meet that good, don't let it pass you when it comes: you'll know when it comes. It'll come and hit you like a truck. Don't let the daze and the confusion distract you from capturing it. And don't let it shake you off. You'll never get what you seek in life if you aren't persistent.


In another lecture he talks about living for the future. How there really is no point to plan for a future. I can't say I 100% agree, but it's atleast partially true to me. He talks about how we have a bad habbit of living in the future instead of living in the now. That we spend so much effort building a future that we forget to live in the now. And even when we reach the planned future, we are already living in another future.

"You can't live it all, unless you can live fully now."

I agree with this statement of his. By living in the present, making the most of it. We can live as we go. Have you ever noticed that you can shoot a basketball and swoosh it without thinking about it? We put trust in ourselves without thinking about it and we make it easily. But when we overthink it, is when we mess it up. We are at our best when we wing it.


I will more than likely write more thoughts on Alan's philosophies later on. I hope you all have a goodmorning, day, and night.

Author's Note

It's been a while since I've written. Been busy and thinking an awful lot. Starting listening to excerpts from Alan Watts. I recommend you listen to some of his philosophy.

Reviews

[Cadel]

Absolutely love the message of Allan Watts, and so this too by extension.