All I need is my five wits

It’s dark. And quiet. All I can see is the pitch black silhouette of a tree against the nocturnal silence. Next to it, sitting in the sky like a foreign body, a star shining brightly. I close my eyes and lose myself within the rhythm of a song and time carries me along. The moment I open my eyes again, the star is gone. It’s now hiding behind the twigs and branches. It comes as no surprise. After all I know that the earth is turning. But sometimes I need sensual proof to realise what the facts I’ve been lugging around actually mean. Knowledge means nothing if you can’t grasp it. I need my sense to make sense of the facts. Empiricism, that’s what they call it, right? I don’t care. All I know is that facts - as meaningful and reasonable they might be - are nothing more than formulas that add up on paper if they don’t present themselves to my vision, my hearing, my touch, my smell and my taste as digestible and tangible matters. That’s when they evolve and become pieces of personal truth. So, I can read and read, and inform myself as much as I like. I can ponder and ponder. I can study and study. If I want full comprehension, however, I will need to be able to see, hear, feel, smell and taste the result of an equation. This reminds me of my dad. He wouldn’t agree. He believes that you can only fully understand something if you are able to derive the formula yourself. I couldn’t care less. I don’t need to derive and name variables and factors - if I can feel the outcome, I don’t need to understand why. Because its pure palpability to me is proof enough of its truth. It’s my truth. It’s my world. I only have my five wits to perceive it with. Sometimes, sometimes it’s simply enough to feel the accuracy of a circumstance. Sometimes, that’s all you need. When we try to get to the bottom of a formula, our conditioning, subjectivity, misinterpretation as well as missing abilities and knowledge will always get into the way. If we really feel the result of the equation, all the rest falls into place. 

"Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you." ~ Jean-Paul Sartre