Canon Powershot SD750, Landscape, Poetry

by Patrick JenningsApr 1, 20161:54 pm

On Leaving the Valley

State Highway 95, West of Blanding, Utah, United States of America

Driving along the valley floor
Mountains and ridges rising above
So beautiful

Still, I always wonder
What’s on the other side?
What is the next valley like?

So, sometimes I clamber over
Break a trail through the high pass
Scale the precipice above the valley

And sometimes I find a path
Blazed by others, worn smooth by travellers
Seeking the otherness, alternatives

I’m not sure which I prefer
The difficult path seems not
Intrinsically superior

Perhaps it’s not the path I take
But rather the objective
And the act of seeking it

Perhaps it is no more than
Being open to a different experience
Being open to the challenge of change

As I consider this
I turn off the road to otherness
And stay in the beautiful valley

There is wisdom in this too
I am open to change
And accept contentment

State Highway 95
West of Blanding
Utah, United States of America

Taken during travels, 2009

This post is a response to this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge, Landscape.

7Comment

1

Weekly Photo Challenge-Landscape – WoollyMuses on Apr 1, 2016 at 6:33 pm
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[…] On Leaving the Valley – pix to words […]

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2

InherentlyAdventurous on Apr 1, 2016 at 8:49 pm
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Being content is the way to live. Nothing matters. In the end we all die. What matters is how content you are. Nice thoughts!

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- 3
  
  Patrick Jennings on Apr 2, 2016 at 10:07 am
  Reply
  
  <smile> Yep. I also love to be content. But it does beg the question, How to be content?
  
  Jeremy Bentham, for example, was a key philosopher of Utilitarianism and posited “The Greatest Happiness Principle”:
  
  “In reality, utility is defined as pleasure itself, and the absence of pain. Thus another name for utility is the Greatest Happiness Principle. This principle holds that ‘actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness’.”
  
  There is a wonderfully pithy retort to Bentham’s open-ended hedonism found in John Stuart Mill’s seminal work, Utilitarianism. It goes like this:
  
  “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is only because they only know their own side of the question.”
  
  Which Mill preceded with these observations:
  
  “It is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low, has the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed being will always feel that any happiness which he can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect. But he can learn to bear its imperfections, if they are at all bearable; and they will not make him envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but only because he feels not at all the good which those imperfections qualify.”
  
  😉
  
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  - 4
    
    InherentlyAdventurous on Apr 2, 2016 at 12:10 pm
    Reply
    
    I think that it comes down to what one wants in his/her life. For one, I was one of those who always questioned what happiness was, in the past. After all, even the Constitution gives the right to pursue happiness, but Benjamin Franklyn actually even said himself that you have a right to pursue happiness but it is up to you to catch it. Some well known actress’s quote goes around on the Internet and pops up every now and then, and she said along the line of, I’d rather enjoy 30 minutes of excitement than the entire life of nothingness. Over the years, I have come to learn that I am happiest when I am in nature. Wilderness. And also, I’ve come to accept that less is more. I am not repeating what many say but do not practice. And I am not just repeating this for the sake of repeating either. Nothing makes me happier than going for a run or hiking in the mountains. Like Dalai Lama said along the line of, The purpose of life is to be happy. And I believe that. So, it is up to you as to what defines happiness AND contentment, and yours is completely different from others’ and that is what defines each and every one of us. Because you’re who you are, and what makes you human is what you feel happy, content and most of all worth living in this world about. Because in the end, we all die. I don’t know if a few hundred years from now when technology is so advanced that we can grow new bodies that we can simply implant our several decades old brains (even after the body that it initially came in died) in. Who knows. But since we won’t live that long, let’s focus on now, and what you want in life, what you want to accomplish in life, or what you are content with in life are entirely up to you. In the end nobody gives rat’s ass about what you want. You (not you) are the one who decide to agonize yourself when you want something (through challenges and difficulties) that you can’t get right now, or decide to be patient and work hard to get something that you defer till later. Or simply, some people embrace the idea that not what you have in your possession matters but the memories that you gain as a byproduct of experience does. Anyway, some people choose to be happy and content with their lives by living with less (could be less achievement in life as well) when some really work hard to achieve big, which is a great thing, if that is what they want in life. No one knows. And no one really cares. And you can’t tell anyone which is right or wrong. In the end, it is your life that you feel satisfied or not. Not others. Because we all die in the end. When you at the death bed, it is only you who will look back and regret or feel content with what you lived through. Cheers.
    
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    - 5
      
      Patrick Jennings on Apr 3, 2016 at 10:03 pm
      Reply
      
      <grin> Yep. I don’t really buy Mill’s argument that only an ‘enlightened’ individual really understands what ‘true happiness’ is … nor do I think that Socrates and the man really understand how the pig and the fool see their own happiness.
      
      But I do think that a good amount of … let’s call it “awareness” … in a society is essential. If people self-centredly pursue their own happiness, without concern for how that pursuit might affect others, then the conditions for widespread discontent are set.
      
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6

sustainabilitea on Apr 2, 2016 at 7:41 am
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Always wondering what’s just over the horizon…I can identify with that!

janet

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- 7
  
  Patrick Jennings on Apr 2, 2016 at 9:10 am
  Reply
  
  =) Perhaps I’ll see you in the next valley, then?
  
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