A Tentative Thought on Purity.

Purity is a most elusive concept when applied to the matter of human aspiration. It’s become unfashionable, bound up with religion and morality, with notions of repressed Victorian prudery, and with the remote fantasy of mediaeval Romantic ideals. It’s become loaded with a pejorative connotation. It’s uncool, fit only for dull people seeking to vindicate their lack of urbane wherewithal. That’s the modern view, and it’s how I used to see it.

But what do you seek when you’ve tired of the tawdry, the sordid, the commonplace, and the tedious drive for cheap nights and pointless days? Where do you turn when you’ve done all that and it didn’t satisfy? How do you respond to the realisation that what you thought was the great adventure of life was just a matter of following the monkey’s path between the tram lines? Where do you look when you want to find something bigger, better, infinitely more exciting?

I don’t know what purity is, but I’m sure it has nothing to do with religion, morality or Victorian prudery. It might have something to do with mediaeval Romantic ideals, but they’re too tainted with the one-life dogma of exoteric Christianity. Maybe the real Jesus knew, but how can we tell?

So now I’m wondering – just wondering – whether the search for purity might be the greatest adventure of all. It might be near or far. It might be embodied in a grain of sand, the wisdom of a tree or the nobility of a particular person. I suppose the nature of purity only reveals itself when you find it, and maybe that’s reason enough to go a-looking. Maybe.