430. A Call To Action

Many of the texts you encounter seem to do nothing other than make an argument for a particular conclusion. The conclusion is supposed to follow from the premises according to the usual rules of logic. As you read, you determine whether or not the machinery of logic successfully leads to the conclusion. The value of such a text then seems to be coextensive with its logical success or failure.

But it is always possible that even the most logical text is also about something else. This is not the conclusion named in the text but something revealed through the process of reading openly. Here, the text is not just a logical argument but a pretext to some further possibility. It is a call to notice a particular insight, an idea that drives the text itself. And it is this driving force that you might also discover can drive you.

A text like this is never only about the conclusion it ostensibly reaches. It is a call to action: it asks you, the reader, to try something. But to see this, you cannot stop at whatever is immediately apparent. You have to be willing to push yourself further, to travel with the text as far as it can take you. This is not for the sake of the author, who is merely offering you a secret, but for your own sake. Your very existence might depend on grasping the meaning behind the structure of the words.

The metaphor found in such a text is more likely than not about the way you relate to the world as a perceiving subject, about what it means to experience, remember, and imagine a world. It offers you a way to see more, to become more aware of your own experience and the possibilities it offers. It is by recognizing these possibilities that you become more capable of seeing not only what is but also what you must be. For the heart of such a text makes it clear that you have no choice: you must change your life.