I was just thinking about the whole "if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it really make a sound?" question and found a little more meat in Wikipedia...
Philosopher George Berkeley, in his work, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, proposes, "But, say you, surely there is nothing easier than for me to imagine trees, for instance, in a park [. . .] and nobody by to perceive them. [...] The objects of sense exist only when they are perceived; the trees therefore are in the garden [. . .] no longer than while there is somebody by to perceive them."[1]
I then had one of those strange *gulp*
moments when I connected this question to the fact that I've been so completely uninspired to journal or blog or anything these past many months (years, actually)...and I wondered if my lack of inspiration/energy/ganas to put pen to paper lately is acutally akin to the tree falling with no one around. Is that what journaling is about? Not just a place for me to make sense of my experiences and extract some sort of meaning from everything, but to ensure my experiences aren't left "unperceived" by others? Not sure, though I do know the past couple of years are already pretty fuzzy even in my own mind--much in part, I'm sure, to the fact that I've hardly recorded a thing.
Work has really sucked the life out me lately and drained me of most personal inspiration. A lot of that is my own fault--not managing my time as well as I could--but a lot of it simply comes with the territory. Going to give myself 1 more year to see if it's possible to be a great principal and the kind of mom I want to be. Hoping the inspiration returns.
