Why matter matters

Earlier today I was having a discussion with a friend. We were talking about the nature of friendship and he said that I seem to make solid friendships...or rather a typo' meant that what he actually said was "you have a lot of friends and seem to make solid friends"...I replied that "it's nice to think that we all work together to make ourselves more solid." This set me to thinking about the nature of existence and how we all experience the world so differently but we also have points of mutual understanding that help us make sense of the world. If you think about the way we use words to describe colours around us. We have no way of knowing if people are seeing the exact same colours as we do. We know that we share a standard eye structure and brain centre for processing the information...so we can assume that we are all seeing and interpreting the same wave lengths of light...but we also know that every person is unique and each persons interpretation will be unique also. So we agree on the basics and say that the sky is blue and the grass is green...not forgetting that colour blindness tells a different story all together. Every life, every path, every choice leads us on a deeply personal journey. A journey tailored to our ways and our circumstances. I think one of the few things that keeps us sane...that keeps us "together" is our, mutually agreed upon, shared experiences. I understand joy, heartbreak, discovery, and loss because so many before me have told of their experiences. Our collective desire to document our lives and record how we deal with it has meant that we have an enormous back catalogue of prescribed emotions that are appropriate for any given situation. Like expert Lawyers we refer to past cases and use this to help us understand how to act...and like lawyers we search for examples of legal precedence and where we find holes in the laws of life we fill them in by enacting new laws where there are none or disposing of archaic ones. In a lot of ways we are almost reacting by reflex or acting upon long standing traditions. I think we love many traditions because we like to feel connected with others around us and we like to connect with the people that came before and hope that the people yet to be will want to connect with us too. We, sometimes, turn our backs on the mystery and uncertainty of life in the hope that agreed certainties will make our shared lives more solid. Because we are all barely here (some people may have read my "Little book of Nothing"that talks about how we're more not here than we are here...I may post the text on this page one day). We need to agree that we are actually here and that this really is happening to us...because we are but the slightest shimmering particles more empty space than solid matter...our shared existence lets us cling to this barely solid world. I guess I'm saying that " I exist therefore I am" or more specifically "we exist therefore we are" Perhaps that's why we feel the need to be acknowledged by others or we feel the drive to acknowledge others around us. You may think I'm crazy sharing my thoughts like this. A stream of consciousness... of half formed ideas mixing with half baked theories...but like you I'm just trying to make sense of this place...Our shared experiences help me understand and make me feel compelled to share too. I hope by sharing we can take tiny steps toward some sort of understanding. Well I'm glad we are sharing our lives in some manner or other. It means that all this matter matters in some way and that makes us appreciate the things that matter most to us.