Mid Week Meditation: Everything is Everything or How the Ironic Died...

I am a fan of Lauren Hill.  Her sultry, thick, pain-laden voice, thoughtful lyrics and poetic rhyme scheme, make her a goddess (church folk, you'll have to pardon the expression) among men. 

I am glad she is back from her self-imposed self-exile to perform and create or perhaps vice versa.  I have listened to her new work and enjoy it very much.  It is however, her earlier work that stays with me. 

I am particularly with her "Everything is Everything"-- her manifesto for her life and work.  I dig it.  "I begat this, flippin' in the ghetto on a dirty mattress..." she explains.  I dig it.

I dig it not only because it is Lauren Hill's work, but because it is an allusion to a metaphysical principle that means something to me as well.

"Everything is Everything" is a melding of the philosophical theory and a theory of physics with similar names-- The Theory of Everything.  In both disciplines, the essence of the theories simply try to assign a meaning to being and nature and existence. 

You know, so the theory makes us ask, why is there anything at all or what makes reality reality?

On a very real and practical level, I ask myself every morning those questions in a manner that calls on me to reflect on my purpose in this reality.  I also ask myself weekly what I've have learned in the previous week that helps me understand this end.  I never have sufficient answers daily or weekly and so I keep reflecting.

At the risk of speaking ill of the place this blog get most of its traffic, Facebook has become a reminder of the need for us to continue humble reflection.

For the brief time I was on Facebook, I noticed that folks were publishing minute by minute updates on their lives:  "I just met the most awesome guy," or "awesome workout" or "This experience is going to change my life..."

First, I know these people and their lives are never that interesting in person when I hear from them.  What's more, there is a Facebook and social media reality that exists and it has its own laws and philosophies, the most interesting of which is, that nothing actually exists in the world unless one bears witness to it on a social media.  And what's still more,  is that when we update the way we do on social media minute by minute, we loose the ability to reflect pensively about what "is" and our place in that.

I realize that the fact that I am using social media to reflect on the lack of reflection social media allows, is breathtaking in its audacity, portentousness and, well, ironic.  I have perhaps been an offender of this Facebook updating and that is why I humbly withdrew from it and look for ways to stay humble and reflect and then act.  But, I suppose as long as I don't post this on Facebook or send a Tweet about it, it will never have actually happened.