Okay, this is important. It’s one thing to know right and wrong. It’s one thing to know what’s the right thing to do, and what’s the ill-fated thing to do. The trouble is, there are so many little tiny decisions in a day. How am I going to know until after the fact which path is the right one to take? I say that I am learning. Is that really true? Is that really the essence of learning? Accumulating information in order to make the right decisions more often?

Learning Without Accumulation is the title of a Krishnamurti book. I try to teach Cody the essence of wisdom and understanding.

It’s like a see-saw. Or a pendulum. On one end is the bad, addictive, unhealthy things one is attracted to. On the other are the pure antidotes that enact a recovery. I guess I am trying to manage that swing, and in so doing, learning. Little by little I swing less and less. I make fewer and fewer mistakes, and therefore need less and less extreme antidotes. But the pure antidotes instead are becoming a solace for me, a source of wisdom. I want to take them out of the realm of the see-saw effect. Maybe the midpoint, the fulcrum of the see-saw is moving in the direction of health, if I’m living right. So if it ever does eventually stop, it will be in a beautiful place.

Every time I break any of the commandments of health and wisdom, I feel I am back to square one. Even if I am not. I feel it. It is not so much a question of evidence. How could I possibly keep track of my progress? It’s not a life lived if you are only tabulating and charting all the time. That’s been a little achilles issue with me. Not living. Retreating to analysis. I do like to do it. (As is apparent here, I suppose.) (I’d like to think the not so subtle difference between analyzing and philosophizing distinguishes my process.)