I will follow

One night about two weeks ago, somewhere close to midnight, when I’d finally run out of spontaneous reasons to stay up long enough to be sleep deprived the next day (night Nathan always sabotages morning Nathan), I went to bed.

Crawling in beside Lauren, I laid my head back on the pillow and took a deep breath, trying to let the bed absorb the weight of the day as I sunk into the mattress. Lauren was awake, and we began to talk in voices trained by a baby sleeping within earshot. We looked back on the day and, like we always do, on how cute Eve was and how lucky we were and how we hope it never ends. As we paused for a moment, smiling in the dark, Lauren said something which wasn’t so significant for what she said but how she said it.
With a quiet sadness, she said softly: “I love life so much."

And she does. She does love it so much. She loves every bit of it, the people who we share it with, the memories of childhood and of high school and yesterday when Eve laughed and Christmas and vacations and going to the movies and the first day of Spring. But that love, as much joy as it brings her, is not felt without a cost. The cost is the knowledge that life ends, a truth made bitter by living, and that no matter how much we love it, life is not ours to keep. It’s a gift, meant to be loved, but meant to be given up. And the deeper the love, the tighter our grip on this gift, until at last we are forced to come to terms with its parting, which is just impossible.

And so Lauren, knowing this, having the foresight to see that love cannot be without loss, combined in one statement love and sadness, a simple statement that somehow sums up a very profound irony.

Lauren’s not a melancholy person. She doesn’t live with guarded emotions. On the contrary, she gives herself completely to life, to joy and happiness, to relationships, and she feels everything, all the way through. Her comment that night was sincere, just like her life.

I don’t remember what I said back to her right then. I like the way her statement sounded, and I hope I left it hanging in the air for effect. I may have gotten excited at such a philosophical musing and rambled about the “tragic dualities” of life or something made-up like that and ruined it, but I can’t remember. What I would like to say now, though, is that while what she said was true in both its plain meaning and its intention, she will not have to experience her love of life or the pain of its loss alone. I will be by her side, until I’m not. I will share it all with her until I can’t anymore.

And when it must be, like the song says, I will follow her into the dark, or I will wait there for her.

N

Expectations

Have you ever noticed that people disappoint you a lot? Do you regularly find yourself disapproving of others' conduct? Are you surprised when someone lives up to the standards you set?

You could have expectations.

If this is the case, you’re not alone. Most of us have expectations for other people, and it is not unusual for them to go unmet. In fact, some of us have so many expectations that our relationships are often a source of dissatisfaction, leaving us frustrated and unfulfilled. These expectations are not always easy to explain either. Some of them are the product of our upbringings and the expectations that we were held to as children. Some of them are the side effect of another condition, self centeredness, which gives rise to a type of entitlement-based expectations. And then there are expectations formed around others’ behavior—as in what you’ve come to expect. And to top it off, there are principled expectations, which are abstract in nature and represent how we think people should behave in general. Determining what kind of expectations you have—and where they come from—is an important part of learning more about your condition.

To truly understand your expectations—and to learn to live with them—you have to be honest about the effect they have on you. For instance—is it your husband’s incurable laziness and bad attitude about housework that disappoints you, or is it your unrealistic expectation that one’s spouse should want to help the other spouse equally shoulder the responsibilities of the home? Is the source of your disgust really the blatant superficiality of all your friends and how much they talk about money and new clothes and houses and other people, or is it your naive expectation that people should, on average, be concerned with matters of significance? Are you perturbed because the receptionist at your doctor’s office barely looked you in the eye and acted like you were annoying them the whole time you were there, as if you weren’t the customer and you weren’t paying good money to see your doctor and as if you didn’t make this appointment three months ago—or is it your overly demanding expectation that people should practice simple politeness and make eye contact and stop bringing their crappy attitudes into work with them and show a little professionalism? Are you angry because your nearly-adult kids complain constantly and take their privileged lives for granted and act like spoiled little brats who can’t tear themselves away from a text message for one second to actually communicate with you about their day, or is it because, like an idiot, you expect them to understand the advantages they have in life and show some appreciation and act their age instead of acting like tweens for once? Are you enraged by people in line at Starbucks who throw a hissy-fit when the barista doesn’t have their favorite ingredient, by drivers who honk at you after .005 seconds of sitting at a green light, at parents who smoke in the car with their babies in the backseat, at the nearly 2000 people who stampeded into a Walmart on Black Friday in 2008 killing a seasonal employee by crushing him to death and then complained when they were asked to leave the store, and by John Edwards?

Or are you enraged because, despite thousands of years of history and atrocities and small minds and weak characters and the utter predictability of human behavior, you still expect people to be better than they are?

It’s exactly this kind of introspective exercise that can help you determine the source of any negative feelings you might be experiencing as a result of your relationships and interactions with the world. And when you realize, finally, that it’s your expectations that are at the root of your negative feelings about people, you can take the first step towards recovery:

Abandon them.

“For your health.”

-Dr. Steve Brule

N

A guest, like all my Fathers.

King David, in what must have been a moment of angst about the tragic brevity of life, wrote in melancholy song:

“Oh Lord, make me know my end
and what is the measure of my days;
let me know how fleeting I am!
Behold, you have made my days a
few handbreaths, and my lifetime is as
nothing before you. Surely all mankind
stands as a mere shadow! Surely for nothing
they are in turmoil; man heaps up wealth,
and does not know who will gather!"

Psalm 30, v. 4.

No matter what creed you live by, or what beliefs you hold, there is something true about David’s words that transcends religion altogether. The insight of David’s reflection is not primarily the words themselves, but the reason behind them. He is asking, praying, that he will be made aware of his temporariness, his transiency. Is this necessary? Does not the very request itself beget his awareness of the fact? Doesn’t he already know? Or was he acknowledging that tendency people have of putting death out of their minds, or if not that, the habit of living in a way that takes for granted the frailty of life and misplaces significance in things that do not last? Did David know that before long he would forget this sacred appreciation towards time and begin again to entertain the illusions of the everyday? Surely a man like David understood the weaknesses of human character, and knew too well the attachments to this life that we form so deeply. We are not deterred from loving this life, no matter how incapable we will be in dealing with the loss that must necessarily follow. I think David knew this, and I think he believed that freeing ourselves from our attachment to this life was so inhuman, so against our nature, that to do so required a revelation.

I’m not sure if revelation is required or not, but it’s here, right in front of me. I open an ancient book, and I read the words of an ancient man, and in them I find a soul that pleads the way I feel. And what I feel, to be clear, is that the world has confused filler with substance, and false meaning is the byproduct. By sort of an ironic mistake, we have artificially distorted the value of things that fade away, and neglected that which truly lasts. Society uses this distortion to preserve itself by luring onlookers into pressure cooked lives where it sucks out their time and money and soul and distracts them to the point where they don't notice that their days are almost up until it's too late, and by then they've given their lives to it, ensuring it's immortality with their sacrifice. And while a few mourn the loss of one of their own, the masses hardly notice, and the cycle continues.

I don’t say this to aggrandize my sense of self awareness; I say it because it makes me profoundly sad to imagine a person who, coming to the end, realizes that they invested their lives in phony futures with no return. And if the author of the Psalms thought it could happen to him, I don't see why it couldn't happen to me. Or to you.

I don’t know if praying for an increased self-awareness of our own fleeting existence will make us any more likely to choose the carpenter’s cup over the golden goblet, but if all it does is remind us to look again at how we use our time here and how we live out our lives, then it wasn't in vain.



"Ignatius J. Reilly's supercilious blue and yellow eyes looked down upon the other people waiting under the clock at the D.H. Holmes department store, studying the crowd of people for signs of bad taste in dress. Several of the outfits, Ignatius noticed, were new enough and expensive enough to be properly considered offenses against taste and decency. Possession of anything new or expensive only reflected a person's lack of theology and geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one's soul.

Ignatius himself was dressed comfortably and sensibly. The hunting cap prevented head colds. The voluminous tweed trousers were durable and permitted unusually free locomotion. Their pleats and nooks contained pockets of warm, stale air that soothed Ignatius. The plaid flannel shirt made a jacket unnecessary while the muffler guarded exposed Reilly skin between earflap and collar. The outfit was acceptable by any theological and geometrical standards, however abstruse, and suggested a rich inner life."

-John Kennedy Toole, from A Confederacy of Dunces

-N

There's a protest for that

If you think that America’s government has lost its way, there’s a protest for that. If you think Washington is in bed with big business and that lobbyists write our national policies, there’s a protest for that. If you think that Wall Street is a good place to indict the 1%, you’d better hurry because that protest started without you. And if you think that governments the world over are conspiring to slowly but surely encroach on our civil liberties as part of an organized scheme to enslave and suppress the governed in a vice-hold of absolute power, then (1) you’ve been spending too much time on inforwars.com, and (2) there’s a protest for that.

It’s all one protest actually.

The “Occupy Wallstreet” movement has given a voice to seemingly disgruntled, disenfranchised and disillusioned people across America. There are as many motivations behind the protesters as there is social and economic disparity amongst the 99% that is ironically represented as a united front. Yet somehow there’s unity enough to have propelled the movement out from New York’s crowded island to less cliché places for protests. If it shows anything, it shows that a significant number of people are being moved to political speech, even if what comes out is an inarticulate generalization that glosses over the causal relationship between national policies and their own current personal circumstances. It’s more along the lines of that feeling that something is wrong, although you can’t prove exactly what caused it, and you can’t exactly describe it, you know something is wrong, because what’s going on can’t be right.

Even if not everyone is saying it, there’s a fundamental principle mixed in with all the political rhetoric and pun-ridden signage that underpins the legitimacy of the protests, and the right of the protesters to demand change, or even just an explanation from our leaders as to why things are the way they are. This is the idea that the government—defined as the representative body of the people—has a purpose determined for it by the people who elect it, and that it should be accountable to those same people for its failure to achieve it.

Perhaps up to this point we might find some degree of consensus. But if there was ever a fork where the road splits, it is here. To say that Government has a purpose is one thing. To say what that purpose is, even on a broad scale, is to pick one stance in a thousand. And what’s more interesting to me than the plurality of opinions as to the government’s purpose is the reason for the plurality itself. The average voter’s perception of the government’s purpose is, in my opinion, a direct reflection of their own interests and position in society. And as there are many different interests and many different positions in society, so goes the logic.

Maybe this sounds obvious, but I don’t think everyone wants to readily admit that this is true. But just look at politicians—or more specifically—congressmen and women: they are often and necessarily torn between voting for laws and policies that help their constituencies (or the majority of voters within those constituencies) and voting in the interest of other causes. In an ideal world meeting the needs of any one constituency or community and the needs of the country would not be a mutually exclusive choice. And generally speaking what is good for the country as a whole is good for any one community, as communities are often microcosms of the nation with the same social and economic qualities. But not always. And when it comes down to choosing sides, loathe is a politician to come home from Capitol Hill bearing no gifts.

But who wants to confess that they’re more concerned about the value of their home than America’s poverty problem? Who wants to acknowledge that they’re more worried about their small business than whether the Nissan factory employing a whole town is about to close? What state employee is willing to admit that they won’t accept a pay cut and reduced pension benefits even if the state goes bankrupt? Who is going to be the first in line to refuse to support a tax increase that would create a path to national solvency? Who isn’t?

We believe the purpose of the government is to help us (or leave us alone), and we are 300 million individuals. It is only natural to assign priority to those issues that most immediately affect us. But we cannot all pursue our own ends and expect the government to pursue them all with us. And too often we overlook the connection between a problem that seems outside the scope of our interests and a problem we currently face. But even if our problems and their problems were totally unrelated, we cannot ask a government with limited resources to address ours first without acknowledging the implications: where resources go one place, they don’t go another. And where resources don’t go, they are missed.

It is difficult to escape the meddling influence of us. If the purpose of the government is to help rather than hurt, and helping means dividing resources among the people, the next question is fairness, and what is a fair division of resources and what’s not. Fairness is a judgment on the worth of human conduct, and what it entitles a person to. Valuations of human conduct evolve from a moral code. And a moral code is not without a source. And all of our answers to these questions are the product of the development of our consciousness in a certain environment, with certain internal and external forces wearing on us at all times. Yet when we come out formulated and all determined like we are, we forget the million varieties we could have been, and judge life from our point of view as if we can take credit for the whole process of our becoming, or as if we had nothing to do with it—whichever is easier to believe.

So am I saying that people more often form their political opinions around their own self-interests and prejudices than by using a set of principles that take into account the natural inequalities of existence and evaluate the needs of society based on disinterested criteria?

Guilty. But don’t worry—when I wrote this I took into account the natural inequalities of existence and evaluated the needs of society using disinterested criteria.


"Although a society is a cooperative venture for mutual advantage, it is typically marked by conflict and by an identity of interests...there is a conflict of interests since persons are not indifferent as to how the greater benefits produced by their collaboration are distributed, for in order to pursue their ends they each prefer a larger to a lesser share."

John Rawls, Theory of Justice


N

Smiles

6:00 a.m. Every morning it comes, arriving precisely on time, conspiring with my body to wake me in the sleepiest possible state. And with it, chirping softly as she pushes up on two tiny arms to see what she can of our dimly lit room through the ivory colored bars of her crib, my reason for waking up.

I stumble negligently out of bed and walk over to collect my daughter. I do this very well with my eyes closed. I carry her over to my wife’s side, and place her gently on the bed. She clasps her little hands together with a smile in anticipation of her favorite food—one that only her mother can provide. Having come to terms that I am not capable of fulfilling this need, I go back to bed. About ten or so minutes later, my wife nudges me lovingly and motions for me to look at our very satisfied baby who is clearly ready for the day. “Well,” I think to myself, “I guess that makes two of us.”

Out in the living room daylight forces my eyes to adjust. Over in one corner is the blanket of the day, laid out in a neat square shape, with a toy or two waiting to be played with. I imagine the toys suddenly pretending to be inanimate as I walk around the corner and wonder if I’ve seen Toy Story too many times. I lay Eve down on her back and her arms quickly straighten over her head as she stretches from the 11 hour slumber that must be quite rejuvenating. I, on the other hand, still can’t seem to get enough sleep.

“I’m tired,” I say to myself as I look down at her.

“You are?!” her wide eyes seem to say back to me. “You should come to bed at 7 with me. I feel great.”

And as I think about how to explain why I never make it to bed at 7, her wide eyed stare shifts into a smile and my tiredness is momentarily forgotten as we begin to exchange smiles and before I know it I’ve said “Good Morning” in 5 varieties of baby talk. She has a way like that.

No matter how hard I try to complain about being tired, or having to go to work, or not getting to be a baby and lay around on soft blankets all day and take naps, she takes the wind out of my discontent. With every smile she gives, I feel a little bit warmer, a little bit happier. This warmth and happiness builds by the minute as I’m with her, and by the time I have to walk out the door to catch the bus to work I’m wishing I could wake up at 6:00 a.m. all over again.

It’s amazing to me what power there is in such a simple expression on such a little face. Behind Eve’s smile is the purest innocence, unspoiled in a world of spoiled things. Behind her smile I see joy uninhibited by the worries of life. I see excitement that is not jaded; enthusiasm that is not forced. And I see a love that expresses itself in recognition: she knows me, and the sight of me makes her happy. I cannot imagine a better feeling. It overwhelms me, and for the life of me I can’t figure out what I did to deserve this smile, but I would never, ever undo it.

“I love you,” I say to her, as she grasps one of my fingers in each hand, bringing them slowly to her mouth, cooing all the while.

And though she can’t return the sentiment, she doesn’t have to. I know love when I see it, and I see it in her smile.

N

9/11

When I first mentioned to my wife that I was thinking about dedicating a post to 9/11, she calmly gave me some very practical (and very telling) advice in the concise expression "be careful." The advice was practical because 9/11, as a subject of discussion, is especially liable to arouse the plethora of emotions that any audience is sure to have on the topic. This is very telling because it illuminates the disparity of perceptions that surround 9/11, and the controversial place which this event holds in our consciousness (the advice, too, was directed at me, acknowledging the tendency of my writing to be critical and ironical--not a good combination for a dedication to our generation's signal patriotic rallying point). But, seeing as how I've already begun…

Sometimes I think about the moment before the first plane hit, before chaos set in and everyone inside began to function on instinct, when heads were still clear--I think of that person, sitting next to the window, who glanced out and saw what must have been a surreal sight, so surreal that it couldn't have registered at first, but it couldn't be denied either. I imagine that person staring down the nose of an airline passenger jet, trying to speak but having lost the power of speech, trying to move but glued to their seat. I imagine them finally drawing a breath, and not having the time to consider that those were their last moments. I imagine the nose of the airplane as it first pierces the glass, then a bookcase or a desk, and finally coming in contact with this onlooker, who for a split second was face to face with a 350,000 pound Boeing 767 traveling over 500 hundred miles an hour. Part of me likes to imagine that they didn't flinch, that they met their fate without blinking. But this would require understanding, it would require comprehension--and there was nothing to comprehend, only something to react to. Had it been me, I would have turned to run, a futile gesture driven by the will to survive.

Fast forward to July 7 ,2007. The place is a bustling market in a northern Shiite village outside of Baghdad, Iraq. The person is a child, a little girl, standing next to her mother as she buys some fruit. She stares off into the crowds, glancing here and there at what catches her eye. I ask myself is she sees the truck, the explosive-laden truck that has pulled into the market, and idles for a brief moment before it combusts into a whole of fire, metal and light, carrying villagers away as if they were leaves in the wind. And I ask myself if that little girl and the onlooker who met their fate face to face in Tower 1 are not victims of the same tragedy, a continuing tragedy that is not confined to one event, but is perpetuated by a force that no amount of anti-terrorism task forces or border check-points or body scanners can ever truly extinguish. That force is the force of human convictions, of human beliefs. Terribly, terribly misguided beliefs--but no less powerful than their peaceful counterparts. It is belief that has sent every suicide bomber to their self-imploding demise, and belief that these beliefs must be stopped that has sent our young men and women to foreign lands to stand in their way. The continuing tragedy is the never ending war of beliefs, and the cost in human lives exacted by the evolution of ideals into violence.

That's the most frustrating part of 9/11, in my view: the actualization of beliefs that we cannot fight until they are actualized. We cannot arrest terrorists for thinking terrorist thoughts (I think); we must wait for the fine line they cross in taking a step towards action, which is deadly business, since sometimes that step is into a crowded marketplace with a bomb strapped to it. Before this point, sometimes all we have is the force and appeal of countering ideas, or at most the economic sanctioning power of whatever consensus we can muster. Unfortunately, the resilient insurgencies and terrorist groups who embody the face of these beliefs can be hard to starve out, and even harder to approach. Conversation, I would say, is at a minimum.

I've often pictured a roundtable discussion between myself, a translator, and a small group of al-Qaeda militants. The question that haunts me is what would I say? What would I say when they tell me that the West has collectively murdered tens of thousands of their citizens and exploited their countries? What would I say when they tell me that they do what they do because of America's support for Israel, or because the Koran has commissioned the Jihad they stand behind? That none of that was true? That the Americans who died on 9/11 were innocent? That they had misinterpreted the core writings of their faith? Even when I construct some argument that forces them to consider the inconsistencies of their beliefs and to justify the bloodshed of the little children who are too young to be infidels or Westerners or anything but children, I think about snapshots or videos I've seen of our own citizens screaming in each other's faces over the truth of their beliefs, of signs that say "God hates fags," of pictures of Barrack Obama with Hitler's mustache, and I feel the weight of the convictions that manifest themselves in these enraged expressions, and how they may become inexorably intertwined with the identities of those who hold them. And although most days the people behind these slogans go home and don't set up IEDs outside of their rivals' driveways, the passion in their beliefs is not so different from those in other parts of the world who use violent means in waging their ideological wars on the world.

Freedom of belief is a liberty we champion in this country, even though some would prefer either a little less or a little more on the public stage. And we have accepted that this freedom comes at the cost of discord within our own nation, and we pay that price on a regular basis. What we cannot accept, and must never accept--especially within our own borders, and by our own people--is the dark escalation of personal beliefs into violence-begetting hatred. For when we reach that point, when we commit terrorist acts on one-another, we stoop to a commonality with people whom we have sworn to defeat at all costs.

If America can learn anything from 9/11 besides a respect for the sheer power of conviction, it should learn to be an example to the world of a peaceful pluralistic society, which is a damn hard thing to be--and that tells me it's got to be worth something.

"The evolving consecration of Ground Zero has been tortuous and fraught, occasionally a flea-circus pantomime of the historical and global frictions that, directly or indirectly, rendered this patch of Manhattan eligible for consecration in the first place."

Nick Paumgarten, writing for The New Yorker.

N

Comment response

Because the site would not allow me to post this comment (as the character length is over the maximum), I've given it its own post.

Ahh. You make a good reply.

You aptly point out that there is no small moral value in the act of prostehlytizing in the name of one's faith, especially when it fulfills a fundamental tenet. And this value is separate and independent from the success of the prosthelytizer. But in the same token, the degree of success is arguably the more significant value relative to the ultimate aims of the faith (again, in the Christian tradition). Yet clearly one attempting to spread his faith cannot be held solely responsible for the decisions of those he shares with to accept or reject his message. However he can be held responsible for his motivations for doing so, as well as the extent to which the particularities of his methods discourage acceptance amongst his audience (I suppose you could say that questioning the motivations of a street evangelist is equivalent to questioning their authenticity, although I think authenticity is a rather loaded term).

The answer, in my opinion then, to your question of whether "abrasive truth delivery" can be morally good depends on how you balance the values of obedience of the speaker and acceptance of the message (which under these circumstances could also be described as newfound salvation). A hesitation here might be that because the speaker cannot force acceptance of their message, then the only value for which they are responsible is obedience, which in this case is to deliver the message without distortion or falsification. This would probably be most genuinely accomplished by simply reading the scriptures aloud, allowing the audience to apply their own interpretations. But, given the impracticalities of reading the Bible out loud on the street to strangers, what usually occurs is that the interpretation of the speaker becomes the bulk of the message, and consequently the message inherits not only their personal ideology but their tones and mannerisms, and is confined to the limited portion that they choose to present. So it seems that although the one delivering the message can be only that--the deliverer of the message--they make a series of choices by which they shape the message, giving it a feel and a sound a certain appeal (or lack of appeal). In this way I believe the speaker becomes responsible for the second value, or for the acceptance of the message, to the extent that their personal choices regarding their delivery--not the message itself--negatively affects the audience's reception. And because it is my argument that the reception of the audience, given the significance of the decision before them, is the greatest value in this picture, then a delivery of the message that impedes this value is not morally good.

The crucial factor, as you mentioned, is whether an abrasive delivery, as opposed to a gentle-handed or any other kind, is more or less effective. And as far as what effectiveness means in this scenario, I think it cannot be divorced from its regular meaning, which in oratory would be the positive reception of the audience to the substance of the message, or the tendency of the message to move the audience in the some way that corresponds to the message's aims. To equate effectiveness of the message to simply its delivery by the speaker is to equate effectiveness to the moral value of the act of delivery, which moots the entire question of effect on the audience, which I am unwilling to do.

Now it is clear that the effectiveness of a message is largely dependent on the particularities of the audience, and every speaker must accept that they cannot always predict or influence these particularities before the message is delivered. But that does not mean that there are not general truths about audiences (whether it be a crowd or a single person on the street) that can assist in making a message more effective. These general truths, I think, are identifiable by considering simple human qualities and characteristics that affect perception. For instance, the fact that most people are repelled by judgmental accusations is obvious, and as equally obvious is the fact that most people respond well to kindness, respect, and acceptance. And although, especially when we're talking about street evangelists, the content of the message should not be altered to fit the audience, it should not be forgotten that the message is broad and deep, and has many facets that appeal to secular audiences, as well as some that scare and anger them. The truth of the latter is not diminished because an audience refuses to accept it, but it may very well be that the same audience, with the right foundation of understanding and opportunity for consideration, could be moved to embrace the harsher truths which the message presents--truths which are not best shared by a loud and judgmental voice of a passing stranger.

So yes, abrasive truth is still truth, and one can only lead an audience to water (so to speak). But if people are more susceptible to persuasion when approached a certain way, to ignore these sensibilities is not only reduce effectiveness, but to choose a style of delivery which is not necessitated by the message itself, and for what? Because it suits the speaker? Surely there is a better way.

To err is human, so we say. At least that’s what I told the man who approached me Friday as I walked to my car after work. I mean after he told me that if we loved Jesus, then we would, literally, sin no more. Did I mention he was a street evangelist? At first he just asked me if I had a relationship with God, or something to that affect, as I attempted to walk briskly by him. I told him I was “good,” meaning “It’s okay I’ve heard the message, and I’ve come to a decision about that”. For some reason I don’t think he ascertained my full meaning, especially since he responded with “well how can anyone be good?”

“Well I don’t mean literally,” I said. “I just mean, you know, I’ve come to an understanding in my faith is all.”

“Is Christ God?” he responded.

“In a way I suppose yes,” I said.

“Well what other way is there?”

“Well you know that’s a complicated concept.”

“Not really,” he replied. “Jesus says if you love me you will obey my commands. Go and sin no more.”

I decided here not to point out that he had slightly conflated the idea of Jesus being God with Jesus’ message about love and obedience. And it wasn’t that I disagreed with his initial proposition, it was just that I think the idea of the trinity isn’t the simplest theological concept there is. But I digress.

This went on for a bit, and he further expanded on this premise.

“If you love Jesus, how can you keep on sinning?”

“Well I don’t think God expects you to be sinless. I think God expects you to try.”

“The Bible doesn’t say ‘go and try not to sin,’ it says ‘don’t sin.’”

“Yes but I don’t think we’re capable of sinlessness.”

“If you’re truly transformed you won’t continue to live in sin.”

“Well yes but I think there’s a difference between living in sin and committing a sin. To live in sin is thought of as to sin without remorse or repentance, not pursuing a less sinful life. This is different than simply committing a sin, wh-“

And it was at this time that he cut me off, handing me a card with a picture on the front of a grave (in what appeared to be Hell, which I thought was overkill, since we’ll already be buried on earth) with the interrogative “Where you will go when you die?” on it.

“Email me if you have any more questions about sinlessness,” were his parting words.

While recognizing immediately that he was the last person who I would email about sinlessness, I marveled at the fact that I had succeeded in annoying a street evangelist enough that he walked away from me. Maybe he realized that I was not his ideal target, and that instead of evangelizing he was delving into an interpretive debate that failed to provide him with the thrill of fighting a non-believer on more fundamental issues like God’s existence and the evils of attending the Nashville National Folk Festival, which was the event that had drawn him there, as it would naturally provide crowds of heathens for good hunting.

Overall, I thought he was overly confrontational and thereby ineffective, a common (non) quality of the street evangelist. The coercive tone of a stranger standing on a street corner, yelling that you must have a relationship with God always strikes me with irony. I also have difficulty appreciating the presumptuousness of their questions. It’s as if it never occurred to them that someone might find the idea of a Supreme Being—whose existence (in the Christian tradition) is a unified tripartite with separate and distinct elements (in the form of Christ and the Holy Spirit)—a bit of a foreign concept. Not to mention that they gloss over what surely must be a non-believer’s difficulty of conceiving of a relationship with this being, and exactly what that means.

I kept the card, and intend to put it up in my office should I ever change my mind about seeking advice on sinlessness—I guess in the event that I exhaust every other credible source on earth that covers this topic, and am left with no choice but to resort to the opinings of a man who was wearing mirrored Oakleys as he enlightened me with scriptural truths (although in his defense, it was quite sunny). I’m sure he’s at the festival right now, assuming everyone he approaches is damned to Hell, and that as he points his finger and recites the Ten Commandments, he is confident that he does God’s work.

I’ve spent more than most of my Sundays in church, and I was even awarded a Bible once for scripture memorization (it was a enviable NIV Study Bible). Yet I lack the same confidence held by the Oakleyed man, and maybe he’s right—maybe I think too much about what it all means, and I complicate the matter unnecessarily. Maybe I should just hand out cards with imposing questions on them that suggest my beliefs. I could start simple. “What kind of food will you eat too much of tonight?” or “How many times will you go see movies that you know are going to be bad?” or “How much money will you spend internet shopping this week?” I’m sure eventually I could work my way up to questions about eternity.

“What will you do when the Oceans run out of fish?” (accompanied by picture of fish in Hell).

It is said of Herbert Spencer that he “had the philosopher’s disease of seeing so far ahead that all the little pleasant shapes and colors of existence passed under his nose unseen.” Without calling myself a philosopher or claiming to have the gift of foresight, I might describe myself as having this affliction.

Sometimes it is difficult for me to enjoy the present as I think with angst about the future. The keener I imagine the inevitable, the blurrier my purpose for doing whatever it is that I’m doing becomes. I am often in danger of thinking so much about what I ought to do that I don’t do anything at all. I forget that what seems like a futile struggle against time is actually life happening, and that to opine about its futility, or to worry about its end, is to let it pass you by.

There’s a film called "Life in a day”—it’s a National Geographic feature where the makers of the film asked everyone and anyone from all over the world to send in their own video footage from one day, July 24, 2010, which—after much editing I’m sure—served as the final product (the film is only showing in select cities, but you can watch the trailer here). The concept of the film resonates with me in the sense that I regularly think about the incredible variety of life on earth, not to mention just within our own species. The sheer volume of human consciousness is overwhelming. The expressions of personality are innumerable. By the time a person reaches their 20s, I would wager that their thoughts alone could fill countless volumes. And this happens over and over, every second of every day. This is what life has allowed—a remarkable diversity of experience.

When I consider all of this—all the living that goes on while I’m sitting here, writing about it—I realize that it will not wait for me. The world will not cease to revolve while I try to determine why it revolves as it does. Society will not halt its progression for my ponderings about its ills. And my face will not stop aging because I stare at in the mirror to detect any signs of aging. There is simply no amount of anticipation that will change the inevitable facts of life.

When I finally reach death’s door, I don’t want to carry through it the burden of wasted time. I don’t want my last thoughts to be lamentations. I want to go out, like the great Francis Bacon said, “in an earnest pursuit, which is like one wounded in hot blood, who for the time scarce feels the hurt.”

In order to do that, I will have to learn acceptance where there was formerly neurosis and fear. I will have to learn patience where there was formerly not enough. And I will have to learn sacrifice where there was formerly no knowledge of such a thing.

I’ve a lot to learn.

Apology

I've been doing some thinking, and I would like to apologize to the world and everyone in it for the following:

(1) For every time I've chosen myself over someone else, for no other reason than out of greed.
(2) For every time I've cursed another driver for something I've done to other drivers.
(3) For complaining about the way things are without trying to change them.
(4) For forgetting something someone told me when I wasn't really listening, although I was pretending I was.
(5) For pretending to listen in the first place.
(6) For mocking annoying people.
(7) For overindulging at a meal without ever thinking, throughout the entire meal, that there are people in famine-stricken countries who will never taste half of what I just ate.
(8) For trying to draw attention to myself.
(9) For losing my temper with the one's I love.
(10) For coveting the possessions of others in belief that my life would be improved if I had what they had.
(11) For being too sarcastic.
(12) For letting the circumstances of my day affect my outward attitude.
(13) For leaving things out on the kitchen counter repeatedly, despite numerous requests from my wife to put them away when I'm done with them, and for all the other small disrespects paid to her wishes.
(14) For judging the character of others just to make lively conversation.
(15) For embellishing stories about my experiences to make them sound more interesting.
(16) For forgetting the relativity of my difficulties and obstacles in life, and that somewhere, some kid is trying to learn to get dressed without his arms.
(17) For not doing everything I can.
(18) For making it look like I'm working harder than I am.
(19) For preaching against mediocrity and then living it.
(20) For not realizing sooner that you can never take it back.

That's all.

Here lies Voltaire

Oy vey. I think even I am growing tired of my tirades. I think it’s time to pause and take a breath between critical introspections for a moment of remembrance. For whom, you ask? The figure of this remembrance sits adorned a chair, cast into eternal form, in an oak paneled room in the National Library in Paris (see picture of statue above). I took that picture after sneaking past a distracted guard (which was really a woman in a booth by the door texting on her cell phone) and discovering the object of my quest, Voltaire himself, with a wry smile that was no doubt a deliberate stroke of the sculptor’s hand intended to portray perhaps the greatest personality of France in his most probable expression.

He was born in 1694 to the name of Francois Marie Arouet, and he died on May 30, 1778 to the name of Voltaire. In the able words of historian and philosopher Will Durant,

“Never has a writer had in his lifetime such influence. Despite exile, imprisonment, and the
suppression of almost every one of his books by the minions of church and state, he forged
fiercely a path for his truth, until at last kings, popes and emperors catered to him, thrones
trembled before him, and half the world listened to catch his every word.”

His works reportedly fill 90 volumes. He wrote plays, novels, essays, a philosophic encyclopedia, letters and much more. And almost all of it was exceptional. His raison d'être? To prove that education and the pursuit of truth could enlighten human kind to a state of reason, where dogmas would find no harbor, where the vices of power would have a weaker grip over the ruled, and where the tragedies of life would diminish in occurrence and effect. He was always at odds with the propagation of falsehoods, especially when they came from the mouths of those in power, whether they were government officials or wearers of ecclesiastical garb. He sought perspective, and he disseminated it. He strived towards unearthing “a unifying principle by which the whole history of civilization in Europe could be woven on one thread”:

“Battles and revolutions are the smallest part of the plan; squadrons and battalions
conquering or being conquered, towns taken and retaken, are common to all history…Take away
the arts and the progress of the mind, and you will find nothing” in any age “remarkable
enough to attract the attention of posterity…I wish to write a history not of wars, but of
society; and to ascertain how men lived in the interior of their families, and what were the
arts which they commonly cultivated….My object is the history of the human mind, and not a
mere detail of petty facts; nor am I concerned with the history of great Lords…; but I want
to know what were the steps by which men passed from barbarism to civilization.”

He made tireless efforts in searching out and consuming information. He poured over long histories, and was precise in his organization of facts. Yet, at the same time, he was the most creative and artistic writer France had ever seen; he was “sheer intelligence transmuting anger into fun, fire into light”; “a creature of air and flame, the most excitable that ever lived, composed of more ethereal and more throbbing atoms that those of other men; there is none whose mental machinery is more delicate, nor whose equilibrium is at the same time more shifting and more exact.” In what are described as “humorous picaresque novelettes,” Voltaire wrote romantic comedies where the “heroes are not persons but ideas, the villains are superstitions, and the events are thoughts.” I excerpt for you Durant’s discussion of his novelette Micromegas:

Micromegas is an imitation of Swift, but perhaps richer than its model in cosmic imagination.
The earth is visited by an inhabitant from Sirius; he is some 500,000 feet tall, as befits
the citizen of so large a star. On his way through space he has picked up a gentleman from
Saturn, who grieves because he is only a few thousand feet in height. As they walk through
the Mediterranean the Sirian wets his heels. He asks his comrade how many senses the
Saturnians have and is told: “We have seventy-two, but we are daily complaining of the
smaller number.” “To what age do you commonly live?” “Alas, a mere trifle;…very few on our
globe survive 15,000 years. So you see that in a manner we begin to die the very moment we
are born: our existence is no more than a point, our duration an instant, and our globe an
atom. Scarce do we begin to learn a little when death intervenes before we can profit by
experience.” As they stand in the sea they take up a ship as one might pick up some
animalcule, and the Sirian poises it on his thumb-nail, causing much commotion among the
human passengers. “The Chaiplains of the ship repeated exorcisms, the sailors swore, and the
philosophers formed a system” to explain this disturbance of the laws of gravity. The Sirian
bends down like a darkening cloud and addresses them:

“O ye intelligent atoms, in whom the Supreme Being hath been pleased to manifest his
omniscience and power, without doubt your joys on this earth must be pure and exquisite;
for being unencumbered with matter, and—to all appearance—little else than soul, you must
spend your lives in the delights of pleasure and reflection, which are the true
enjoyments of a perfect spirit. True happiness I have nowhere found; but certainly here
it dwells.”

“We have matter enough,” answered one of the philosophers, “to do abundance of mischief…
You must know, for example, that at this very moment, while I am speaking, there are
100,000 animals of our own species, covered in hats, slaying an equal number of their
fellow-creatures, who wear turbans; at least they are either slaying or being slain; and
this has usually been the case all over the earth from time immermorial.”

“Miscreants!” cried the indignant Sirian; “I have good mind to take two or three steps,
and trample the whole nest of such ridiculous assassins under my feet.”

“Don’t give yourself the trouble,” replied the philosopher; “they are industrious enough
in securing their own destruction. At the end of ten years the hundredth part of these
wretches will not survive…Besides, the punishment should not be included upon them, but
upon those sedentary and slothful barbarians who, from their palaces, give orders for
murdering a million of men, and then solemnly thank God for their success.”

Voltaire lived for the hope of enlightenment of humankind, but sadly came to believe in his later years that humankind was all too often the victim of forces moving in the opposite direction. After the French clergy declared that the great earthquake of Lisbon in 1755 (with a death toll of 30,000) was a punishment exacted by God on the sinners of Lisbon, and the outbreak of the Seven Years War which followed a few months later, Voltaire wrote Candide, where “never was pessimism so gaily argued; never was man made to laugh so heartily while learning that this is a world of woe.” In the end, despite his wearied condition, Voltaire never abandoned hope in the reforming power of education and the development of the intellect. He knew that “men form institutions, and institutions form men,” and that to break this vicious circle you cannot simply change the nature of the institution, you must change the nature of the man (or woman). Was he hopeful in this respect?

"Do you believe," said Candide, "that men have always massacred each other as they do to-day, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?

"Do you believe," said Martin, "that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they have found
them?"

"Yes, without doubt," said Candide.

"Well, then," said Martin, "if hawks have always had the same character why should you
imagine that men may have changed theirs?"

"Oh!" said Candide, "there is a vast deal of difference, for free will----

And reasoning thus they arrived at Bordeaux.

On May 30, 1778, Voltaire drew his last breath. He was buried in Scellieres, France, until 1791 when, after the French Revolution, his remains were brought back to Paris and “the dead ashes of the great flame that had been were escorted through Paris by a procession of 100,000 men and women, while 600,000 flanked the streets. On the funeral car were the words: ‘He gave the human mind a great impetus; he prepared us for freedom.” On his tombstone only three words were necessary:

"Here lies Voltaire.”

I wish, as it were, that I had time to type out the entire chapter on Voltaire in Durant’s The Story of Philosophy and share it here. I urge anyone who found the excerpts here as interesting as I did to do just that (read, not type). I guess if I was posed with a demurrer from a reader, I would reply that if there was any mortal figure whose intellect, at least, I could model my own after, it would be his. Literary brilliance, scientific aptitude, and remarkable wit, combined with tireless energy and passion for truth. This describes Voltaire, and I find him inspiring.

The statue pictured above is, in one way, a living monument: the very heart of Voltaire lies inside it. As I walked past the statue after taking the picture I brushed my hand over the stone, with a feeling that I would never come closer to the man himself.

Chasing Happiness

“The Pursuit of Happyness” is such an endearing movie, isn’t it? Will Smith pretends to be poor and cries while his son sleeps in the subway station bathroom. And then he gets the job at Dean Witter and now I’m crying. Well not really but the title of the movie makes me think. The pursuit of one’s own happiness is somewhat of a sacred right in our culture, considered the prerogative of everyone and even a life-philosophy by some. “Whatever makes you happy” is often the answer given to the question of “what should I do?” Or “whatever you’re passionate about.” But what if you’re passionate about the wrong thing? What if you being happy isn’t and end in itself?
 
Have you ever noticed how concerned people are with what they like? “Oh I like that a lot.” “No no I don’t like that at all.” “He gets on my nerves.” “I can’t stand people who think they’re better than you, ya know?” “I’m a cat person.” “I’m a morning person.”  “I’m a blah blah blah (insert endless list of preferences). It’s only natural. We are very interested with what pleases or displeases us. Need I cite to any number of Facebook profiles where the “about me” section is a disgustingly long rambling list of everything the author could think of to include about their interests? Why does this matter? It matters to us, of course, because our likes and dislikes are reflections of our personality, and our personality is the one we’re most occupied with. There is no limit to the amount of time we spend imagining how other’s think of us. This occupation with our own personas easily translates or evolves into a perpetual concern with our own happiness. Do I like who I am? Do I like what I’m doing? If not, the pursuit continues.
 
An old German by the name of Immanuel Kant once said “let us seek happiness in others; but for ourselves, perfection—whether it brings us happiness or pain.” This obviously requires a determination of what “perfection” is, but even so, I think it’s profound. It may sound like an overly dutiful perception of life—but maybe it’s suggesting that the surest way to secure happiness is to stop trying to fulfill your own needs and look towards the needs of others. If there is any such thing as perfection of the self surely it is the freedom from the self. We are by design self-interested beings. This could explain our belief that by fulfilling our own needs we will find the most satisfaction. To deny ourselves much of what we would naturally incline to seems unpleasant, but how many times do we find ourselves on the other side of indulgence, bored with what was only moments ago a satisfying state of being, looking for something else to please us again? Even those with utterly predictable lives often rely on a host of simple and repetitive pleasures that should they be deprived of them, their mood sours and they wear their discontent on their sleeves. Whether it be acknowledgement paid by others, having a luxury car, not having to put up with annoying people, or making sure all your personal accessories are made by Apple —whatever your pleasurable poison—I say if you’re the object of it, it’s fleeting.
 
Boy, with all this austere writing, I should probably go live in a monastery somewhere and kneel on rocks in prayer half the day long. I don’t deny my own faults. Most of what I write about is really a complaint against myself. It’s my own struggle with these issues that inspires my writing (except the Facebook page thing). I guess as I watch myself and those around me attempt to find happiness, I can’t help but notice that it is mostly our own needs and desires that guide our search. We do this from the accepted position that trying to be happy is a good thing, and I think it is. But I think we mistake being happy with having everything we want.  Or being liked by everyone we know, or having the perfect body, or having the perfect house that we somehow forget is just a house and not an indisputable sign of one’s intrinsic worth. This leads to a very circumstantial sense of happiness and one that doesn’t do much for anybody else.
 
If I’m going to be a monk, I guess I’ll have to give up my iPhone, which sucks, because I sure do love my iPhone. Although I can’t wait for the 5. Do you think it will have swipe text? I heard you might be able to use it as your Visa. I hope so.  I’ll be happy then.
 
 
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At the end of the workday, I walk out of the building in which I work, and a man asks me for money, an alcohol-scented request which I do not oblige. Yet as I walk away I wonder if I’m turning my back too quickly. I think sometimes beggars are actually opportunities for good deeds, disguised as repugnant examples of human apathy, irresponsibility, and body odor. I know that handing out cash is less a solution and more an enabling cop out, but it gives me some sense of security that even if I’m naively counting on the honesty of my help-ee, I’m doing something. The other option is taking the time (and sometimes risking your personal safety) to actually talk to the person standing in front of you, swearing that they’re a veteran of the Iraq war and that their car’s out of gas, asking you for money to help them get to work.

And when I’m feeling even more reflective, I see the beggar and wonder if life really is a zero-sum game that some say it is. There are only so many jobs, so many slots at universities, so many desirable places to live. There is only so much food (although we waste so much of it) and so much water (less now that I’ve taken another 20 minute shower) (and I would add there’s only so much oil, but we all know that the earth has an infinite supply of oil). But is this the way it has to be? Must socio-economic stratum include a lower class and the truly poor? We can’t all be rich, can we? No? Can we all simply have what we need? And if so, how do we get there without taking the rightful earnings of some and giving it to others who have earned nothing? The redistribution of wealth already occurs in large measure, and yet the problem of need remains. Perhaps it’s not that we just need more, but that we are helping in the wrong way. Or perhaps it is the very nature of civilized society today that perpetuates the systemic problems of our world, and particularly of our culture.

Need is a global problem, although it ranges in scale and scope by region. In America, without a doubt, there are certainly those that have either nothing or so few resources that they cannot live independently of government or community assistance. The cycle of poverty is a vicious one, as the loss of income, standard of living and the semblance of civilized life seems to deal a debilitating blow to the ability of the poor to recover. Yet poverty is also relative. The standard of living in America is comparatively high, and what counts as lower class or poor in the U.S.A. might be middle class elsewhere. It is this notion of class—so ingrained into the American psyche, reinforced by a prevalent consumerism—that is the real culprit, I think. We allow it to define us, to set our ambitions, and even to form our worldview. To be counted in the ranks of the poor must leave quite the impression. If society tells people what they are long enough, people begin to agree.

Worse yet, the path out of poverty is not always there for the taking. For the poor, one of the only sustainable means of upward mobility is the asset of labor, an asset whose worth is largely determined by education, and education is expensive. And in times like these, when labor is in abundant supply with still dwindling demand, the path is narrower still. Even more “worse yet,” the lower classes in America are prey to the forces in the economy that profit from need and want. Once upon a time, the poor were skin and bones (and in many places still are). Today in America we have the anomaly that obesity among the poor is increasing, as the cheapest food also tends to be the unhealthiest. Cheap food, cheap clothes, cheap everything—it can only be so cheap at a cost. Providing America with cheap goods means cheap manufacturing processes, which means cheap labor. And cheap labor can be found in some of the poorest countries in the world, who despite the business of big American manufacturers seem to remain poor. And cheap goods often means lower standards, and that can mean a lot of things, like pesticides on your tomatoes, hormones in your meat, lead in your toys, and pollution everywhere. Not to mention of course that many of the cheap goods that the poor buy are not to fulfill some objective need, but to fit in with the rest of the consuming classes in America, to create the appearance of wealth where it does not exist. And the government, the great benefactor, try though it might, cannot exert the oversight necessary to always ensure that the dollars it hands out go to the right people for the right things.

I know, I know. Who am I to talk about the poor as if I had once lived among them, or prepared an exhaustive survey of their social habits? I guess I’m just am observer, who’s observations, although not made with perfect knowledge, are made regularly nonetheless. And what have I observed? I have observed that need in America, while sometimes objective and plain to see, is other times the product of social constructions. Our culture praises form over substance, appearances over reality. It is better to look rich and be poor than to look poor (or be poor for that matter) and have a rich inner life. What we need to survive, to thrive even, is a fraction of what we often have, and a smaller fraction of what we want. The financially able consume with little regard for their need or its effect on the world, and then criticize the poor for being irresponsible. I have also observed that in our modern world, division of labor and our dependence on technology have so narrowed our roles in the workforce and the requirements of our vocations that we are left without many of the skills of our ancestors. If tomorrow we were forced out of our homes with the clothes on our backs and the tools in our garage, to live on land of thick forests and fields of rich soil, most of us would surely freeze or starve. This lack of wherewithal depletes us further yet. The keys to “success” in America are often discovered at the cost of character and humanity, and I fear that while we work towards acquiring the aims of our toil, we are actually bowing to the standards our culture professes, and nurturing that regrettable “acquisitive” tendency of humankind. Still we look on the poor with pity, as though we are so content.

I guess what I’m really saying is that those without may be freer than they realize. Of course hunger and vulnerability to the elements are nothing to be envied, and I’d be kidding myself if I didn’t admit that many would be better off with a stable income and a reliable standard of living. But this doesn’t mean that those things are more conducive to human happiness, but that maybe humans are too dependent on circumstances for their happiness and too blindly accept the values our society puts forward. To be homeless is a shameful thing, because people live in houses, that’s what people do. And they drive cars, and go to work in buildings, and go to college, and have closets full of clothes. If we can’t do those things, we’ve obviously failed. I know there are people who make it a point to have less, to live on only what they deem necessary to be healthy and without discomfort, and who work to sustain a sustainable way of life—all in the midst of developing their inner lives towards a satisfaction that does not depend on new things from the store or a bigger house or anything material at all. Maybe someday they will succeed in redefining what it means to be fulfilled in the modern world, and poverty will refer only those who lack in spirt and soul.

I used to see a large box by the railroad, six feet long by three wide, in which the laborers locked up their tools at night, and it suggested to me that every man who was hard pushed might get such a one for a dollar, and, having bored a few auger holes in it, to admit the air at least, get into it when it rained and at night, and hook down the lid, and so have freedom in his love, and in his soul be free. This did not appear the worst, nor by any means a despicable alternative. You could sit up as late as you pleased, and, whenever you got up, go abroad without any landlord or house-lord dogging you for rent. Many a man is harassed to death to pay the rent of a larger and more luxurious box who would not have frozen to death in such a box as this. I am far from jesting.

-From Walden, by Henry David Thoreau

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A little over a year from now we will be electing our nation’s 45th president. Between now and then the media will rage, campaigns will rise and fall, and the American citizen will be faced with a choice: vote or die. Well, not actually- but at least a choice of whether to vote or not. Every time election season rolls around I feel the pang of ignorance after not having educated myself on the issues (once again). This feeling evolves into a disconcerting realization that not only have I failed to make informed decisions on the predictable candidate platforms—I’ve failed to make decisions about some of the largest issues in life. This is because, generally, decisions of this nature carry with them at least a minimum requirement of ideological and behavioral conformity upon which their sincerity is conditioned. Knowing this, they are more easily avoided than made.

To wit: consider the question of whether God exists. To decide that God does exist is not just to affirm some isolated premise, but to accept an idea with implications permeating every level of behavior and thought. Just the simple belief in the supernatural opens a world of suppositions that cannot be taken insouciantly. I mean they can—but then what does that “belief” actually amount to? And consider the opposite: to decide that God does not exist is to endorse the idea that at some level, matter has no cause, that the universe (just like God) has always been there, that there is a viable secular basis for ethical systems, and so on. One decision, whether we like it or not, often demands another.

Not only that—a decision demands a stance that usually alienates at least one group. A stance is often simultaneously an affirmation and a rejection. And personally, as someone who considers themselves to be a thoughtful individual (and a lawyer), I hate to make a decision from which there is no escape. But no amount of semantics will allow me to be at once pro-life and pro-choice, pro-gay marriage and pro-conservative right, pro-Obama and pro-tea party, or pro-New York Mosque and pro-Glenn Beck (may he rest in non-broadcasting peace). While I might try my hardest to search out the middle ground, occasionally it does not exist. And when there is no middle ground, there is a line, and I’ve learned that I sometimes avoid stepping over to one side or another, which leaves me in the category of bystander.

I think my aversion to choosing sides, to whatever degree it exists, is rooted partly in the awareness that I really don’t know what I believe about some things, and partly in fear of the consequences that I will face after having decided what I do believe. I suppose this is a good problem to have, since it means that I feel an obligation not only to have principles, but to act on them. And it’s not that I haven’t made any decisions on major life questions—I certainly have. There are some questions whose answers are clear to me, and my position on those issues is well decided. Most of those, though, are based on what I believe is the truth, and there are many issues where the truth is more closely aligned with opinion than fact, depriving me of the “it’s the truth” option.

But just so this entire post isn’t a mushy pile of indecision, let me say this: I believe in the freedom of choice, and in the responsibility to choose. I support ideas that encourage the full development of human potential rather than those that limit it or restrain it. I stand behind the principle that education is the pathway to freedom, but also that true freedom comes only with the subduing of the self. I am convinced that most human behavior is a product of environment, incentives, socio-economic status, and degree of personal moral foundation. My own ethical system is formed around Christian virtues, among which I believe love and selflessness are the greatest. Furthermore, I accept the following as legitimate positions, theories and ideas: constitutional modernism, biblical contextualism, democracy, nuclear disarmament, global warming, the link between cell phones and cancer, the link between everything and cancer, that organic food is actually better for you, the results of a new study that suggests watching Jersey Shore might have an immediate and negative effect on intelligence, that babies shouldn’t watch TV, that people are increasingly shifting their reliance on people to reliance on objects, that the gap between the rich and the poor is still growing, that death is not the end, and that writing a blog is an exercise in narcissism.

Even so, the real question is, what am I doing about it? Vote or die after all I suppose.

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I have not written yet about my love affair with books. It is a significant relationship in my life, and one deserving of a digital place in this ragtag journal of mine. Now as with any relationship, there has been conflict, drama, friction, fiction, reconciliation, and occasionally page tearing. But it has been so very rewarding, and I predict we will grow old together.

It started in college when I began taking philosophy classes. After the intro course, the book lists on the syllabi were increasingly longer and more prestigious: the complete compilation of Aristotle’s works; Sarte’s Essays in Existentialism; Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil; Heidegger’s Being and Time (might as well have been in German); etc. As they piled up on my shelf, I began to take pleasure in the intellectual aura they gave my room in the basement of our dilapidated college house. I realize now that this was mostly a superficial interest in looking smart, but it wasn’t long before I actually wanted to be smart. Naturally class helped me along—my professors constantly planting questions and ideas into my mind that would eventually lead to philosophical contemplation. Overall I think just the proximity of the books combined with the engaging discussions inspired in me a newfound interest in knowledge that has since become sincere—or in other words, I pursue knowledge now mostly in the belief that it will make me happier and better able to contribute to the lives of others. But at that time, my new interest expressed itself most clearly in my acquisition of what I perceived as the most effective medium of knowledge: books, and the words within.

Between my junior year of college and just the other day, I have purchased hundreds. Philosophy, history, psychology, classic literature, Pulitzer Prize winners, biographies, and the complete collector’s edition of Calvin and Hobbes (I should footnote here that my love of Calvin and Hobbes preceded my love of Philosophy, and certainly contributed to my love for reading, if not the development of my personality) (I should further note that this edition was a birthday gift from my loving wife, who so graciously puts up with my book buying habit, and did not leave me when I asked to her to buy me a very expensive set of comic books). Many of my books sit unread, I admit. But that will slowly change, and until then they will occupy an honorable place in my growing personal library. Even now, while my purchasing volume has slowed considerably, I can hardly pass up a bookstore I’ve never been in, and I never pass up a book sale unless the selection is completely meritless. My appreciation for books has matured (in that I no longer hope that their strategic position on the shelf will appear as some sort of mental resume to my friends and guests), but I am still entranced by their physical attributes: the smell of a new book (or a really old book), the crispness of their pages, the regal stature of an Easton Press leather bound, their soldierly appearance when you line them up, spines outward—I love it all. I love it because I know what books represent, and this makes them so much more meaningful.

What every book represents, in my opinion, is the ability of language to influence human life. Language is, in a way, everything. It defines everything, it gives an identity to all characters and qualities. It gives human emotion a means of communication beyond physical touch. Language can also create realities that exist only in words. Most importantly, it is the foundational structure relied on by our mental lives. And knowledge relies on language for its transmission—sometimes in a simple and plain manner, other times guarded by a steep vocabulary or an artistic form. Regardless, a good book, one that through all the tools of the linguistic arts, or through creative genius, or through the mere telling of the truth, leaves the reader in a different state than it found them is a wonderfully powerful thing. And when you are first or finally moved by a book, you gain a freedom that is so simple to maintain.

On the other hand, as Sean Maguire said to one Will Hunting, “I can’t learn anything from you I can’t read in some (expletive) book—unless you want to talk about you.” And therein lies the limitations of a book. They can’t replace the real thing (usually).

I’ve walked the marble floors of St. Peter’s Basilica, stood before the tomb of the Saint himself, and felt the overwhelming spiritual weight in the air. I’ve walked through the foothills of the Alps. I’ve toured the halls of the English Parliament. I’ve watched the aurora borealis slither across the cold sky of Norway. I’ve practically memorized every episode of Seinfeld.

And all of it falls short to the wonder that is my daughter.

Not that I can take credit for this one. Although the resemblance is strong, it’s not my doing. What I am responsible for is having brought another human being into this world, and now, as her father, finding a way to be that I am comfortable with her imitating. Children can be such effective portraits of their parents, or if not portraits, products, and they are often telling indices of their parental characters. Sometimes of course you get Freidrich Nietzsche from a pastor’s boy. Not that there’s anything wrong with Nietzsche.

Naturally we’ll have a few years before Eve can begin to comprehend the virtues and vices of her parents. But then again—some believe that from day one, the newborn begins to react to the stimuli provided by its mother and father, and that no care giving should be arbitrary. Undoubtedly in time her observatory powers will grow, and she will begin to form connections between cause and effect, between behavior and consequences. She will develop a sense of morality formed around her interactions with us and with the world. And when I think about the infinite number of people she might become, and the complexities of our own personalities, I realize what I don’t have in this long-term scenario: control.

That’s not to say I will leave Eve’s future-self to the wind. On the contrary, I’ll be there every step of the way. But I can’t make her into what I see fit. Truth is, I don’t want to. I want her to have the freedom of choice that makes a decision meritorious. There’s a balance between providing your child with the principles and tools that will equip them with the powers of rational thought and forcefully instilling a set of ideological beliefs that will narrow their worldview.

I know there’s a lot I have to learn. And the first time my daughter comes home with an idea I find repugnant, I’m sure my tolerance will be tested (like if she thought “The Blind Side” was a good movie or something). But if my education and vocation have taught me one thing, it’s that the ability to weigh ideas in an objective light is crucial to making sincere value judgments. And that’s something I want for everyone, my own especially. So instead of focusing my parenting efforts at training Eve up to be a replica of my belief set, I’ll spend my time teaching her how to form her own.

Well I better get going. It’s Sunday, which means it’s time for Eve’s lesson in Rawlsian Theory and a reading from Plato’s Republic. There’s no time to waste!

Sometimes I look in the mirror and all I see is “just a kid.” A scared, naïve kid who has yet to experience the hardships and watersheds of life which make adults out of us all. Maybe at 27 years old that’s an accurate description (for some). I’ve tried to prepare myself for “real life,” although in some ways education just delayed everything. There is no substitute for experience; we should live before reading books about life. At some point, time’s up, and you have to face life…in the face. In my case, it will be the face of a newborn baby girl, whose arrival is imminent and whose presence is sure to bring me up-to-date on the “defining moments of life” list.

People have asked me: “are you ready?” This question perplexes me. Am I? Is there a checklist somewhere I don’t know about? Anyone can be ready in the tangible, crib-set-up, baby-wise, diaper-stockpiled sense, but of course this is not what they’re asking. They want to know (or at least they're unknowingly asking) if I’m ready to be a father, if I possess the mental readiness to take on the role of parent, if I am capable of forming the emotional attachment to a child that is conducive to a strong parent-child bond, if my spouse and I have sorted out all our views on parenting and whether we’ve adopted a stance on incentive-based versus punishment-based upbringing and everything else that such a loaded question could possibly imply. I’m always tempted to say something like “well, I’ve been practicing with an American Girl doll, and it’s going good, although I’m not sure how realistic of an experience I’m getting,” or “I have a cat, and we get along.” Not that they mean any harm by the question. It’s just that when I really think about it, I don’t think being ready in this sense is something you can quantify.

But there are some things I do know. I do know that I want to be a father. I know that I am capable of loving a person in a way that transforms me. I know that children are the most precious resource of our world, and that their capacity to change it is greatly influenced by the environment in which they begin. I know that the development of the human mind and personality is the most fascinating thing I have ever contemplated, and the fact that I will be such a shaping force on my child’s life is a responsibility I will cherish. I know too that this world is a place where pain and suffering exist, and that children are not immune. And lastly, I know that I cannot possibly know what it will be like to feel the love a child has for her parent until I feel it, but I believe it will transcend understanding.

So am I really a scared, naïve kid? No, not really. But there are things that I believe I cannot learn from books, including how to be a good parent. There are plenty of “how to be a good parent” books out there, it’s just that being one isn’t as simple as knowing what to do. It’s wanting to do it, and wanting to do it for the right reasons. No doubt it will be challenging, and that my own self-interest will get in the way is a sure thing. But that’s the beauty of becoming a parent: it’s the perfect opportunity to put yourself second, to love selflessly, to care without always being appreciated, to give wondering if you’ll ever receive in return. There are obviously plenty of examples of where the challenge has not been met, although I don’t plan on adding to those numbers. Frankly, I couldn’t be more excited about it.

With that said, let the living begin.

N

Occasionally when I see a less-than-ascetically pleasing building (or piece of modern art), I think to myself: that ugly structure is going to outlive me. It and every piece of non-biodegradable trash sitting in the dumps, every newly minted quarter, and a host of other inanimate objects who are silently winning the competition to see who gets to be the last inhabitant of the earth. We are but transient guests here; it is our creations that have a more eternal presence.

This both depresses me and gives me hope. When I am dead and gone the McDonalds arches will press on (that’s the depressing part). But I am not without a creation of my own to pass. As long as there are minds for thoughts, my influence can be felt. Mine and everyone’s. We are all capable of leaving a mark on the world. It is only a question of how it will manifest itself. Will you be a funny story, told by your descendents at family gatherings? Or how about a “this is what so and so would have done”? A distant memory possbily, or a wistful recollection. If you’re lucky, your mark will be the example set by your life, admired by your rememberers as a model for emulation. But the ultimate legacy, in my humble opinion, is to be the author of an idea which takes root in the individual and produces an independent good. To be the ideological source of future merit—that I could live with (after I’m dead, of course).

Living to influence others without seeking acknowledgement for our efforts or the quality of our ideas is a challenge though. The desire for acknowledgment is so pervasive, and it has a tainting affect on motivations. To be recognized is sublime. To be ignored is torture. It is nigh impossible to do something that requires effort without hoping, consciously or subconsciously, that it will be appreciated—really that we will be appreciated. Even acts of charity are seemingly more rewarding when treated with heaps of gratitude. The wish for acknowledgment goes beyond conceit, stemming often from our own fundamental insecurities. It gives most people great pleasure when their persona is recognized for its uniqueness, while the absence of the same recognition can be felt as a nagging void. Acceptance by peers has become almost monumental. For some, if they are not liked, then they are nobody, and moreover everyone must like them. In this way the desire for acknowledgement shapes the human experience: behavior is motivated by it, happiness (temporary) is achieved through its satisfaction, and sadness is felt when it is not fulfilled.

Of course, selfish motivations don’t necessarily deprive a good thing of its goodness. One hopes that if a judgment day should ever come, merit will be counted, regardless of the reasons behind it. Maybe we just wouldn’t get “full credit”; I’m not sure. What I do know is that if there is such a thing as a selfless act, it’s not easy to commit. But I think just trying is significant. And in terms of leaving a mark on the world, we will more often than not take our motivations for leaving one to the grave. Besides- the living are usually generous when it comes to recalling the lives of the dead. But on that off chance that there really is a Great Record Keeper who sits on the edge of the clouds and keeps track like only an omniscient being can, I think I’ll err on the side of pursuing selflessness in my efforts. Whether I’ll ever catch it is another thing entirely.

Naturally I’ll be back in an hour to check and see if there are any flattering comments.

This past weekend I traveled to Chicago from Nashville. BNA to Midway, Midway to BNA. Airports have a funny way of compressing experiences into arrivals and departures. And something about the time-space distortion created by plane travel (not claiming to use “time-space” in the proper way or anything) makes me feel like the plane doesn’t really go anywhere, but instead that I just walk into this crowded little room, and when I come out, I’m in another city (especially when I don’t have a window seat).

I noticed on this last trip that flying causes me somewhat more anxiety than in the past, and I think I know why. It has something to do with the expectations I’ve developed for my life over the past few years, and the awareness that I have a long way to go before many of them are realized. And when my analytical mechanisms begin to calculate the odds of surviving a 500 mph collision with the ground from 30,000 feet while encapsulated in what is essentially a large tank of fuel, I sadly face the fact that if the engines fail, I have to live (figuratively) with what I did (or didn’t do) and who I was (or wasn’t).

It’s really not about how good my life has been- it’s been great, don’t get me wrong. I’m more fortunate as a human being than the majority of the world’s population (dead and alive). Great family, great friends, amazing spouse, quality education, comfort, love, a taste of luxury now and then, enough money, enough food, a good sense of self confidence and everything in between. I would describe my life as full, even at the meager age of 27. But as I’ve grown as a person, as new knowledge has shaped my mind and as my eyes have opened just a little bit wider with every new and formative experience, I have learned to hold myself to a standard that values not so much the pleasure of existence, but the fulfillment of individual potential. And when I think of my true (as opposed to my actualized) potential, there’s a gap there, and I feel regret that I haven’t done more to close it. Especially during turbulence.

That, I suppose, is the good thing about mortality-reminders: they are conducive to introspection. Of course, in the predictable human way, I often forget those feelings of urgency and fall back into a comfortable routine of not growing, not developing, not moving forward- but of idling, satisfied just to be where I am, entertaining myself with distractions, rationalizing as needed. This is not an easy condition to remedy (given that flying is so expensive). It takes vigilance, discipline, and enthusiasm not natural to my composition for me to maximize my potential and to live to the fullest of my abilities. It’s a difficult thing to do (a sure sign of worth), and I suspect I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to break through the glass ceiling of “myself.”

But as the great and imaginary Tyler Durden once said, “This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.” Fight Club always does the trick.

“Ah! The clock is always slow;
It is later than you think.”

-Robert Service

N

Life, as I know it, in the totality of existence or “grand scheme” sense of the term, is often difficult for me to reconcile. Not that life is supposed to be reconciled, or fair, or just, or anything but what it is really. Yet there’s some sense of should be and shouldn’t be that lurks behind my perceptions, silently valuing and judging and rebelling against the happenings of the world, though always careful not to rub elbows with my belief that justice is nothing more than a wish on a wish list (rather than an innate right to which we are all entitled), so as not to disturb the delicate balance of cognitive dissonance that I maintain.

E.g: children with cancer, dog clothes, the fate of the American Indians, huge masses of trash in the ocean, promotions that went to cheaters, your fiancé being struck by lightning right before you propose, whoever it was that knocked off the mirror of our car in the parking garage and didn’t have the decency to leave a note, the fact that the bachelor is so popular, and finally the old vegetable of a man, rotting in the dilapidated nursing home to the tune of daytime television, with black and white pictures on the wall from the time when he served on the USS McCormick in the last great war.

Reconciling: trying to make sense of it all- or in other words, looking for reasons (no blog-plug intended). Must there be a reason? I think we'd like there to be. I think many people are attached to the idea that life's significant events are not random, but part of something which makes them purposeful, or rather the culmination of life: meant to be. The implication of course is the logical conclusion: reason requires purpose, purpose requires intent, and intent is the perrogative of beings. Destiny, fate, serendipity, karma, providence- they all mean one thing: something is out there, looking out for us, and it has a plan. Life is not the product of the coincidental collision of astroids, it is the realization of ____'s will (insert preferred name for supernatural being of choice).

Or...the casualties of the 2004 tsunami (numbering around 230,000) were not all "chosen" to die just then, the mass production of IED's in Pakistan that make their way to Afghanistan and send our soldier's home in boxes is not for a good reason (Westboro Baptist members, don't answer that), and you failing your 10th grade chemistry test was not part of God's plan. So then why did and do these things happen? How can we accept the cold randomness of the universe and just go on our merry way?

The solution, I think, is to compartmentalize randomness to it's apporiate realm, and explain the rest of life with what we know. We cannot discount the effect of human conduct, of human life. How many events or occurences are there that are truly free from human influence? Is the cancer in a child always a chance mutation? Are natural disasters as "natural" as described? Is the old man in the nursing home where he is because his entire family was accidentally eradicated by a tractor-trailer crash, or is his placement the reality of human compromise?

So maybe too many paragraphs ending in question marks. The point I'm making, if I asked myself, is that we want the reassurance of reasons, but we too often look for them in the wrong places (sometimes because we don't know any better, and sometimes deliberately). I'm not saying the skies are empty, but rather that we are predisposed to accept predetermination, and inconsistent in doing so. The promising med-school student is run over while riding his bike to class, and the homeless person is starving; one is the will of God, the other is the consequence of poor judgment. Our explinations for the world usually suit our sensibilities.

"Men love to believe that God breaks the natural order of events for them."

-Spinoza.

N