Bewilderment is lacking something, loss, enchantment,
and struggle. Certainty might be necessary to our lives because sometimes we
don’t want to have to wonder the outcome of our actions. In the story about King
Midas he turns everything he touches to gold, “he wouldn’t ever again have to
wonder: where is the future? He could now plan his future down to the smallest
detail, which is really the definition of an anti-creation story” (Howe 11). The
king knew that no matter what he touched it would turn to gold, so he knew that
for certain he would always have gold, but never anything he could care about.
Bewilderment might be necessary to our lives because “it breaks open the lock
of dualism (it’s this or that) and peers out into space (not this, not that)”
(Howe 15). Bewilderment is necessary because life cannot be one hundred percent
predictable if it was it would not be worth living. Certainty and bewilderment
are important to life because certainty make us feel comfortable and
bewilderment helps keep us on our toes in all the uncertainties of lives.
I agree with both the blog post and comment posted. As Roxana said, "Bewilderment is pondering where you know or do not know something" and she uses Howe as a reference, I completely agree. Not knowing someone personally is a prime example as to a reason to mind your own business and to not care about their actions or affiliations. It adds to bewilderment because it creates the "why" concept to be insignificant in according to relations with strangers. If one is not apart of your life than they are not a significant worry to keep. Besides this, I also believe that certainty is necessary because in order to carry out decisons one needs this type of reassurance.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your view on how bewilderment is the lack of another major thing. As the previous commenters said, that bewilderment is thinking about the unknown such as the interaction with other individuals and not knowing much about them personally. As mentioned in Howe’s reading, “For me bewilderment in like a dream: one continually returning pause on a gyre and in both my stories and my poems it could be the shape of the spiral that imprints itself in my interior before anything emerges in paper.” (9). There is much uncertainty in what will happen next even when it comes to expressing oneself through writing and that is what makes life more interesting. Having that ability to also apply it to interactions with other people keeps life moving. That certainty in life comes and goes depending on the situation, yet bewilderment makes life worth living for and without these things life may be full of craziness.
ReplyDelete