Has anyone ever told you something that you felt you should understand but did not?
Asked by
Trillian (
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April 3rd, 2010
Or, put another way. Have you ever been told something that seems at once to have no meaning and also seems like something you’ve intuited all along but never articulated?
Somebody said this to me; “Each moment is separate. Each moment is forever. To live is to meld time seamlessly from moment to moment. To slip between the moments is to step out of time. One must step sideways. One can only see the moments forwards and backwards and so cannot see the separation between the moments. One must view them from the side to see the separateness of each moment.”
I feel almost like this means something like I heard in a dream. Or something I knew as a child but forgot.
Can anybody relate to this? Have you ever been told or intuited something like this? I can’t be the only one all the time, can I?
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8 Answers
I use to think the phrase ”everything happens for a reason ” was something people threw around way too often when they had nothing better to say. I never completely absorbed the meaning of that phrase until three years ago or so. I was at the grocery store and I accidently hit the ‘cash back’ button on the machine. Instead of canceling, I withdrew $20. As I was exiting the store, a woman in tears walked up to me and politely asked if I had any change to give her to buy something to eat for her and her son. I peered behind her and saw an older women, I figured was her mother, holding a boy about two years old. I gave her the $20. For some reason I felt compelled to withdraw that cash instead of canceling. I figured out, that was my reason even though I didn’t know it at the time.
That’s when the phrase everything happens for a reason hit me, even though that moment seems so insignificant compared to the grand scheme of things. It was a tiny occurrence that changed my mindset.
The rules of cricket – cannot get them in my head! (But then I don’t get what football is about either.)
@janbb: Check out the bell changes so beloved by the Brits (and in particular, Dorothy Sayer when she wrote The Nine Tailors).
Also known as change ringing.
Studying philosophy i get this quite a lot… Soemthing sometimes seems to make sense…but I’m not quite sure why… I guess…the steps in between…how you would get from premise (a) to the conclusion… and sometimes I can’t make sense of it but just know that it seems right.
Other times things don’t seem to make sense to me but it feels like they should make sense…
Nothing right now seems to be making any sense at all though… in a dark space at the moment…and I feel intuitively like it’s necessary but I could be totally wrong…
I adore this question. You are not alone in this. I have this sense often. What comes to mind this moment is my relationship with this phrase:
”...after the fire a still small voice.”
I am not sure if this is the same, but I do at times notice that what the person is say as they say it is something I have heard somewhere before.
@sleepdoc: ..but I do at times notice that what the person is say as they say it is something I have heard somewhere before.
You’d better help me understand that, please.
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