remember december

Do you remember what December was like?

I don't. Unless I apply some effort, and I think back, and I think hard. But then it's like remembering someone else's life, or remembering the details of a movie you saw a few months ago. We are now almost six weeks into the semester--in fact, maybe we are six weeks into the semester--and my life feels entirely different than it did even a month ago.

I am continuing to feel content, and this has been surprisingly steady. There are moments when I'm not in the best mood, but I never really feel depressed, or despairing. I just coolly think, "Things aren't so great right now, but they're not so awful either, and things will improve." And I'm right, I've found. The pills are undoubtedly (in my mind, anyway) part of the difference, but there's more to it than that--I've made biological changes, but I've made some psychological, sociological changes, too.

The #1 thing has been that I think I've found my calling. I've found a life project that motivates and inspires me and that I think I can dedicate my life to, given my talents, weaknesses, constitution--given who I am and who I am becoming. This project is to explore the question: "How can human beings live the best possible lives?" This question has guided me implicitly for so many years, taking me through psychology, religious studies, philosophy, education, and it's time for it to become explicit.

This question is not easily answered, of course, but it's something that people have thought about more or less continuously for a long time. Clearly there are subquestions one has to answer on the way to answering the big one, like "What are some conceptions of the good life that people have produced and lived by?" "How do people actually go about living those conceptions of the good life?" "Is there a way we can educate people to pursue a good life for themselves above all else?" "Should we endorse certain views of the good life over others?" "Should pursuit of the good life even be a primary goal of human life at all?" There are probably even more...and I think it's these questions that will sustain my life. These are the questions I get excited about. I actually want to read about these things. I want to dive into continental philosophy--phenomenology, existentialism, postmodernism--I want to read more religious texts, I want to read about psychotherapies that have been developed to lead people to the good life...I want to read anything I can that deals with the question of the good life.

And I want to start writing, too. I want to start writing out my ideas, my thinking--I want to start developing my own philosophy of the good life, or at least my own philosophy of the process one might take to discover the good life for him/herself. I've put down the idea of being a scholar lately, but the idea is appealing to me again, I think because I've found an area in which I would love to be an 'expert.' And to teach about these sorts of questions? I can hardly contain the thrill I feel at the possibility of a life spent teaching, reading, and writing about the good life. This, I think, is essential for me to live a good life of my own.

My values are shifting. I don't feel like the same person I was last semester. I of course am not the same person--we change from moment to moment--but I feel like I'm approaching the world differently now. It's an odd feeling, and one I can't fully explain just yet. It's very transitory, as if I'm right now in the process of shifting--I'm between ports.

More to say, later.