The Golden Rule
So I've been reading all day long, something I haven't done in months mostly because of Larry's work hanging over my head. Friday I finally called him and officially quit, and since then I've felt as if a big load has been lifted off my shoulders. However, I've also been sick, but even the snot and the sneezing and my general lack of coherence hasn't been able to take away the joy that comes from reading. No WoW today -- just reading. It's a book about the history of God by Karen Armstrong, one I bought a couple of years ago and never got around to finishing. I figured it would be best to begin again from the beginning because I knew I couldn't remember much of what was said. And it's fascinating. I like Armstrong. She used to be a nun.
Anyway, since Friday I've been having "spiritual" experiences here and there, and I call them spiritual not because I think they derive from God but because I simply like the word. Maybe they do derive from something, but I'm at a loss to describe that something. I can't link it to the book because I only just pulled the thing out of a box this morning; really, I'd have to say that the desire to read the book has stemmed from the experiences. My parents went out to dinner on Friday and I went with them, and while riding in the backseat on the way home I was suddenly overwhelmed by my sense of vision, by the sense of vision. I almost cried. Seriously. I was holding back tears because I didn't want my mother to think I was beginning an anxiety episode and start up on me. I looked out over the highway into a development complex that had just the right number of trees around it to give an incredible sense of depth and the way the dimming sun was shining just right gave everything the most perfect feeling of clarity. I suddenly remembered what the guide told us on our field trip to Flamingo Gardens, that the dots on a television screen are actually perceived as dots by the eagle because its vision is so sharp, and suddenly I felt that, if only for a moment, I could see like an eagle. My next thought was one of awe, because in that moment I realized that I couldn't see; I wear contacts for a reason. Then all I knew was this almost ecstatic appreciation of human ingenuity, that centuries ago much of the world wandered in blindness.
Even 50 years ago, my chance of survival on this planet would have been slim. I was struck by how fortunate I was to have been born in 1985, a time when children with tetrology of Fallot could receive operations that kept them from dying before the age of five, when treatments more sophisticated than penicillin could save a weak body from pneumonia, when contacts offered those who would be otherwise incapacitated by their blindness the ability to see, to work, to drive, to live in a world so dependent on sight.
The experience lasted for maybe 10 seconds, not long at all but enough to leave its impact on me. For the rest of the weekend similar instances occurred on and off, though none as strong. Even sick as I was, I found beauty in my suffering, mostly in my warm bed, my ability to read, and, oddly enough, my television. TBN and a couple of other religious networks are basically the only channels I watch with any regularity; other than that, I'll watch whatever channel is currently playing a Law & Order episode, or perhaps a rerun of The Nanny or Golden Girls. The religious networks have been particularly inspirational to me as of late and have been so ever since coming home from college. And I know why, too.
I think it's because I'm beginning to form a "life plan" -- a real one, not one that has been suggested to me by some of the intellectuals in my midst who think I should be writing witty memoirs about CSCA or the next great Harry Potter book. I've known since my junior year of high school that I was not a novelist, that I didn't know how to adequately tell a story and that even if I could, the idea of story-telling just didn't appeal to me. I loved reading other peoples' stories, but I didn't want to be creating them myself. My sort of "story-telling" was one in which I simply had things I wanted to say: things about life, things about God, things about love. I knew (and know) I had so very much to communicate to the world, but I also knew that I wasn't going to reveal it in the form of a novel, or short story, or poem. I am not a creative writer. To a certain extent all writing requires creativity, some more than others (a poem vs. a textbook), but I like to think that my sort of writing requires the middle ground. No, I wasn't a writer in the traditional sense of the word, but I've always loved writing and have always been told I have a knack for it.
I then went from thinking I would write novels to thinking I would write abstruse academic essays on things most people couldn't give two shits about, and as an uppity eighteen year old pseudo-intellectual, I was damn proud of that. Come to find out in college that, while many of those abstruse topics were of mild interest to me, at the end of the day I had to admit that I was hopelessly a member of the laity; I didn't give two shits about them, either.
Almost. There have always been two things I've cared about deeply, things in which my interest has not waned even over the span of a decade. From being obsessed with Princess Diana to Irish musicians to bold academia, the two things that have never changed are my interest in God and the things concerning him, and my love of videogames. That the two could be mentioned together is quite possibly absurd, but I don't care; those are my passions, my deepest loves in the truest sense of the word, for nothing -- not age, not gender, not hopelessness or despair -- could keep me from adoring the both of them. I love games and I love Christianity. I do. I do I do I do. And while I'm decently certain that the love of videogames will remain a pleasant hobby, the fascination with Christianity is something that I can build a life on. The "life plan," at this point, is to do something I never recognized before May of this year: in a radical switch, I'm going to do what I love, not what others think I should be doing.
I think I'm going to grad school to study Christianity. I don't know exactly how that will pan out, nor any of the specifics, but I do know that what I want to do, ultimately, is help people. I want to open the storehouses of Academia and offer that wealth of knowledge to the "laity." One of the things that has infuriated me ever since coming to college is the absolute misuse of knowledge in the academic world. That Academia is a club is sickening to me. They all do their "research" on the number of conspirators in Renaissance Florence and what percentage of them came from which family, and then engage in mutual masturbation at conferences where herds of elitist pricks discuss amongst themselves, as in a secret society, what the numbers mean. I'm not convinced that more than a fraction of academic research is useful to society as a whole, but even that which is useful seems to be locked in a neverending circle of politics. The trickle of information from the academic world to the public is as incomplete as it is minimal, and this is something that disgusts me. All of that knowledge and you do what with it? You appease yourselves. You make it into your plaything. Knowledge should not be just for the one who has discovered it, especially if it can be useful to the rest of humankind.
I want to help break this cycle. I want to help get this information to the public. I want to bring to them all the preciousness that Academia has been hording since its conception. Whether I write essays or a book or two or magazine articles, or whether I comment on news programs or talkshows, I don't care. I just want the information out. I want to help de-fundamentalize a society that is carving its own destruction out of its ignorance.
And now that I feel drained from having written all this, I'm going to save the rest of what I wanted to write about for another time. It had a lot to do with twelve year olds falling in love and what that does to the fragility of human emotion, but I'll save it for another day. For now, I need to wind down and just enjoy myself.
Maybe I'll quest in Tanaris.
Anyway, since Friday I've been having "spiritual" experiences here and there, and I call them spiritual not because I think they derive from God but because I simply like the word. Maybe they do derive from something, but I'm at a loss to describe that something. I can't link it to the book because I only just pulled the thing out of a box this morning; really, I'd have to say that the desire to read the book has stemmed from the experiences. My parents went out to dinner on Friday and I went with them, and while riding in the backseat on the way home I was suddenly overwhelmed by my sense of vision, by the sense of vision. I almost cried. Seriously. I was holding back tears because I didn't want my mother to think I was beginning an anxiety episode and start up on me. I looked out over the highway into a development complex that had just the right number of trees around it to give an incredible sense of depth and the way the dimming sun was shining just right gave everything the most perfect feeling of clarity. I suddenly remembered what the guide told us on our field trip to Flamingo Gardens, that the dots on a television screen are actually perceived as dots by the eagle because its vision is so sharp, and suddenly I felt that, if only for a moment, I could see like an eagle. My next thought was one of awe, because in that moment I realized that I couldn't see; I wear contacts for a reason. Then all I knew was this almost ecstatic appreciation of human ingenuity, that centuries ago much of the world wandered in blindness.
Even 50 years ago, my chance of survival on this planet would have been slim. I was struck by how fortunate I was to have been born in 1985, a time when children with tetrology of Fallot could receive operations that kept them from dying before the age of five, when treatments more sophisticated than penicillin could save a weak body from pneumonia, when contacts offered those who would be otherwise incapacitated by their blindness the ability to see, to work, to drive, to live in a world so dependent on sight.
The experience lasted for maybe 10 seconds, not long at all but enough to leave its impact on me. For the rest of the weekend similar instances occurred on and off, though none as strong. Even sick as I was, I found beauty in my suffering, mostly in my warm bed, my ability to read, and, oddly enough, my television. TBN and a couple of other religious networks are basically the only channels I watch with any regularity; other than that, I'll watch whatever channel is currently playing a Law & Order episode, or perhaps a rerun of The Nanny or Golden Girls. The religious networks have been particularly inspirational to me as of late and have been so ever since coming home from college. And I know why, too.
I think it's because I'm beginning to form a "life plan" -- a real one, not one that has been suggested to me by some of the intellectuals in my midst who think I should be writing witty memoirs about CSCA or the next great Harry Potter book. I've known since my junior year of high school that I was not a novelist, that I didn't know how to adequately tell a story and that even if I could, the idea of story-telling just didn't appeal to me. I loved reading other peoples' stories, but I didn't want to be creating them myself. My sort of "story-telling" was one in which I simply had things I wanted to say: things about life, things about God, things about love. I knew (and know) I had so very much to communicate to the world, but I also knew that I wasn't going to reveal it in the form of a novel, or short story, or poem. I am not a creative writer. To a certain extent all writing requires creativity, some more than others (a poem vs. a textbook), but I like to think that my sort of writing requires the middle ground. No, I wasn't a writer in the traditional sense of the word, but I've always loved writing and have always been told I have a knack for it.
I then went from thinking I would write novels to thinking I would write abstruse academic essays on things most people couldn't give two shits about, and as an uppity eighteen year old pseudo-intellectual, I was damn proud of that. Come to find out in college that, while many of those abstruse topics were of mild interest to me, at the end of the day I had to admit that I was hopelessly a member of the laity; I didn't give two shits about them, either.
Almost. There have always been two things I've cared about deeply, things in which my interest has not waned even over the span of a decade. From being obsessed with Princess Diana to Irish musicians to bold academia, the two things that have never changed are my interest in God and the things concerning him, and my love of videogames. That the two could be mentioned together is quite possibly absurd, but I don't care; those are my passions, my deepest loves in the truest sense of the word, for nothing -- not age, not gender, not hopelessness or despair -- could keep me from adoring the both of them. I love games and I love Christianity. I do. I do I do I do. And while I'm decently certain that the love of videogames will remain a pleasant hobby, the fascination with Christianity is something that I can build a life on. The "life plan," at this point, is to do something I never recognized before May of this year: in a radical switch, I'm going to do what I love, not what others think I should be doing.
I think I'm going to grad school to study Christianity. I don't know exactly how that will pan out, nor any of the specifics, but I do know that what I want to do, ultimately, is help people. I want to open the storehouses of Academia and offer that wealth of knowledge to the "laity." One of the things that has infuriated me ever since coming to college is the absolute misuse of knowledge in the academic world. That Academia is a club is sickening to me. They all do their "research" on the number of conspirators in Renaissance Florence and what percentage of them came from which family, and then engage in mutual masturbation at conferences where herds of elitist pricks discuss amongst themselves, as in a secret society, what the numbers mean. I'm not convinced that more than a fraction of academic research is useful to society as a whole, but even that which is useful seems to be locked in a neverending circle of politics. The trickle of information from the academic world to the public is as incomplete as it is minimal, and this is something that disgusts me. All of that knowledge and you do what with it? You appease yourselves. You make it into your plaything. Knowledge should not be just for the one who has discovered it, especially if it can be useful to the rest of humankind.
I want to help break this cycle. I want to help get this information to the public. I want to bring to them all the preciousness that Academia has been hording since its conception. Whether I write essays or a book or two or magazine articles, or whether I comment on news programs or talkshows, I don't care. I just want the information out. I want to help de-fundamentalize a society that is carving its own destruction out of its ignorance.
And now that I feel drained from having written all this, I'm going to save the rest of what I wanted to write about for another time. It had a lot to do with twelve year olds falling in love and what that does to the fragility of human emotion, but I'll save it for another day. For now, I need to wind down and just enjoy myself.
Maybe I'll quest in Tanaris.