RisiaSkye
Artistic
- Joined
- May 1, 2000
- Posts
- 4,387
**LONG POST WARNING**
I think that I understand why people have children. Or at least some people. I have been struck lately by a weird, creeping nostaliga for a past that I know for a fact wasn't that great the first time. I have this overwhelming urge to set it right somehow, to correct the errors of my childhood--to say the thank yous and I'm sorrys that I wasn't capable of saying as a teenager, and that I didn't know were needed as a child.
And the hours seem to stretch out before me; they are silent, vacant, endless, without meaning. I know that I don't value the corporate machine. I have no urge to ride the rollercoaster of capital, to produce nothing and receive nothing but abstractions of labor values. I want to believe that I am more than a set of mathematical equations determining my potential for labor, in all senses of the word. I desire life with meaning, and perhaps that is the problem.
I'm not sure that I want the paradoxes implicit in studying to learn that I know nothing. I don't know if I am equipped to find joy in a world without purpose and direction. Perhaps this is also why we need God. In the end, no matter who set down the words, it is comforting to live by a set of rules, to be given a plan and promised the answers to an unsolvable riddle: what does it all mean?. It is seductive to be always in a holding pattern, always living by another's dictate, to not have to find your own way, but to follow in the more Enlightened footsteps of others who will provide meaning and deliver something to fill the void.
Yet I don't want to choose a simplistic shortcut--I don't want to reproduce simply to fill the hours, days, and years any more than I want to run in the hamster wheel of spreadsheets and board meetings. I don't want to follow a guru or a priest simply because they have a plan--I won't allow myself to accept a ready-made solution to avoid my own struggles with the limitations and frustrations of my existence. I want simple, uncomplicated expectancy, the ability to look to the day solely for the day, to find and appreciate moments without disingenuously trying to string them together into a life with a design, a plan, an end. I want to know that I don't have the answers to all of the questions--and not be afraid of this knowledge.
I think that what I really desire is to know, entirely and without reservation, that what matters isn't why- why we're here, why the universe expands, why we're self-aware, on and on into infinity. Churches the world over offer detailed explanations of how (how others have lived, how we should behave)--as well as what, when, and who. However, they don't answer why, they just add layers and layers of distraction to mask the central emptiness of the answers; they bury the anxiety produced by our own self-awareness in procedures and histories, myths and rituals without addressing the actual problem. Perhaps the reason this all rings so false to me is that I think we're missing the point.
How much can you really concern yourself with questions that don't have answers? What good does it do anyone to torture ourselves with our fallability, to ignore our capacities to love, to celebrate, to spread joy to others--simple to meet an arbitrary set of requirements, often rules established centuries ago? Maybe all that matters is that life IS, that we ARE and that we try to do more living in the world we have than theorizing about and planning for another world which may or may not come. I would rather save a life than a soul. I would rather live a life of joy and experience than one of denial and the promise of joys postponed. I know actual people whose lives I can affect, whose real days I can make brighter, and I would rather do that than help them find the light of what may only be a dream.
I think that I understand why people have children. Or at least some people. I have been struck lately by a weird, creeping nostaliga for a past that I know for a fact wasn't that great the first time. I have this overwhelming urge to set it right somehow, to correct the errors of my childhood--to say the thank yous and I'm sorrys that I wasn't capable of saying as a teenager, and that I didn't know were needed as a child.
And the hours seem to stretch out before me; they are silent, vacant, endless, without meaning. I know that I don't value the corporate machine. I have no urge to ride the rollercoaster of capital, to produce nothing and receive nothing but abstractions of labor values. I want to believe that I am more than a set of mathematical equations determining my potential for labor, in all senses of the word. I desire life with meaning, and perhaps that is the problem.
I'm not sure that I want the paradoxes implicit in studying to learn that I know nothing. I don't know if I am equipped to find joy in a world without purpose and direction. Perhaps this is also why we need God. In the end, no matter who set down the words, it is comforting to live by a set of rules, to be given a plan and promised the answers to an unsolvable riddle: what does it all mean?. It is seductive to be always in a holding pattern, always living by another's dictate, to not have to find your own way, but to follow in the more Enlightened footsteps of others who will provide meaning and deliver something to fill the void.
Yet I don't want to choose a simplistic shortcut--I don't want to reproduce simply to fill the hours, days, and years any more than I want to run in the hamster wheel of spreadsheets and board meetings. I don't want to follow a guru or a priest simply because they have a plan--I won't allow myself to accept a ready-made solution to avoid my own struggles with the limitations and frustrations of my existence. I want simple, uncomplicated expectancy, the ability to look to the day solely for the day, to find and appreciate moments without disingenuously trying to string them together into a life with a design, a plan, an end. I want to know that I don't have the answers to all of the questions--and not be afraid of this knowledge.
I think that what I really desire is to know, entirely and without reservation, that what matters isn't why- why we're here, why the universe expands, why we're self-aware, on and on into infinity. Churches the world over offer detailed explanations of how (how others have lived, how we should behave)--as well as what, when, and who. However, they don't answer why, they just add layers and layers of distraction to mask the central emptiness of the answers; they bury the anxiety produced by our own self-awareness in procedures and histories, myths and rituals without addressing the actual problem. Perhaps the reason this all rings so false to me is that I think we're missing the point.
How much can you really concern yourself with questions that don't have answers? What good does it do anyone to torture ourselves with our fallability, to ignore our capacities to love, to celebrate, to spread joy to others--simple to meet an arbitrary set of requirements, often rules established centuries ago? Maybe all that matters is that life IS, that we ARE and that we try to do more living in the world we have than theorizing about and planning for another world which may or may not come. I would rather save a life than a soul. I would rather live a life of joy and experience than one of denial and the promise of joys postponed. I know actual people whose lives I can affect, whose real days I can make brighter, and I would rather do that than help them find the light of what may only be a dream.
