A Fog of Our Own Devising

I wonder how many times we bring our own confusion upon ourselves.

Too often I think we like to believe that we are surrounded by a fog of living.  We believe that it is similar to the so-called Fog of War, that confusion that is well documented in the midst of military action where all becomes confused and unclear in the reality of explosions and death.  We look around us at the confusing set options and circumstances that we often find ourselves in and find that we, too, seemed to be lost in a mist of events, uncertain at times of what is truly going on and who we are truly with and what we should really be doing.

At least, that is the way the seems to us.  But does it seem that way to others?

I wonder if it that is fact not true, that the fog that we find ourselves too often ensconced in is something of our own making.  We have a grand tendency to confuse our own lives, to put up obstacles where none exist and to walk into walls that are clear to everyone around us.  We feel ourselves to be trudging through a mist we can barely see through, hands held straight out as we try and make our way.  To all around us, it must often look as if we are playing blind man's bluff in the daylight for no particular reason.

Often we lack the ability to see ourselves and the situations we are in clearly, completely, honestly.  This is part of what it means to be human.  We are a bundle of experiences and emotions, filtering the world in a way that no-one else can quite do.  That can be quite a powerful thing - after all, at some level all forms of art are the interpretation of an individual of the world around them.  But it also means that we can see problems that others simply cannot and create issues where none exist - things which are very really to us indeed but only because of the fact that we make them real.  And so we end up wandering through a fog which we have created, a mist which makes the easy difficult and simple confusing and the hard almost unsolvable.

Is there a solution to this fog?  Surely there is.  If this was a meteorological discussion, I would simply say that the sun or wind eventually drive the fog away.  And in this sense God, or a good friend, can often serve the same function, driving away the confusion and helping us to see things for what they really are.  Removing the fog helps us to see the true obstacles for what they are and remove those cobwebs of unreality from clogging our vision.

But here is my problem:  sometimes it feels as if God and friends are not enough.  Because there are times when, although the weather is clear and splendid, the fog always comes rolling back in.