03.05.07 12:15 pm
(I wrote this in the journal I'm keeping on my computer, but then I decided to post it. It's not entirely coherent and it might not all make sense, but maybe you'll find it interesting.)
I wish I could capture how college kids actually talk. It'd be interesting to write a short story, or an essay, or a one-act, just trying to convey to people how Midwestern college kids live. I think if you could present their lives to people (even to the kids themselves), make them see these lives from an outside perspective, they might see them more clearly. But, if you criticize someone's way of life without offering them an alternative--a higher alternative--then you haven't helped at all.
What are all these people really talking about? Are these people really going to grow up to be the adults in the next 10-20 years? What are these people going to do? How many of them will just slide into mediocrity, never having actually considered anything else? I would like everyone's lives to be extraordinary--but maybe some people already think their lives are, when I see them as horribly ordinary--so how do you resolve this? My view, really, is that I want people's lives to be extraordinary in a certain kind of way. Not a terribly specific way, but in a way oriented towards so-called higher values. I think this would lead to a better culture, and a more rewarding life for so many people. But you have to make people really believe in these higher possibilities--and I think that's the difficulty. Most people don't really think there are higher possibilities. There's no religion, there's no supernatural, and with these losses (which are probably accurate) came a loss of transcendence, a loss of meaning. People can still be part of something transcendent, but not in the way that religion would recommend (for many people, religion just isn't an option). But people don't think about this. And I think when people do consider the transcendent, it seems ridiculous. It seems hippie, new-age. Unrealistic. A joke. So how do we open up possibilities of higher fulfillment to people? What are the sources? How do we open people up to deep joy when they don't really know what deep joy is? (And how do I keep these sources open in myself?)
"So intelligent, so funny, so well-read, so nice--just a great guy. Talking about how we're going to go on vacation together." Overheard in Starbucks. People do and say the same shit all the damn time. We have these formulas for love, these formulas for attraction, and we just play them out, and we think they're so unique, so great, so deep, so meaningful; but it's a script. How do we take ourselves seriously? I'm not exempt from this--I've played out scripts. I'm great at it. I would love to be able to play out certain scripts in my life--I say I want to be in love, but what does that mean? It means I want to enact that script in my life. I want that ideal to play out. But that is not necessarily real love. It is keeping ourselves busy. Maybe we have to do this, maybe it adds richness to our lives. But I think it keeps us fixated on lower values, makes it even harder for us to realize higher values--to realize they exist, and to realize them in our lives. Real love, real friendship--or the best kinds, anyway--pull us higher. They move us.
I have been trying to listen to myself a little more closely lately. To monitor my actions. To see what exactly I'm doing, to hear what I'm saying. And I hear myself, see myself, being cliched. Even the things that seem original are often just cliched. I think very few people are truly original; I think many people who think they're original are actually playing out a script that signifies originality. But if there's a script for it, it's not original.
In watching myself more closely, I find myself saying things that don't mean anything. Talking just to be talking. Doing just to be doing. What the hell is the point of this? Maybe it brings me a kind of comfort, but I don't just want to be comfortable. I want to be engaged with life.
I think I'm sort of an elitist about experience. I think experience should be extraordinary, should be meaningful. At the same time, I recognize that it can't be all the time. If I have a few bursts of exuberance each day, I'm pretty satisfied. My worry is that some people rarely (or never) feel this exuberance, this infusion of spirit. And, yes, I think people should aim to feel this. They should want to live lives of exuberance and inspiration. Many people are in situations where they can't (because of lack of food, water, basic needs), and I understand that, and I think that's a huge problem. But lives of exuberance, cultures of exuberance, a WORLD of exuberance, should be our goal. We can do this, we can have this, if we work together, if we keep the goal in mind, if we continue to believe that it can actually happen, and we talk about how exactly we can make it happen. I think if we worked on this, many of the other things we worry about would be resolved--we would find ourselves in meaningful relationships with our "co-workers," we would find ourselves engaged in meaningful work (towards a more exuberant world), we would (in short) be happier.
I don't want to say that most people are pissing away their lives, and I don't think that most people are, but I do want to say that most people could be living more fulfilling lives. A cynic might say that everyone is pissing away his or her life--it's just a matter of choosing how you want to do it. But I think that's a horrible way to think, though it's hard to say it's invalid or incorrect. I just don't think it's conducive to a good life.
These are all ideas I need to develop more. I'm hoping spend more time in the next few months (and beyond) just writing in the hopes that I'll clarify my own thinking and that something worth reading might appear. My life, it seems, will be about exploring ways of human fulfillment, and it's time to start working on that question in earnest (just as soon as this grading is done, just as soon as my incompletes are done, just as soon as...).
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it was when she was going to grad school at a reputable midwestern university, on the verge of completing her dissertation, that she lost all hope for freedom through learning, gave up the religion of the educated masses, flew to oregon, hunted down slim watts, and suffered great despair when he rejected her on-her-knees proposal, wife and child beside him. no one could blame him - they had never been romantic with each other (or even physical) in the first place. so, she asked about his brother who is still jailed for murder before moving in with her mother and stepdad, getting a job at safeway, and trying to find a local man who was interested in helping her build a happy home.
yet her drinking continued to be a problem, which taxed her will to accept convention and her capacity for being pleasing company. even if a warm, simple man would allow such behavior, that only sickened her more of his conventional, heterosexual ways. nearly down the altar with wedding dress #2 in hand, she rode the bus back to mexico, to the southern most point to lounge naked on a dangerous beach, watch people brutalize themselves in the pacific ocean, losing what panties were being worn to rocks filtering painfully through their genitals, accepting spiked lemonade from another american, a local gangster with a decent fiction library.
no, nothing could please her, she was born in dis-ease with reality and this situation was no more better. creepy men are so much worse than solitude. so she got a job as an adjunct professor in some shitty town and made friends and chilled the fuck out.
before the acid flash backs hit. but you can't just blame the youthful adventurous spirit for them. she had been doing a lot of acid upon getting her adjunct position and now it seemed life was one massive acid trip, mostly gone horribly awry. salvation only came in the form of girlfriends, who let her sleep with them, play wife for a week or two, until one or the other of them became irritated by the situation, and then she moved on, she became a kickboxing instructor, and life moved swiftly forward ever after. she became a proper jock with a proper jock husband, had proper jock children, became a p.e. teacher and coach's assistant at the high school, and started eating chicken.
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