life

The Other Day

The other day I woke up and thought about what I had done with the past year. What had I filled my time with, and what had I taken time to do? One more year had passed and although the endless parade of days will continue, my days are numbered. The days that we take for granted are days wasted. The days that we do not choose are days that are chosen for us. What is so important today that I cannot take the time to do something memorable?

Every day is a chance to change, to experience, to remember that today means nothing in the grand scheme of things, but that today means everything to you and me. It could be that one that I decide to follow a dream, to take a chance, to stop taking what I’ve got for granted or to leave something behind for good. It could be the one that I decide to push my limits, or to read a book. Perhaps it is the day that I pack the bag and head off on an adventure? Whatever today is it will pass and be gone, wasted or not, lived or ignored.

Days are endless and arbitrary. They are meaningless chunks of possibility that we can let pass us by or capture and create meaning if just a moment at a time. “What will I do with today?” can be the most demanding question, the most important question that we ask ourselves. At the very least it deserves a thoughtful answer because he quality of our lives depend upon the answers we give. Because one more year will pass and although the endless parade of days will continue, our days are numbered. The days that we take for granted will be days wasted. The days that we do not choose are days that will be chosen for us and we will be left standing and wondering what we did the other day.

Looking Up

It is within the annals of history that we can learn the underlying issues of the day. The unforgivable sin of unwarranted opinions held true and unquestioned; the absolutism of religious fear, arrogance and stupidity. Human beings have beliefs about their world, yes, but to force upon the world those beliefs is a human failure, a frailty of mind.

To argue against Truth is to cut off the very branch we sit upon. To insist upon respect unearned is to disrespect any act, any thought worthy of being respectful. To rely upon rhetoric over rationality is to be a liar and a thief, and to hide behind the guise of honesty for the sake of profit is to undermine the civility of any society.

There are freedoms and there are limitations, and these are not set in stone but are not easily moved once set by the forces of nature. The only way, the only viable path is to recognize the failures and mistakes that we and our forefathers have made. We humans are proud and arrogant, but we are also curious if only we would allow ourselves that magical perspective of wonder and surprise.

As Plato showed us, we are shackled in a cave and watch as prancing shadows amuse us, numbing us to our slavery, the ignorance and easiness that those that would enslave us rely upon for their own power, being blind as they are and lacking any foresight. The sun is shining bright if we only look up once in a while.

Life is Short

Camus once asked what will matter in a million years. There is another question that perhaps is more to the point, more personal: You might die today. What will you do? Such questions seem platitudinous, meaningless. However, they are actually the most important questions we can ask. It’s not true that we don’t care, that we are apathetic about such ideas, it is that we are not hardwired to think about philosophical concepts such as purpose, meaning, importance.

It is not true that we do not have time. Think about it. How do we not have time to live our lives to their fullest? It is not true that we have obligations. Think about it. The only obligation we have is to be the best that we can be to those that we love, to ourselves, to our societies, to each other. It is not true that we are not capable. Think about it. Human beings have the capacity to think beyond ourselves, to create, to imagine. Our intellect gives us the ability to be free.

Be happy. Stay healthy. Don’t waste your time being angry. Fight that inner-voice that beats you down at night when you wake up from a dream. Love yourself and don’t sell yourself short. Love life and try not to forget:

The universe is approximately 13.8 billion years old.

The earth is about 4.5 billion years old.

The average person lives for about seventy-two years.

What will you do with your 0.0000016% of the age of the earth?

Philosophy Revisited

If there were two concepts that define a healthy, happy and high quality life for all of us those concepts would most likely be happiness and truth, both philosophically difficult but important enough to warrant the work it takes to achieve and understanding of them.

Aristotle’s definition is a great start, but really a test of happiness rather than a definition: happiness is a good in itself.  If we really want to be happy then we must look to understand what it is to be happy.  If your happiness is reliant upon someone or something else it is not truly happiness, but a lesser version of the happiness that we all so desire.  A high quality of happiness is a good in itself.

Truth is perhaps a bit more difficult, but I’ve come to a definition of it that through the years I’ve found is helpful.  [T]ruth is:

The quality of the relationship between the idea of a thing and the thing itself.

So, [T]ruth comes in degrees of quality.  Through the years I’ve claimed that philosophy is the most important human endeavor and have been looked at with incredulity.  But, given this definition of both happiness and [T]ruth and their importance to the quality of our lives philosophy is the only path by which we can understand the quality of those things that we deem most important to us.

The conclusion of this is simply that we must understand the quality of our relationships.  This has the funny and further inductive property of applying to all of our relationships, political and personal; an interesting consequent in itself.

A Paradise of One

Self-sufficiency is often defined by a determined belief that freedom is defined by individualism.  This is simply not true.  To be self-sufficient, others are necessary.  It does not matter that we view our societies as slowly evolving towards, even progressing towards, our dependency upon others in the modern world; this has always been the case.

Centuries ago people depended upon their neighbors.  The community was a support group for the self-sufficient.  Your neighbor could fix the plumbing and you were a good gardener; working together kept both you and the community progressing towards both happiness and efficiency.

And although our communities are being redefined and molded to include more and more, larger areas, and diverse cultures, this one simple principle still applies: we need each other.  This is one of the simple truths that we must come to realize or we perish.

There is no such thing as going it alone; there is no paradise of one.

Ideals

Hopefully we all have ideals: those beliefs, those ideas that are just out of reach; those things that motivate us to act.  Ideals are often defined by what we do when no one is looking; what we think when no one is around.  Some ideals are lofty and unattainable, and sometimes the bar is simply set too low.

There is a correlation between ideals and happiness, and yet often our ideals can make us miserable.  We do not live up to the ideals that we have set for ourselves.  Failing to live up to our own ideals is worse than failing to live up to others’ expectations.  In philosophy those with less experience  often pose the question: “What is the meaning of life?”  There are problems with this question, but one of the main issues is that it does not answer the question that we all really want to know.

Our ideals often lead us down a path, a rabbit hole.  We presume to know the consequences of our idealistic actions, but we are often wrong.  We find, with time, that our ideals do not lead us to the one thing that we all crave: happiness.  Our ideals, ironically enough, can easily lead us to the sense of failure and doom.  Not only can no one else live up to our ideals, but neither can we live up to our own.

A conversation had of late reminded me of that.  If our ideals are making us miserable it is perhaps because we are not asking the right question.  As Daniel Dennett pondered, cranes must be built from the ground up.  In the same way our ideals must be built upon what makes us happy.  If we start from a belief that we can be happy, then our ideals will follow.

So, what is the meaning of life?  There probably isn’t one.  However, How can we be happy?  That is  an ideal that is up to us.

Til’ Death Do Us Part

To look for meaning in life is a natural thing to do.  Most, it might be said, look to find meaning in their work or their family; perhaps, both.  It doesn’t really seem to matter, only that there is meaning in life.  We fight against a shallow existence, but often we find ourselves being the consumer of things rather than thought.

And this is where life takes us,especially when we are young.  But we get old, if we are fortunate, and it is in age that we find that the world cannot be fixed or saved; that we cannot fight the march of what we as a generation choose to call progress.  The wars continue to be fought, children born, people die.

There is injustice in the world now, as there always has been.

It is not that we get wiser as we get older (wisdom is a rarity).  It is just, maybe, that we get tired; that we realize that the world will not be fixed or saved; that our continuous fight is doing nothing but making us miserable; and in the end we die anyway.

This is not as gloomy as it may first seem.

There are choices that confront us, and if we take the time, we will be faced with choices that actually matter.  If fighting for justice, for wisdom, for progress makes us miserable, perhaps it is us that needs to be saved or fixed for the fight will always and forever be there; until death do us part.

Letting Go

Early in the morning, every morning, the sky presents a new show.  The lights, the trees, the snow, the clouds play out a story complete with characters.  Sitting in front of the newly founded fire in the wood burning stove, the coffee is hot and strong, and black as the night before.

Taking a sip, the sun begins its pageantry through the leafless trees.  Everyday begins this way: summer, fall, winter, and spring.  Now it is winter here on the homestead; and it is cold.  The fire begins warming up the room as the thoughts begin to fill my head.  The past taking up much of the past, and the present taking up much of the day, now they both make a place for the future.

Another sip of coffee, the sun continually changing the sky and the rooster crowing in the background, the beauty is astounding, and yet not enough.  It is quiet up here, still like silence on the sea; a car goes by, the same car as yesterday and the day before.

When silence is ubiquitous every sound counts.

Another sip, another thought as I wait for the second car that comes some minutes later.  All of this will be missed, and as the night lets go to the daylight, we will also let go of another day.

Boredom

Much of the work done when we care becomes tedious and it is at these times that we notice, that we begin to think that what we do does not matter.  That is a mistake.  All things, all jobs, all activities are tedious when we delve into them in depth.  That is the nature of being in depth, of understanding the nature of doing things.

The tediousness does not keep our little voice busy; it does not keep our egos at bay;  tediousness is boredom with a different name.  Only that when we do something indepth we cannot afford boredom.  That is the secret of success and perhaps even contentedness: to realize that all things are tedious at some level.  Tediousness is not the problem, it is our attitude towards it that is.

First, to be content we must be motivated by something other than profit.  We must be motivated by the virtue of tediousness, the acceptance of boredom.  In order to do this we do lose something: our ego, our un-admitted reliance upon what others think.  We all care, but perhaps simply about the wrong things.

To enjoy the boredom in our lives is a learned character trait.  We dismiss this this simple possibility at our own peril.

Simple

Work is not complicated.  Today is not complicated.  We simply must do what must be done.  The morning was started with the dog and evolved to some carpentry.  The sun out, became more beautiful as the day slowly grew.  The wood cut, and lunch.

Out came the chicks; the sun would do them good.  Enjoying the sunny day the chicks played and slept, ate and drank.  Simple times; simple life.

The afternoon started slowly, the tractor in place and the chipper hooked up.  The brush awaited.  The chipper started and the chipping began.  One pile, and then another.  Almost Buddhist in its meditation: the brush goes in and chips come out.

The chips themselves simple in their creation.  They will start as hen house bedding, and the compost and then on into the garden to start the cycle again.  One day growing a tree that will be cut and used, even to its smallest branches.

The piles of chips, sitting in the sunshine, and a shovel.  The old trailer brought to life but first the hitch attached to the tractor.  The work is hard and the day is beautiful: both simple in their very nature.

The trailer full of chips and the stored for the winter.  The day is simple; work is not complicated.  As it should be; as it should be.