What ever happened to this thing?

Sometimes I find old things I decided to write down. little essays, or journal entries, or all manner of things. And I remember what I was writing about, why I was writing it. They're never really positive, because I don't tend to write when I'm in a good mood. Sometimes the bug hits me, but very rarely. Sometimes it's depression, or fear, but more often it's actually a response to some thought that hit me. So thinking about thinking comes up sometimes. And now I'm thinking about thinking about thinking, though we'll stop that train of thought here. This time, I'll keep it more to why we do what we do.

That's always been the question I ask. Why do people do what they do? And you can start to find general trends if you look in the right places. That's all that sociology is. And you can try to see how that fits into other subjects. That's why I studied religion. But really? When it comes down to it, people still make their own ways, even if they follow a larger trend. Who you are really does come down to what you choose to do, but who you are also determines what you do. A nice person does good things because they're a nice person, and because good things seem like what they want to do. The same goes in reverse. So take that and look at yourself. Everyone does things, then asks why they did it. But you had to have a reason. I do what I do because it seems like what ought be done, but why ought it be done? Why do we look up to the people we do, live up to the standards we do, like what we like and hate what we hate? And if you try, you can find a reason. Eventually you'll find a reason that satisfies you. But we don't have time to figure out all of those. So we have to figure out what's important to figure out, and figure it out. I could care less why I find meat delicious, but why I have the friends I do is of much more importance. Because if I know that, I can keep those people I've found, find new friends, and potentially make the relation with them all the more rewarding. I gain no such benefit from knowing about meat.

Is this why things are seen as important or as trivial? Few ask WHY something is beautiful, being satisfied that it is. Perhaps, then, understanding meanings is not the only way to gain a true benefit from something. I feel as though understanding the root of beauty, making it rote formula, that would make it banal and no longer worthwhile. It would lose a quality it held before which gave it its beauty. But it is only through understanding a part of beauty that we can even know this. Even the knowledge of what not to seek out needs to be found. But in my experience, one cannot brute-force their way to understanding. Understanding is something that comes in flashes of inspiration, a spark of light to the flash pan, illuminating, for brief moments, that which we are to understand. If we don't write, we lose this, we are forced to find it again. So I think this will become where I write. To capture those moments in time, a thousand words to try and reclaim the picture in my mind.