When to Use “And” Instead of “But”

Who are people trying to fool when they say “first give compliments, and then, before revealing to them what you have noticed that is not quite so complimentary use and instead of but!” Who is so daft they won’t detect this sleight-of-hand wordplay?

However, there is a time when using and instead of but is absolutely the right thing to do.

You long to go to the beach, it is your escape from all that nags you, inwardly, outwardly, hauntingly, your ever-present, ever-distant destination. Alas, you are here, the beach is there.

Picture yourself, then, in your back yard. No, wait, actually go to your back yard, or your front yard, or somewhere outdoors. Hopefully it is nice out, but it doesn’t have to be. You sit, quietly, meditatively, peacefully, feeling the hot sun, or the cool breeze, or the soft drizzle of rain.

Now, if I am sitting next to you, or somehow I have gotten into your mind, I happen to point out how much the hot sun is similar to the hot sun at the coast. The breeze you are feeling could be coming off the ocean, and its sound in the trees’ leaves is not completely unlike the ocean from a couple of hundred yards away.

Well, your first reaction is “yes, but…it is not the ocean – this is my backyard!” WRONG! You ought to say “yes, I feel it, AND it is the ocean!” The wind is the same wind; the sun, too, has the same brilliance, the rain might just as well be the same rain that you endure just because you have come quite a ways to be at the ocean. Good smells in the air – the same! The beach is with us always. Here and there – not here but not there.

And this is a lesson in being qualiadelic. We can recognize that there are gifts everywhere, and the gift may seem different here or there, but they are in essence the same. The molecules that the breeze carries may be different but the invisible wind is the same. The waves in the ocean and the ripples in a lake are the same. They are qualia – the matter they carry may be different, but the breeze and the wind and the waves and the ripples themselves don’t have any material existence, not any more than does a rainbow or a cloud.

Our senses see and our mind interprets. Our senses tell us we are in our backyard and that’s what our mind interprets. As an evolutionary survival game it works but we aren’t living in the the same landscapes anymore.

This is a gift. Play with it. Experiment with it. Appreciate it. No buts about it, only ands.