Spirit According to Air

Recently, someone asked me "what is a friend?"

I told him, "A friend is someone who agrees to be your friend."

"Then how do I make a friend?" he asks again.

"Start by calling him a friend" was my answer.

Sometimes, I think we're living, not in the world itself, but in a world created by our definition. For example, in our world, the sun rises above the horizon from the east, and sets back down to the west. But what if, one day, we all agreed to change the name of the direction the sun comes up to "west" and the direction it goes down to "east"? Then the sun would be rising from the west, and setting to the east.

Now, you might be saying "well, the sun is still rising and setting the way nature intended." True, but whoever (except for us) said that nature intended the sun the rise from the east and fall from the west? For all mother nature's concerned, the sun is just rising and setting however it wants, and someone just decided that it is rising from the east and setting from the west.

Sounds far fetched doesn't it? But think about it: aren't we always changing the world with the way we define it? When we go to a club, or any social gathering for that matter, you're probably going to meet someone whom you've never met before. To make things simple, let's just call this person "Michael." If Michael share some things in common with you, and the two of your started joking around, you have just established a connection with him. If one of your friend asks you "hey, who is this?" you're probably going to say, "oh, this is my friend Michael." Right there, Michael has become your friend.

There are many more examples of this. The leaders of two countries get together for a meeting one day. In that meeting, it became clear to both sides that they have similar goals, and they are most likely going to achieve these goals if the two countries work together. They then spend a bit more time working out the terms of that agreement. After that, they call a meeting with a press, and inform the reporters that the two countries are allies. Instantly, the two countries, and all its people, will have to follow the agreements as defined by the leaders in their meeting, and two separate countries suddenly become allies.

In a lot of ways, we are just our minds. To survive, we would first try to put everything in its place by giving it a name. Then, through our words and actions, these names will come together in many different ways, hence creating different outcomes for our lives. Through trial and error, we are able to figure out a various ways of putting these puzzles together, and produce the outcomes with want with our lives.

Then what if, one day, we are able to change the "definitions" themselves? Who knows what we could achieve then?

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