Shopping for Ideas

Sometimes I catch myself thinking, “What am I talking about?  Where am I getting it all from?  Haven’t I just wandered off into some sort of zone of gibberish?”  For am I not saying things that, while they might derive from instances of sense in everyday life, have been re-expressed with such a degree of generality that the words out of which they are formed no longer have any connection with the real?  After all, what do I know about infinity?  I have only the haziest acquaintance with its mathematical expression.  What qualifies me to talk about it in the first place, and anyway why do I put such emphasis on it, what is so important about it?    Really I have no idea …

… Absent-mindedly I go out to buy eggs, dawdling, dreamy, I stare into a shop window attracted by the colours; the reflections that stretch and thin; so I go from one thing to another, buying this then that and I come home mystified.  What prompted me into it?  What have I to do with it?

Tags: Metaphysics