I may be an orange peel.

“If I hadn’t seen [the orange peels floating in the ocean], then I wouldn’t know they were there, and if I didn’t know they were there, I wouldn’t be able to say that they even exist. . . . Some of them are starting to sink now. In a few minutes, the only place they’ll still be floating will be inside my mind. . . . And after I go out this door, I may only exist in the minds of all my acquaintances. I may be an orange peel.”

 

Aptly phrased by J.D. Salinger in one of my favorite books, Teddy (don’t laugh at the name, John!). This passage reminds me of something I constantly find myself in contention with:

Everything is dynamic, thus nothing is ever secure. Moments, thoughts, existence – it’s all fleeting. Yet I struggle against it. Most recently I have found myself trying to revert against faith – to try and find repugnant anything that cannot be based on some sort of reasoning. Yet basing everything on faith, or a leap thereto, seems almost a necessity. If nothing is ever steady or secure, then there’s nothing to hang your hat on. You have to create a hat stand. Everything is an elusive illusion. Yet I constantly fight to believe its neither elusive nor an illusion. What a feat it all is!

Further, if everything is dynamic, then everything moves into the unshakable forward and we are left with nothing to show for our progress except a presumption that we once felt the things we felt. But if that were true, wouldn’t it render our lives meaningless? Who’s to say lives are supposed to be meaningful? They are what we make of it, I suppose – a skillful tethering of the presumptions we are left with. But perhaps the presumptions are enough – perhaps it’s all we need to create a hat stand – to control in our own way the uncontrollable, to permeate the impermeable. 

And so persists the unflagging tension between reality and perception.

I’m not really sure how to conclude this (if there is even a conclusion to be made) except perhaps with the acknowledgment "I may only exist in the minds of all my acquaintances. I may be an orange peel."

(click here for more info on Teddy by J.D. Salinger)