quarterlife
So just watched all 8 eps of "Quarterlife" on myspace. It's kinda cool, since I'm 25 - although that's somewhere closer to 1/3-life depending on the theory to which you subscribe. I can really see how people stop developing around this age and just float on into the oblivion of work, relationships, and debt. I ask myself...isn't there more to life?
Relationships. Friendships are great and they are the balm that soothes us after facing a week at the workplace full of old, craggy faces who exploit us to feed their affairs, addictions, and alimonies. But relationships have something to do with life - mixing and melting your life force with that of someone else. It's an indescribable feeling, which is probably why we all seek it. It is a drug in and of itself and human beings (as a specie) are addicted to it. But like all other drugs, it obeys the law of diminishing returns. Eventually, these always fail. Even those legends in our extended families for have been married for 30, 40, 50 years; their relationship has failed at some level. It's why marriage was instituted in the first place - to maintain social structure.
For the longest time - I thought relationships (of the romantic, intimate sort) were the answer to this question of "what else is there?" Now that I am no longer in one, it is very tempting to think this way, but I know that's not really true. I think friendships are more enduring, but these days, I see so little of the people I'd like to see. In that sense, I really miss my school days, where sometimes a few hours with a friend could be imagined into an eternal fantasy. Now, though, even living with Jeff for a year seems as if a tick of the clock. The events of the day are barely memorable - almost as if today never happened from the point I set out for work until the minute I started writing this.
I think that something like happiness is the ultimate reward life has to offer. Afterall, that is what everyone seeks, is it not? But how does one arrive at happiness? Certainly there is a eudaemon sense of the word, but that is not what I'm talking about here. My happiness is a certain balance of emotions and energy. It is not idly laying in the lap of luxury being fed grapes and fanned. That leads to boredom, which certainly does not make me happy. Food, drink, sex, narcotics (although I've not experimented in this latter form of hedonism) do not make me happy (or at least not for long). Hard work, religion, piety do not make me happy.
What does, then, make me happy? Being loved by someone to whom I'm not related. Having fun (but this is almost as transient a form of happiness as being drunk; fun is a narcotic.) Making a mess in the kitchen. This is actually interesting because it is fun, but I think of a different sort because it is CREATIVE. Art, creativity, success - these are the things that lead to happiness for me. But then, we've arrive at the eudaemon definition again! So perhaps my definition of happines needs more definition.
But surely there must be some other kind of happiness than just effort + success = happiness. This is really a type of "fun". Happiness, for me, must be more overarching, more general and longer-lasting. It must relate to your existence, and not just how you feel at the moment. Happiness is not an emotion! Happiness does not produce the emotion we call happy. It produces something more like contentment or satisfaction. It does not have to present itself as an emotion unwaveringly (we are far to emotional for that to be true), but I think it is somehow indelible. Once one has acheived happiness, nothing can take that away from a person, even though the ravages of time may obscure its brilliance as the minutes and hours of life pass us by.
Still, I can't help but wonder if I was surrounded with close friends and lived with them and worked and recreated with them if my life might not have more happiness in it. These phony-seeming tv dramas like Friends, Dawson's Creek, Quarterlife create an ideal that life never seems to mimic closely enough for the saying "art imitates life" to have effect. But this also makes me wonder whether I've just been pushing myself so far away from people that now I have to climb out of this well I've made for myself out of fear. Because how can you be rejected if you're already condemned to the solitude of a pit?
Relationships. Friendships are great and they are the balm that soothes us after facing a week at the workplace full of old, craggy faces who exploit us to feed their affairs, addictions, and alimonies. But relationships have something to do with life - mixing and melting your life force with that of someone else. It's an indescribable feeling, which is probably why we all seek it. It is a drug in and of itself and human beings (as a specie) are addicted to it. But like all other drugs, it obeys the law of diminishing returns. Eventually, these always fail. Even those legends in our extended families for have been married for 30, 40, 50 years; their relationship has failed at some level. It's why marriage was instituted in the first place - to maintain social structure.
For the longest time - I thought relationships (of the romantic, intimate sort) were the answer to this question of "what else is there?" Now that I am no longer in one, it is very tempting to think this way, but I know that's not really true. I think friendships are more enduring, but these days, I see so little of the people I'd like to see. In that sense, I really miss my school days, where sometimes a few hours with a friend could be imagined into an eternal fantasy. Now, though, even living with Jeff for a year seems as if a tick of the clock. The events of the day are barely memorable - almost as if today never happened from the point I set out for work until the minute I started writing this.
I think that something like happiness is the ultimate reward life has to offer. Afterall, that is what everyone seeks, is it not? But how does one arrive at happiness? Certainly there is a eudaemon sense of the word, but that is not what I'm talking about here. My happiness is a certain balance of emotions and energy. It is not idly laying in the lap of luxury being fed grapes and fanned. That leads to boredom, which certainly does not make me happy. Food, drink, sex, narcotics (although I've not experimented in this latter form of hedonism) do not make me happy (or at least not for long). Hard work, religion, piety do not make me happy.
What does, then, make me happy? Being loved by someone to whom I'm not related. Having fun (but this is almost as transient a form of happiness as being drunk; fun is a narcotic.) Making a mess in the kitchen. This is actually interesting because it is fun, but I think of a different sort because it is CREATIVE. Art, creativity, success - these are the things that lead to happiness for me. But then, we've arrive at the eudaemon definition again! So perhaps my definition of happines needs more definition.
But surely there must be some other kind of happiness than just effort + success = happiness. This is really a type of "fun". Happiness, for me, must be more overarching, more general and longer-lasting. It must relate to your existence, and not just how you feel at the moment. Happiness is not an emotion! Happiness does not produce the emotion we call happy. It produces something more like contentment or satisfaction. It does not have to present itself as an emotion unwaveringly (we are far to emotional for that to be true), but I think it is somehow indelible. Once one has acheived happiness, nothing can take that away from a person, even though the ravages of time may obscure its brilliance as the minutes and hours of life pass us by.
Still, I can't help but wonder if I was surrounded with close friends and lived with them and worked and recreated with them if my life might not have more happiness in it. These phony-seeming tv dramas like Friends, Dawson's Creek, Quarterlife create an ideal that life never seems to mimic closely enough for the saying "art imitates life" to have effect. But this also makes me wonder whether I've just been pushing myself so far away from people that now I have to climb out of this well I've made for myself out of fear. Because how can you be rejected if you're already condemned to the solitude of a pit?