As Time Goes By

Seven years writing this blog; seven years and five months. In my eighth year. Daily, at first every day with an extra post once in a while. Then I rested on Sundays. Then finally I rested on Saturdays, too. Five days per week with an extra post thrown in from time to time. Over 2215 postings. A couple of million words, at least. 250,000 hits. Mostly foreign readers. Italy, France and Germany are the stalwart nations of readers.  A lot in the Middle East as well.


And Russia. Not sure about who in Russia is reading my posts. I thought these were university students but then came to believe that these are government staff gleaning American opinion on a variety of topics. Still don’t know who these folks are, and I probably won’t. For the other readers, I still suspect readers are students gathering American thoughts. Don’t know why this is important to them, but curiosity accounts for a lot.


It amazes me how easy it is to select a topic and write about it. Always a topic looms large. Something worth spending some time on and thinking about. Pondering truth and mystery is a fun pastime for me. Enjoyable. Brain tickling.


Some topics of course are political; reaction to a happening or an obnoxious opinion floated by someone trying to manipulate public opinion. This is a nation of open thinking and expression. We value that freedom. And a lot of us use it.


Freedom to express oneself is a ritual of individuality. In a nation of 330 million, each opinion counts for something. Not all hold up. But each opinion is examined in the open air for validity and logic. And truth. Not all opinions pass muster. Many fail. In time they become obvious. We train our minds to see beyond the surface and question what some think are facts.


Freedom does that. It seeks truth. It roots out facts. It pieces facts together logically and thinks about the context of the happening. This is the gestalt of knowledge. It accrues meaning and validity. But it will need to be tested many times to hold its truth. Shedding unproven ideas is part of the process of learning and accumulating knowledge. Wisdom is what remains. Over time. Over struggle. It takes work.


The process is not for the lazy or sloppy thinker. Rushers to judgment are discouraged from the process.


Many voices. An abundance of ideas. Not all true. Not all worthwhile. But still worthy of our thinking and exposure to air. In time we know the truth. Be patient good readers. Eventually we will know much. As time goes by we understand more.


Mar 13, 2019