I hate listening to myself type. I need something to say. Wow, I'm a lamer.
Most troubling to a student majoring in the futility of English is the question, "What do you want to do with an English degree?" That question hurts--it directly challenges the purpose of your wasted money on the study of language and literature. And really I can give no good answer. Probably I should have the ability to answer that question,
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Often times I start to feel like i'm wasting too much of my life, and not accomplishing as much as I should be (whatever that is, because I certainly don't measure that by other people's standards, since I hardly respect everyone I encounter). Anyhow, the most common trick I play on myself to start feeling useful and accomplished again is to pick up a hobby. I think that's why I'm going to start a sailing class in the fall, just because i need something to do with my time. I'm not really sure if that's the same boat (hehe, while re-reading this i noticed "boat", silly subconcious) you're in, but it seems like if i can stave off the boredom for long enough, it could possibly go away forever. Although, I'm not really sure if that's helping to solve the problem. I mean, on the face of it, it appears that i'm just hiding in some useless hobby really, but I think that i'm choosing this as my course of action because i'm not even sure how vaild the "problem" is.
A common question among my group of friends is why our favorite pasttime has quickly become an activity that's sole effect is seemingly to slow our brain down, and sometimes make us downright retarded. (Yeah, yeah i love it because it makes things "crazy" and all, but i have to admit it does make me fucking stupid at times). I interpret our drive to use weed because i'm just bored with other things. Whether it's as bored as saying "Wow, i'm bored i guess i'll do something else", or just feeling bored with how things are going on a day-to-day basis, i look for other things to fill up my time. I think it's just a natural human feeling to be anxious about your use of time, because we think that to "succeed" we have to utilize every precious moment given to us. For now, i'm going to experiment and see if i can make it without doing so.
My course of action for the next few months is just to relax and see what comes at me; if that means hanging out at the beach and playing lots of frisbee, then so be it ;). Anyhow, not sure if that added anything to your post, but I think i know where you're coming from on this.
Peace.
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The "problem" you speak of in your second block of writing seems to me to be the fundamental problem of life. As humans we are given the curse of knowledge or, more accurately, of incomplete knowledge. Most things go unknown to us. Yes we know certain things about the physical and psychological world but all we have from science and other knowledge as Nietzsche pointed out are descriptions without provisions of knowledge about the origin of anything. Yet, wonderfully, the one thing--possibly the only thing--absolutely true is that we will die someday. We do not know why biological organisms have death pre-programmed into them, but we damn sure know that they will eventually die, no one excluded.
Now, there are a couple ways of dealing with the fact of death that I can think of. Firstly, and probably most commonly, you can believe in god or an afterlife. That belief allows you to assign meaning to your life and to pretend that you will never die. I don't know about you, but I find that kind of thought complete bullshit. It might be comforting but it feels intellectually dishonest to me--I could never genuinely believe in a god or an afterlife. Secondly, you can reject any religious thought and really try to think about what death means in relation to life.
Taking that second path leads to all kinds of lovely thoughts. For me it makes happiness kind of impossible. How can you ever be happy when you are always moving towards an end, towards an ultimate loss? It's such an incredible thought. You start out your life and live in this sort of unconscious enjoyment and after leaving youth you move towards an independence which seems to get better as you get older. But, as your life improves, it all ends.
Thinking about your death makes it hard to take life too seriously for everything starts to become a man made invention used to occupy your time before you die. Yet, it also becomes imperative to take life seriously for some kind of primitive animalistic instinct compels you to want to live and not have the world keep going on without you. Furthermore, it becomes imperative to find something that you can genuinely enjoy and believe in so that you actually spend your life doing something that makes you feel good to be alive. Several things seem to come up in regards to finding genuine enjoyment in life. One of them is other people, helping them out and having relationships with them. Another is hobbies, something where you can occupy yourself without a need for other people all the time in a way that allows you to accept the intrinsic solitude of being alive and of always being at a slight distance from other people's thoughts and feelings.
Once hobbies get sought, though, more problems come out. How little talent lies in most of us becomes apparent quite quickly. That really becomes bothersome because you would like to do something worthwhile, something you can be proud of, if actual pride lies in your constitution. For it's obvious that the only reason we have evolved to our current state is from the achievements of other people that lived and died before us, that from the obsessions and passions of people in the past we have better lives in certain respects than they do. Yet, the one constant is how to deal with death and find something in life that makes you forget about death long enough to accept it. I would like a hobby too Greg. I'm still looking for one that I can really go nuts over. I have not had a hobby that made me want to stay up all night in a long time. I guess that's what to look for: something that you really want to do, that makes being alive important for you, not necessarily something that makes you successful for it is very crucial to accept your mediocrity and the probability that you will be forgotten after you die. It's all difficult to do.
Some days I feel very good about living and some days I don't, but I can never really see when the good days will come. Yet it is possible to find things that will make good days more likely, like exercise, hobbies, music, people that you love, etc. Too bad life is just a random succession of good days and bad days which culminates in our extinction.
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I’m writing this in Word as I read your reply, so I don’t lose any critical thoughts to my horrible short term memory. I took a class Winter quarter in physical anthropology, so I’m gonna speak with some air as if I know something about the subject. The common killer of man is senescence - the gradual failing of our body parts over time. Did you know that if you cured the #1 killer of human beings (I dunno, assume it is some sort of cancer?) you would only increase the average life span by about 6 months? Sooner or later we all break down, and I’ve come to accept that fact, rather than even question it.
I agree with you completely in that believing in some sort of afterlife seems like a cop-out. I picture death as the absolute cessation of thoughts. There is nothing after that, it’s just over. Although, I disagree that life continually improves until the moment of death (excepting unnatural causes of death of course). I view old age as a sad state to make it to. I really hope to die before I get to be 75 or so, incapacitated and unable to do anything physically or mentally stimulating. Because of that, I disagree that life is necessarily silly at heart, or impossible to take too seriously. I view my productive years as lasting from now until I’m about 50 or 60, and then I’m going to start deteriorating, decreasing my overall productivity. As a result of my view, I am anxiously, sometimes even optimistically, awaiting the immediate future, because I know that these will be my “best” years, at least by my own definition. Your description of the two choices we have startled me at first, but I suppose that is because I hadn’t viewed them as being two inherently separate choices.
“Several things seem to come up in regards to finding genuine enjoyment in life. One of them is other people, helping them out and having relationships with them. Another is hobbies, something where you can occupy yourself without a need for other people all the time in a way that allows you to accept the intrinsic solitude of being alive and of always being at a slight distance from other people's thoughts and feelings.”
I see a possibility of meshing the two approaches to life, and participating in some, even many, activities that allow me to be independently successful, as well as actively seeking out other human beings I would enjoy spending large quantities of time with. I suppose at this point I should define success (for myself of course), as I just now finished reading your entire post. It is true that I very likely will be forgotten soon after death, except possibly by my immediate family. While others may define success as achieving some sort of fame, or status that implies importance to others, thus securing the possibility of being remembered for some time after their death, I define success in a much more personal manner. I don’t know if it’s a spiritual kind of achievement I’m looking for, or if I’m looking to achieve something through my chosen hobby, or if I want to reach some certain point in a specific relationship, but I do know that my being successful is a very realistic possibility. Hopefully in trying to be realistic I have not set the standards too low for myself, but I see myself being satisfied with my life as a very real possibility.
The fact that good and bad days seem to come randomly does not bother me so much, as I know that I will achieve some level of success in the long run. I don’t mean this to say that I believe in predestination or any such thing, or that I have zero control over my life. I forget whether Kant’s deontological approach dealt with the consequences of actions or the intentions behind them, but I think it was the intentions, so I’ll stick with that for now. I will always strive to achieve my goals to the best of my ability, but sometimes I have to recognize the randomness of life. Hopefully with a little direction and some hard work I will find that I am satisfied with my life’s accomplishments, regardless of the mishaps along the way.
(Post too long, gotta continue in zee next one!)
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Upon re-reading my post, I’ve noticed my argument is not very convincing. I’m not really sure why I am ultimately sure of the fact that I will be successful, I just happen to know it for a fact. If I am allowed a full 70 years of life, I believe I will have had ample time to prepare myself for death, and I will be able to view my life as having been worthwhile. For now, I suppose it should scare me that I can not come up with more concrete goals for such a short period of time, but I’m still filled with some optimism.
I guess what I’m really getting at is that for some reason I really do believe things will be alright in the long run. As long as I buckle down and work hard, figure out some short-term goals, find a good hobby or two, and find that special someone (at least for the next year :P), I think things will turn out alright. For now I’m not going to worry too much about the end result of my efforts being “successful enough”, because I think all those things will sort themselves out in the long run anyhow.
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And its a winding road
I've been walking for a long time
Still don't know
Where it goes
And it's a long way home
I've been searching for a long time
Still have hope
I'm gonna find my way home
Youthful optimism or what? ;)
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I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
-- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused -- nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear -- no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
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