Practically Preposterous
"Well, I was just inventing a new way of getting over a gate -- would you like to hear it?"
"Very much indeed," Alice said politely.
"I'll tell you how I came to think of it," said the Knight. "You see, I said to myself 'The only difficulty is with the feet: the head is high enough already.' Now first I put my head on top of the gate -- then the head's high enough -- then I stand on my head -- and the feet are high enough, you see -- then I'm over, you see?" -- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
And when was the last time you came across something as Practically Preposterous as that? :-) Just realized right there that that's a Paradox. Practically Preposterous. (And I think I've learned somewhere along the way to pay attention to paradoxes. They put the truth before the explanation and its up to us to get from one to the other. And the journey that starts in perplexity usually ends in some form of wisdom).
Practically Preposterous ... that's kind of like Mission Impossible. A Mission being something you set out to Do. Impossible being something that just Can't be Done.
Practically Preposterous ... and that's actually a double paradox. Because the word Preposterous comes straight from the Latin word "praeposterus" -- a curious conjunction of "prae" meaning "before" and "posterus", meaning "coming after." So put them together and you've got the before coming after. And that could mean doing things backwards -- or it could just mean starting from where you want to get to. It could just mean Living the Dream instead of Dreaming a Life. And maybe that's what he meant by Being the Change.
He was -- if you think about it -- a pretty preposterous man. Gandhiji. Because everyone knew you exchanged blows to fight a battle to win your peace until he came along and placed peace before the battle and the battle before the blows (and the whole point was that you never got that far). Doing things backwards. Practically Preposterous!
[...]
Maybe part of the problem is we don't prompt ourselves enough towards faith in the preposterous. Maybe it's time then to start cultivating the Red Queen's practice ...
'"I can't believe that!" said Alice. "Can't you?" the Queen said in a pitying tone. 'Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes. Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
Six impossible things.
Your Time Starts Now :-)
--Pavithra Mehta, in Practically Preposterous
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11 Past Reflections
On Mar 21, 2011 Pancho wrote :
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On Mar 20, 2011 Prasad wrote :
Wonderful Pavi. Being smart is seeing the paradox and acting on it for ones benefit. being wise is learning to work with practically preposterous stuff...
Very nice indeed and most of us do not think about these wonderful paradoxes to come up with original answers like Gandhiji did...
Somebody said -- we are all born originals but alas most of us die as copies...
thanks for the great reflection
Prasad
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On Mar 19, 2011 Caesar wrote :
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world
gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither
let it be afraid.JESUS CHRIST loves you!
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On Mar 16, 2011 Shariq wrote :
Thank you Pavi for sharing your provocative thoughts on Gandhiji's preposterous ways; this is truly ingenious. Gandhiji was a man well ahead of his time and we are just beginning to catch-up with his way of thinking, particularly if we were to imagine our experience of being in Sean Carroll's universe rather than Lewis Carroll's universe. As it turns out, according to Sean Carroll, the Professor of Theoretical Physics at Cal Tech, we all may be living in a preposterous universe - please note the name he has chosen for his website: preposterousuniverse.com! His deeper thoughts on the Preposterous Universe can be found here: preposterousuniverse.com/preposterous.html, and for a light hearted version here he is on the Cobert Report: preposterousuniverse.com/talks/videos.html. What took the rest of us so long to realize the truth of the pervasiveness of the preposterousness?
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On Mar 16, 2011 Varsha wrote :
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On Mar 15, 2011 John Daubney wrote :
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On Mar 15, 2011 Conrad wrote :
Thanks much Pavrithra. You have my deep gratitude. As a retired philosophy of education professor, what you are saying is that the heart of all powerful learning. What you said in one page would take me 20. I am so pleased to receive your e-mails. Your writing will help me be the change I wish to make.
Warm and kind regards to Nipun and all the Mehtas. Conrad
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On Mar 15, 2011 LoriD wrote :
Thank you. This is exaclty what I needed to hear in this moment!
Namaste
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On Mar 15, 2011 Thierroche wrote :
' Freedom is at the beginning, not at the end ' (J.Krishnamurti) is another example of these supposedly absurd= preposterous statements. As in Alice in Wonderland the Queen's comment to our resisting such statements might well be that we just lack practice!
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On Mar 14, 2011 Ganoba wrote :
When we choose one out of a pair of opposites, which we often do, we are doing a preposterous thing. Imagine inviting the husband alone and leaving the wife out (or the other way round). Won't we consider that to be preposterous?
Yet we do this kind of choosing (which actually a heartless choice) all the time; separating the day from the night, the beginning from the end, the light from the dark, happiness from sorrow.
The list is endless.
Deciding not to separate the pair of oppsites is really a wise way of choosing.
Try it just for fun. It is not preposterous at all.