How Romantic...

From my basic understanding of what the story Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the difference between a romantic and classical perspective is that a romantic perspective approaches matters from a more artistic standpoint and classical perspective from a more scientific one. In other words, a romantic thinks more creatively and imaginatively and a classical thinker thinks more factually. A good analogy that the author uses is how a romantic looks at a handful of sand for the whole handful that it is, while a classical thinker analyzes and groups each individual grain of sand.

It's hard to say which I would consider myself though. I feel like it easy for a person to want the universe to be all factual (at least from personal experience). If everything was either right or wrong, people would know what religion to follow, or if religion even mattered. People would know why they existed and why would die eventually. It's pretty to think of a purely factual universe where everyone knows their purpose, their reason. Or is it?

I think I have come to accept what uncertainty and an inspirational imagination actually have to offer. In reality, we can't keep breaking things down to try and figure out their components, because the deeper we get into the anatomy of any matter, the more we have to continue to break up. If we spend our whole lives trying to figure out why we exist and what everything in the universe is made out of, we don't have anytime to actually live. I should only speak for myself when I say this, because other people may get a kick out of trying to classify and analyze everything in their surroundings. For me though, if you put me on a mountain top in Hawaii so I could look out across the entire landscape and seascape, I wouldn't start by categorizing and playing with the rocks beneath my feet; I would enjoy the wonder of the entire view in front of me. The wonder, the uncertainty of how all the natural beauty before me was formed, would satisfy me more than spending my whole life trying to find a concrete explanation.

I'm sure being a classical thinker has its upsides too though. Some people may say there is a rush in finding answers to "unknowns" and getting closer to solving the mysteries of the universe. Honestly, I think finding conclusions like this are impossible (humans have been trying for some time now), and I think a human's time would be better spent being dazzled than trying to find out who's the man behind the curtain.