why I picked psychology

Questions, questions, my life for a question. I love questions, I love to think. I love to explore and understand new things. I want to know things, but not simply to know them, but participate in the joy of coming to know them. At the very base of my life I have one question. and that question has always caused my problems cause to look at it at a glance it's easy to take it as a paradox, but it's not.

I want to know, the question. I want to understand what it is that I want to know. the question I ask is "what is this burning quandary inside me, that has been smoldering in my gut for so long?" it's pushed me forward, begged me to massage it, use it, understand it, but I can't, every time I try to put it into words, they fail, every time I try to find it, it vanishes. Like an itch on the palm of your hand, that you can never scratch, that is never in the spot where your claws search.

so I simplify it down so far that it loses all meaning. I say "I'm looking for the truth" but that makes so little sense, or maybe it makes too much sense, it's a cliche that so many people have heard. It's something a hippy says while he's high. it makes sense to everyone who hears it, and to each, a different sense is arrived at. with all that sense flying trough people's heads from these words, I don't think they ever hear what I really mean.

when I went into college this was the question that drove me to pick philosophy as my degree, because then, as now, I really only needed this question asked, and answered, I didn't care for the question of career, the question of money, or food, though now I begin to understand maybe all those things together have an impact. Maybe even every little thing has an impact on the answer to this question.

but if I digress into that line of thought I'll just mentally masturbate all over the key board, and nothing will be communicated, it only makes sense to me.

After doing philosophy for a while, I went to china, then came back and found so many little answers had been answered but the big one was no closer. Only perhaps that it was stronger now. when I cam back to philosophy I studied and went to classes. and became more and more disgruntled with my class mates. who rather than wanting to understand my question, or help me answer it, or being much help at all, they took my inquiries and ideas as academic, rather than spiritual, they chose, to combat me on the definitions of my phrases, the grammar of my work. rather than trying to understand they chose to argue.

I realized the academic world was designed in such a way that this was considered noble, to argue, till and answer was found. but this seemed so harsh to me. like using a shovel to excavate a fossil when one should be simply blowing away the dirt with their own breath. I wasn't looking to win, wasn't looking to prove, the truth was inside me, I was just trying to understand.

I decided that Philosophy wasn't for me. I had other things to worry about. I found the question was appeased the more I learned, the more I experienced. when I was traveling around china living out of my suit case, there was a time I thought the question had been answered. though I realized it wasn't that it had been answered, but just that I had found a way to lay comfortably with it.

now when I work at Fred Meyer's, the question surges painfully up inside me. it haunts me. it asks me "why have you stopped investigating me" it hurts very much. But I promised it I would get back to it in the winter term, when I go back to school, and that appeased it for a while longer.

so why psychology? because psychology, as I'm just now understanding, is about understanding. you are not yelling at someone telling them "no you're wrong, you should stop being depressed because of this logically laid out argument I've written, I have proven myself there for you are clearly wrong" that's absurd. psychology is about understanding a person, gently brushing them this way and that, hoping they can take a step in the right direction.

the part of me that asks "the question", is the human part of me, not the one that asks about logic, that asks about math. it doesn't care about science, or about the evolutionary reasons to do anything. it cares about the pain of life. about art, about god, or no god, about life and death, poetry. it is understanding the world of emotion, that massive piece of humanity that makes us who we are. all separate and all together.