Sometimes I have too much to say, so I say nothing. Sometimes I feel too many things too deeply, so I take refuge in the normal. And it's thus that I build my prison of silence and dissatisfaction.
Looking back on the past few days, I don't even know where to start writing. Let's try this:
Saturday, daytime: Eric, Alison's friend visiting from DC, and I undertook the first attempt at geohashing, and the exact coordinates of our destination were out to sea, so we planned on going on to the spit of land furthest out into the Atlantic, Rockaway point. The original plan was to take the subway out to Coney Island, rent bikes, and ride the rest of the way, but by the time we'd finished the hour-long subway trip out to Coney Island it was getting toward sunset and the weather was stormy. It was a tremendous amount of fun just to wander around Coney Island in the midst of a storm, heads bent against the wind, listening to the chilling sound of the wind through the supports of the deserted theme park, and I got some great pictures and video. We contemplated taking a bus for part of the way past Coney Island, but it was already dark by the time we were done exploring the beach and we weren't equipped for traversing the pitch black of Rockaway. Next time.
The little trip out to the end of a subway line and the subsequent wanderings on the stormy beach inspired in me an even greater desire to pursue whatever adventures happened to be close at hand. I decided I wanted to purchase a bike in order to facilitate my travels, which led to the formation of tentative Thanksgiving plans, in which Alison and I obtain bikes in DC and ride them back to NYC. In preparation for this feat I've started using the cycle machines at the gym on days when I'm not lifting, constituting my most ambitious workout regimen ever.
And while I'm extremely excited about the progress of my side projects, I feel like, to an extent, they have distracted me from the bigger, uglier questions facing me. I still don't know what I'm going to do after school...but I hopefully I can get by on boldfaced optimism.
Saturday night, Bigger Questions, and the dangers of Cactus Cooler: With Saturday night came an abortive party packed with idiots, and after helping to clean up in their wake, we ended up back at my place, where I began to furiously prepare Cactus Coolers for us all. It began with just Alison, Eric, and myself, but later Kenny showed up and filled in for Eric who had fallen asleep on the couch sometime later. I learned an important lesson that night: alcohol does not mix well with downbeat music, no matter how soothing or beautiful. I have no idea how it happened, or what set it off, but after several drinks I began to dwell on Ryan Martin's suicide and the conversation I'd had about him with a friend the night before. I had largely put it out of my mind since I first heard the news on Monday, only stopping occasionally to consider what he must have gone through before he took his own life, and why he had finally surrendered to what he must have seen as the pointlessness of his continued existence. Clearly, he was not in any kind of trouble that might have made death seem attractive by comparison, so it must have been the sheer terror of meaninglessness that drove him to his death. And I began to see that meaninglessness as if it were a villain who had killed my friend, or even more troubling, as a disaster or accident that the rest of us had somehow survived...this time. Now I see in that meaninglessness a terrible malignancy, ubiquitous and patient, waiting for us to doubt our purpose and falter in our belief in the value of life. And then it will sweep us away.
Even now, as I sit here sober and relatively hopeful about the future, I can feel it behind the walls and around corners, peeking out at me from the end of long hallways and whispering over my shoulder.
So imagine how I was then, somewhat inebriated, listening to decidedly melancholy music, with my friend's suicide at the forefront of my thoughts. That meaninglessness, that despair stood staring me in the face, mocking me, assuring me that Ryan was only the first. I felt like my companions and I were alive by chance, like survivors of a car wreck who had somehow climbed to safety only to look back in horror at the broken bodies of those who hadn't made it.
And I cried. I cried because in that moment I had no retort, no plan of my own to hold up as evidence of purpose, and I cried because I feared for my friends and I, feared the things we might yet have to face.
Watch this.
Read the second comment under "Temple Bell" on this blog. It's by Brian Borger.
2 comments:
i can feel this moving in belief/non belief argument in my head. I fear that argument because i know when it comes as it did on the last night I was in New York I will not be up to the challenge to defend it. i have the vigor but I lack the intellectual justifications that you so desperately crave. some would argue (crossley is cursing me somewhere for using that phrase) that the reason my intellectual justification fails to arrive is because you cant justify belief but i refuse to buy that.
but this is getting alittle tangential so i'm gonna dive head first into this ubiquitous malignancy (which is, studies have shown, the best way to fight malignancy (as well as regular nancy as well as jane))
to me this meaninglessness is a simple thing. I say that not to minimalize it, but because to me most things are simple as a result of the way I see the world (insert judgements here). sure meaningless creeps in and if we let us it will consume us. Strip away everything in your life and what do you have. What are you? a reaction of atoms? a purely mechanical being reacting to stimuli? what? what are you? But of course the question that is asked is not really what is meant. The question that is meant is who are you? And you ask this to yourself in the darkness of the night? You wonder what possible difference you can make. To the undifferentiated mass of humanity what are you. Amongst six billion how can your life mean anything? Against the multitudes of space what do you mean? Nothing. You are nothing against this. And the meaningless will creep as a shadow and swallow you whole.
And yet I say no. I will not sit idlely by and be taken by this shapeless foe. I have not seen everything but I know enough to know that I don’t know everything. And I know that having done no exhaustive search of the world, there is always something else out there. Something new. Something in which meaning could be found. Against meaninglessness, I have possibility. And so as meaninglessness swells around me I will run. I will run in search of meaning, of a weapon to wield against this psychological terror. And surely, as on any flight from a foe there will be times when there is despair. There will be heartache and sacrifice. There will be a great deal of hardship on the road ahead. And yet there is the hope that when one day we will find what we are searching for. So there is against despair I give you
hope
brb
Every once in a while, I need to reevaluate my assumptions and the foundation for my conclusions about how to lead a more meaningful life.
Assumption 1: There is no absolute purpose given to us by a higher power. Our lives aren't so simple as doing what someone wiser than us has told us to do. The corollary to this is that there is no immortal afterlife, and as time increases to infinity any possible effect our mortal lives have had on the world and its people will drop to zero.
Assumption 2: As long as life can possibly be more enjoyable than non-existence, it is worth staying alive. With regard to the lack of imbued purpose discussed in assumption 1, there is no concrete obligation to serve anyone, since everyone and everything outside yourself will meet the same end eventually (whether or not you WANT to serve other people is a different matter entirely). As a result, finding happiness for oneself, since there would be no real value in living an unfulfilled life purely for the sake of others, would seem to be the best use of an otherwise meaningless life. In my experience, the most rewarding and enjoyable feeling comes from a sense of purpose and belonging, a notion that one is where they are most happy being and doing what they are most happy doing. (Before I'm accused of being totally self-centered, it's easy to imagine one can be most happy and fulfilled in the service of others). By that token, the best use of one's life is to find that place and do that thing.
But of course, it's not that easy. How can you know what else you could be doing?
Assumption 3: Everyone has a unique potential. What is fulfilling to one person might not be fulfilling to another, but no one is obligated to fulfill the potential of another, only their own. If a person feels like they've found a particular place and occupation that gives them the greatest sense of fulfillment and happiness, they have made the best use of their life, despite the judgments of others regarding what that person has chosen to spend their life doing. Happy plumber > unfulfilled investment banker who's only in it for the money.
Maybe even more important than finding a place and an occupation is cultivating a way of looking at the world that looks at every moment in life is a step toward that fulfillment, a worldview that asserts that life is fundamentally, necessarily good.
In this moment, I feel like an artist sitting before a pottery wheel, hands caked with the physical substance of my experience, mind and pencil sketching and resketching the ambitious designs for my life, which sits in a misshapen lump that hints at my previous unskilled and heavy-handed attempts at craftsmanship.
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