As I sat outside on a break today, watching my shadow fade in and out as the clouds pass in front of the sun I mull over some familiar topics, but as always they condense into the same question that I’ve asked with increasing frequency – am I getting all that I need from this life? Will I even know it when I see it? For that matter, what is so wrong with a life without a permanent answer to these questions? The longer I query the farther I seem to get from these questions, and mixed in with the hypotheticals and possible worlds is the further nagging question of whether I should be asking about these issues at all, for isn’t it enough to just be here in this moment and enjoy it, regardless of what else might be going on? A tough question; both sides have some excellent points to be made, but today we focus on what I will call the seeker.
On the side of the seeker, there is perhaps nothing more important than figuring out if we are getting all that we can and need from this time we are lucky enough to be here. Not content with simply “because it’s there,” every thought, every notion is analyzed and a place for it in our ontology is sought. Should I be sitting in this pub with my friends? What am I cultivating now, what nourishment is I receiving from this event, this thought this moment? Is this a good (viz a viz beneficial) or bad (detrimental to our quest) thought word or deed? For that matter, might there even be events that are ultimately neutral, neither good nor bad, not a learning experience yet not self destruction or should everything be categorized so that we may draw upon it when necessary?
The benefits of this angle are many. By constantly referencing what we are in the midst of with our end goals we can at any time tease out new meaning and progress. Take my quietly watching my shadow phase into and out of existence in the middle of the city, I couldn’t help but see it as a microcosm of our world – just as my shadow changes form with the sun, so too does my life each day. Sometimes it’s in sharp focus, sometimes it blends with the rest of surroundings, all things muting into the same shade of dark. We are as fleeting as the shadow, trying our best to make the greatest impact that we can while we are able. In fact, that shadow and my time spent watching it wink to and from my sight can mean anything that I need it to – it could perhaps also symbolize that the need to understand impermanence, or even that I should instead be looking up to see what the rest of world does (for they don’t disappear when the sun comes out, maybe I should people watch with my time).
But therein lies the problem,the pain within the pleasure; we can make any idea fit so long we can live with it. And we don’t have to look very far to see the obvious issue with that – the Crusades, turning Saddam + terror into a cause for war, believe that Van Helsing 2 is anything other than an abomination. There is distinct split between what we need and what we think that we need depending upon which voice is doing the analysis.
That aside, if you are the type who sees both sides of the issue, it is just so easy to become paralyzed by indecision about matters of little import. Will a chick pea or cobb salad be more beneficial than the Frech Dip, or is this the cigarette that is going to kill me? Do I tell you I appreciate you or that I love you? The fact is that as humans we are limited in the amount of processing power we have and the amount of time that we have to do it. There are simply too few hours in the day to adequately mull (or agonize or grasp at) how truly decisions like those fit into the rest of our life. I’m already down on the concept of anything other than subject truth, and even that seems almost impossible to reach, so what would then be the use?
What is the use? The problem with this line of thought grows even further once we get more towards the fundamental questions of “Oh yea?” and “So what?” A philosophy professor once told me that ultimately philosophical questions boil down to one of two ends – (you guessed it) oh yea and so what. It may seem like a flip question and trite answers, but despite the economy of words the moral behind them is perhaps most damning at all. If we cannot ultimately know if we are making the best decisions about where want to go and how those activities fit in our larger scheme at a certain point we simply have to stop caring? For instance, the question of “Is this relationship good for me?” There are so many factors, and I know (or at least hope) that we have all agonized over this question at one time or another. The possible avenues are endless: “the sex is so great”…oh yea? “ Yea, but is it covering for latent issues? “ So what? “Well, I want to be a rewarding companionship, someone who can connect with me” Oh yea? “Yes, and I think that’s what we do but how will I know that it’s real?” So what? “So what? “I’ve never seen a healthy relationship, I know it exists and I may have it now, I know what dysfunction is and I want off the merry-go-round” Oh yea?...
And so on and so forth, eventually we come to a point that is irrefutable – stop caring for a second because you ultimately don’t know and just move on. Just as you cannot know both the position and velocity of an electron at any given time, you cannot know the “truth” and the meaning of a particular experience; as you approach clarity in one you lose focus to the other. My apologies too for making the above dialogue so simple, but the idea behind it is the notion that at any time we are at risk of realizing the thing we looked so hard to find the answer too is just a game, one that can be exposed at any minute. For those skimming beneath the surface however, this feels like a failure. Unfortunately, there is no objective truth in these kinds of questions and the answer only comes when we are tired of thinking about it, when we cannot turn over any new stones of insight and we must decide, so as to no longer sit paralyzed by our lives.
I admit that I am completely ignoring some important factors in our decision about meaning and how it fits in our truth, but when you’re speaking about types it’s best to introduce too many variables at once. Our intuition, our impulses, the words of our friends and mentors, television, books and (of course) our prior experiences, all have a hand in our making decisions. And rightly so, for we are not simple machines where we can input data, crank the wheel and get simple yet complete answers. We are complex creatures and nothing happens in a vacuum but my point here, and perhaps a major point for this work in general, is that we include so much more than the rationality we think we express in our decision making that we need to take a step back and look at those activities under the lens for a minute – is our past experience a useful tool moving forward, or is it simply setting us up for disappointment? Is our web of truth in fact so, and what factors are holding that web together?
I cannot be sure yet, but perhaps work on the other side of the coin will prove fruitful. Tomorrow I plan to discuss the other side, those who simply do not care for such questions and can take the “sun is shining, wind is blowing, I’m happy” at face value without wondering whether the sun is worth the cancer, how loud they must play their guitar in order to be heard over the wind and whether or not their happiness is fleeting or eternal. It may sound like the preferred alternative after our time spent discussing the above, but I’m not so sure – taking our experiences without the admitting the underlying sophistication of life may ultimately lead us back to the quest for meaning. I personally would rather suffer with the truth and the questions then be ignorant and “blissful”*
*I subscribe that to be truly blissful you must feel how you do despite your understandings, fears and dreams, not in intentional and ignorant spite of those very same things.
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