Ancient Reality

I've started reading some Ancient Greek literature all over again, starting with plays. Tonight was a short, tragic one called Medea by Euripides. It's interesting how lucid these ancient ones were when it came to portray their reality, even as they immersed the latter in a flurry of fantasy adventures. The bottom line was always tinged with the painful aspects of reality humans must bear... society's weight and duty.

Back then, they were already asking all the questions we still ask ourselves today. That, too, I find fascinating. Perhaps they didn't have 'psychology' or more technical sciences to play with, but still even the words we use today are living remnants of theirs.

A couple of examples: psukhē (mind or soul) + logia (study or research) = study of the soul/mind

philos (love) + sophos (wisdom) = love of wisdom

It makes one wonder whether we're truly any more advanced than they were back then, or if it isn't all just simply a trick of the light, whereby only the settings and landscapes have changed. More generally, perhaps it is only the detail that invariably changes, whereas the foundations remain still and unmoving. But what foundations exactly? Perhaps if we could take a bird's eye view beyond the detail, we 'd see the equivalent of the vastest, flattest clearing that stretches to infinity - one that never moves nor changes. Zooming in on that field, we'd notice the blades of grass in their billions, waving in the wind - the detail, the only one actually moving or changing at the mercy of seasons. Underneath it all, though, the constant of the earth (reality) giving birth to the grass would never change. It would always be there as the fixed base on which to allow for the grass to keep dying and growing back again.

But what can the blade of grass really perceive? It will perceive the sun moving up and down the sky, the wind grow colder and harsher upon winter's approach... its own strength diminishing after a while, until time dictates the blade of grass is bound to wither to nothingness - until spring waltzes in and a garrison of fresh greenery sprouts to the surface again. Never quite the same blades of grass, yet being just that at the same time - blades of grass just like the previous ones.

All the blade of grass can see is movement. A seemingly endless and fluid movement, a sense of time passing... yet underneath it all nothing varies, nothing changes. The base remains as fixed as ever.