Life: resistance if futile
I should be working this morning, but I got into my e-mail and I remembered to check in the wiki of my friend who’s wife is dying. Here is what I wrote to him this morning.
B, I suspect that praise is the last thing on your mind, but I want to praise you for your courage to share yourself with us. I do not know A nearly as well as I would like, but I am certain of her courage also. I have always admired your integrity and honestly. I have been reflecting on writing this since I read you last entry this morning. What can I say to you that would come to you as support in such a difficult moment? I remember when I cried in your office several years ago when I told you that my wife might have cancer just after the birth of our daughter, I have always been thankful for the way you held that, with respect and understanding. I have tears for you and A now as I write. For A I wish the complete freedom that appears to be coming sooner than for the rest of us. Surely if she passes now she will be in heaven, whatever that might be. I pray for you, my friend, you are also passing through a gate to greater freedom.
I also responded to the issues list that is one of the lists that my larger men’s group uses to communicate. “Issues,” being those things that tend to get men going at each other’s throats, meaning politics. One of the guys was trying to denigrate what I said by calling me nihilist. To which I said, Well philosophically I can embrace nihilism quite comfortably. Unfortunately, this tells no body nothing about what I think about any problem in particular. You can be Fascist, Communist, Democrat, or Republican, and yes even an originalist, as well as nihilist. Here is a slightly more balanced definition from Babylon, "the doctrine that nothing can be known; skepticism as to all knowledge and all reality." It is so interesting that even a dictionary can have spin. Just that should provide enough pause in one's step for one to consider nihilism more seriously. He had used the definition at dictionary.com.
Writing is a slow process for me, and so this has been a slow morning. I have a lot to do that I am not getting too. Meanwhile, I feel myself giving up resistance to life. All this time I thought I had to figure out how to live life fully, and all I had to do was stop fighting it.
rs
B, I suspect that praise is the last thing on your mind, but I want to praise you for your courage to share yourself with us. I do not know A nearly as well as I would like, but I am certain of her courage also. I have always admired your integrity and honestly. I have been reflecting on writing this since I read you last entry this morning. What can I say to you that would come to you as support in such a difficult moment? I remember when I cried in your office several years ago when I told you that my wife might have cancer just after the birth of our daughter, I have always been thankful for the way you held that, with respect and understanding. I have tears for you and A now as I write. For A I wish the complete freedom that appears to be coming sooner than for the rest of us. Surely if she passes now she will be in heaven, whatever that might be. I pray for you, my friend, you are also passing through a gate to greater freedom.
I also responded to the issues list that is one of the lists that my larger men’s group uses to communicate. “Issues,” being those things that tend to get men going at each other’s throats, meaning politics. One of the guys was trying to denigrate what I said by calling me nihilist. To which I said, Well philosophically I can embrace nihilism quite comfortably. Unfortunately, this tells no body nothing about what I think about any problem in particular. You can be Fascist, Communist, Democrat, or Republican, and yes even an originalist, as well as nihilist. Here is a slightly more balanced definition from Babylon, "the doctrine that nothing can be known; skepticism as to all knowledge and all reality." It is so interesting that even a dictionary can have spin. Just that should provide enough pause in one's step for one to consider nihilism more seriously. He had used the definition at dictionary.com.
Writing is a slow process for me, and so this has been a slow morning. I have a lot to do that I am not getting too. Meanwhile, I feel myself giving up resistance to life. All this time I thought I had to figure out how to live life fully, and all I had to do was stop fighting it.
rs