Conation (and vibes)

[Norma photo: Geo. feeling vibes!]
Conation is such a vital and essential element of life, and one so commonplace that no one feels much need to mention it, and no one does. That is why I must look it up every time I think of it and say, "Oh yes! Of course that is what it means."

One strives and tries always, but there are different stages to strife and trial that require ever-deeper understanding of psychology. For this, one consults the psychologist. This helps, especially if you don't know what I'm talking about, and helps even more if I don't know what I'm talking about. Puzzling if we ignore two points; the fact that psychology is predicated upon the assumption that we confuse and mislead ourselves every chance we get; everything useful and profitable in the science of psychology was discovered by used car salesmen, then translated into Latin.

The conative experience is collective. Let me illustrate. One has, among contacts, friends, family and coworkers. Should one retire, and three years ago I did, suddenly I am without coworkers. A whole THIRD of my contacts in the world disappear. Coworkers are gone and many cows go unorked. Then one realizes one didn't especially like orking cows and looks for new frontiers of conation. This is peculiar. Peculiar to personal progress. For the purposes of this scholarly essay, I refer to the liberation of self-direction and conscience.

One is prepared, admittedly, while still employed. I felt a freedom of conscience because my employers could not easily do without me and I insisted upon it. But there was always a rejoinder on their parts, spoken or implied, that the day Geo. could rule his own destiny was yet to come. And when it did come, it was not with fanfare, bells or whistles --I sat in the break-room and shared a box of candy with a friend and we both missed our retirement luncheon. Then two cars left the lot, one of them mine, and never returned.


Where did I go? I went to blow bubbles with my grandchildren. Bubbles echo the shape and mechanism of the universe. They are made of events, seeking the elastic and uncontainable shape of their container. They follow physical laws that must be true because we thought of them ourselves, to explain events. We alternately forget and discover the word, conation. We are always trying to navigate events.


Events.

Events are what you see before you, around you, within you. All possible events are assembled in the manifold universe and compose themselves into coincidences, a monstrous compilation of coincidences --infinitely large and infinitely detailed. What you and I think of it depends upon it.

Because it is what thought is made of too.