A Note on Abstraction and Closure

Since we, as humans, perfectly imperfect as we have come to evolve, abstract all sensory perceptions from the outside world, we also abstract our relationships with these perceptions as they are constantly formed and re-formed. If, like Ellis hypothesizes by way of Korzybski, insofar thoughts create feelings and our behaviors, we must learn to accept that we cannot explain the totality of the outside world and thus, accept the nature of the universe as one of uncertainty and probability, not fact and absolutes.

Many friends and relatives with myself included have gone through almost soul-shattering, life-altering break ups, deaths and other tragedies. Many seek "closure." They believe that healing words - the sounds that come out of our mouths - will cure what ails them as if they were a magic incantation.

My advice to those seeking closure is this:

1. Stand in front of a door. Push it open.
2. Pull the door towards you.
3. Realizing that the door has closed and the reality of your present situation has not changed, be content that you are a functioning human being with the ability to know better than to search for answers that have no sensible question.

I to elucidate further on constructing one's own reality, I was talking with my father the other day about time. He said to me that "whoever discovered that there was sixty minutes in an hour was a genius." I replied that he was a master manipulator. My father looked at me quizzically. "Well," I said, "If the dude can make people believe that time is specifically delivered in parcels of sixty minutes and divisions thereof, he should probably have been King of the World."