mahjae05’s Blog

The idea about the mind being a mirror really sparked my thoughts and made me want to look deeper into this metaphor.  Hyde says that in his youth, his mind was a mirror, yet as he grew older, it became scratched and stopped reflecting images.  As a child, humans do as they see.  Their minds are mirrors that simply reflect what they see in the world back out.  But as one grows older, they begin to become more tainted by the many different paths of life.  Though everyone starts out as a blank slate during their childhood, all the influences in life shape and create all the different people in the world.  Each of these scratches on the mirror cause images to be skewed from normal and eventually from there to be a lack of an image whatsoever.  At this point, that person’s mind cannot be shaped any further.  As Hyde says, “A mirror scratched reflects no image- And this is the silence of wisdom”.  He is saying that only when you get past all the outside influence can you actually achieve wisdom.  Your mind has been shaped the way it will be forever and once one’s mind is completely unscathed by outside influence is when they achieve true wisdom.

The Circuit Judge is very distraught about his situation after dying and feels as if he is less of a person then one of the people he convicted while alive.  He says how he only made his judgments in court based on what the lawyers said and not on what the real evidence set forth or what he actually felt about the situations.  By not having his own identity, the Circuit Judge sees himself as an undeserving and lesser person as a whole.  His situation shows how important human intuition and self identity is in life.  If someone does not follow what they believe in, then what are they in life?  Are they living out a different person’s life?  The Judge seems to be living out the ideas of the  American Justice System, causing him to become nothing more then a puppet.  Without an identity, people are simply nothing; even though they are entities within the world, they actually do not exist as a human.  Humans are special because they possess this ability to have free will over what they think and do.  If one does not utilize this ability to think for themselves then what are they actually?

While wondering about crawfish, Theodore the Poet stumbles upon an interesting thought about life.  Watching how the crawfish would come out of its burrow everyday, Theodore went on to question its existence, “… What he knew, what he desired, and why he lived at all.” pg 19.  He then goes on to compare the actions of  humans to that of the crawfish and he draws an interesting connection which brings up a big question, what is the actual purpose of humans in life?  I immediately drew up a pessimistic view to this question, but then thinking deeper, saw the more positive aspects of it.  My thoughts are that there is really no set goal for all humans; everyone lives and dies and in the end, nothing really matters.  To me those thoughts seem kind of uplifting in a way.  Since there is no “real” goal in life why not just live your life to the fullest.  Everyone should live day by day, because in the end, everyone is going to the same end.  No matter what one does in the grand scheme of things, as long as one feels fulfilled in life, then they took the correct path and did the correct thing.