Tuesdays are an accursed day: the sinking of the RMS Titanic, Pearl Harbour, 9/11, the beginning of the Soviet invasion of Prague, etc. The list is extremely long. More importantly, there is real empirical data to support the notion that Tuesdays are the worst day of the week. An article by Reuters stated that most people find themselves overworked on Tuesdays. Mondayitis, despite being a very common topic, is generally regarded as far less evident by said research. On Mondays, you may cruise through work purely off of relaxation experienced during the weekend. Tuesday, however, throws you into the thick of it. I know it sounds like the talk of a madman, however, from a historical and psychological standpoint, all signs lead towards a certain conclusion. My own hatred for Tuesdays must be grounded in rationality; after all, I consider myself to be far more rational than most. I can list a few more dates if you wish: the Great Depression started on a Tuesday, and it is even called Black Tuesday for that exact reason. The Haiti earthquake, the Columbine High School incident, the Boston Marathon—all happened on a Tuesday. It feels as though I am going insane, but it is right there: it all happens on Tuesdays. Every Tuesday, I see a black cat, it always rains, and I feel horrid. I... I don't know how this is possible, but it just does not stop...
I can already tell a few of you are concerned for my well-being and sanity. Most definitely not the introduction anyone could have expected. This was actually the first intended variation of the character study. I felt like it would be only fair to keep it in, despite the entire idea being scraped. Our voyage this time around is a bit shorter. I am preparing myself to finally tackle "In dubio pro natura" for the second time... I absolutely need to finish it. This journey, while more brief by comparison, might be one of the most important. After all, I wish to delve into a fundamental idea that permeates all of my other work: one of perception—its nature and function. This will be our Polaris. As we venture deeper, I ask of you to slow down, to really consider what it is that I am trying to lead you towards. After all, my hope is not to answer questions, but rather to pose them for you, to push you in a direction so that you may discover a nugget of something truly profound. And yes, for those wondering whether or not I finished the essay on a Tuesday, I have a brief explanation. While technically the last word was typed on a Tuesday, editing it took me a few more days. With that being said, I ask of you once more to humour my navigation skills as we sail off.
Fractured and Fragmented
The entropic nature of the universe is incomprehensible to us. Our minds are so used to seeing patterns that we cannot view reality for what it truly is. We overlook the unquantifiable amount of information one would have to absorb to truly grasp the puzzle that is reality. At best, we may only be capable of seeing one or two pieces. They may or may not be connected, however, that is simply how we perceive the world: a web of causes and effects that, to our knowledge, started thirteen billion years ago and continues in its chaotic form—beautiful and unsettling.
I wish to be clear here: perception is inherently fragmented. It is a personal mirror of reality, shattered into a billion pieces. Each action we take has an ever-looming sense of uncertainty: "What if I should have done X rather than Y?" In hopes of making sense of present disorder, we have defined binaries and spectra of thought. They allow us to determine what is the "correct" action, which often fails to take into account the sheer complexity of any situation. Even if we were certain that there is some true categorisation of "good" and "bad", would it truly be so simple? There is seemingly always something we did not and could not have known—a piece of information that could have proved so vital, yet was not present at the time. Perhaps nothing better illustrates this than those late-night quandaries of could-have-beens and what-ifs. Certain memories come to rear their ugly heads and force us to contemplate hypotheticals. We obsess over what has long passed us, incapable of looking forward. Such is human nature, I suppose.
