enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gotta run

Hmm...woke up late. A wonderful, peaceful sleep. 9+ hours. Got out of bed to answer the doorbell to some proseletyzers, else I'd have stayed in longer. I say this over and over and over again, but I think that sleep is the very best thing that you can do to keep your body healthy, young and lean. It simply cures all ills. Sad the way modern life robs us of sleep, non?

I was reading an interesting graduation address last night, written by David Foster Wallace (author of Infinite Jest, who killed himself): address. At first I was thinking it was a bit silly, but I honestly think he has some terrific insights into the responsibility that one can choose to take on in reponse to education.

It also reminded me that adult life is about constantly choosing - choosing your responses to people, events, things. Whilst I believe in some of the ideas expressed in recent popular movements such as the Secret, I don't believe in the blanketing of everything with a kind of numb positive "thinking" in order to get what you want in life. That's because thinking by its very nature is more rich and varied. It requires stepping outside of your own situation and your wants and needs and shattering some of your most comfortable beliefs.

I tend to be an optimist, so I'm lucky - almost always, even when I'm at my lowest, I believe that where there is a will there is a way. If I was born with one talent in life that I realize has saved me from many, many situations, it's that I'm incredibly tenacious. I don't give up and I work and work until I get a decent outcome.

But I do believe that being a thinking person also means that sometimes the conclusions - about a place, a situation, a person - will have negative overtones. You need to deal with the anger that naturally arises occasionally in life directly. You need to express and explore sadness for its provenance so that you can eventually let it go.

So the point of all of this - and there is a point, believe me - is that I'm wondering why I persist in having this diary. Am I looking for approval? I probably was at some point, but I'm getting to a point at which I don't need that from an external source. I can write to myself at any point and certainly don't need to post the writings on the web. I filled a journal on my plane trips back and forth to Italy last year, and none of that made it here.

I don't have any particular philosophy to share. I don't even have any philosophies. If I have one belief that I know to be worth striving for - and often fail at, I know - it is to be compassionate towards others and to do unto them as I would have them do unto me. I could almost say that that is the only thing in life worth doing, apart from keeping your eyes wide open and not standing in one place.

Where I most often fail in life is in searching for a solution. I find one thing that works for me to get the outcome that I want, and then I stick that into my routine and I do it over and over again. But that's wrong! (And that's what David Foster Wallace is saying.) Thinking you have the answers to this or that problem leads you to put blinders on and not understand that others have ways of living that are just as valid. Worse, it leads you to judge and exclude them because you don't even want to look at their way of doing things.

To live well I think is to be constantly changing. It is to embrace change and to be honest and forthright about all of the feelings that that change engenders. It's the most difficult thing to do, especially as we get older. Every year that I live I find that the default is to seek comfort in routines that I feel I can control. But that's regression! That's living a life of quiet desperation only to die with a song on the lips!

The thing that troubles me the most in all of this is that it's difficult to reconcile embracing change and pushing forward to new levels of understanding with the fact that you're trying to accept and love people who don't do this themselves. How do you accept and feel peace towards others when you see that they themselves don't do the work of stepping outside of themselves and trying to become more genuinely compassionate, thinking and tolerant? Some people are just plain unlikeable. The toughest ones are those who pretend to be kind but who are only kind under certain conditions. Are you paying them enough attention? Are you agreeing with everything that they say? Do they perhaps begrudge you any of your successes? And then you realize that you ought to be even MORE compassionate towards them, because they didn't get enough at some point, or haven't figured out that they're in truth angry at other people and taking it out on you without much conscious intent.

Super C. interrupted as he dropped by to bring me a fair-trade coffee! That C! What a treat on a Saturday morning. I have been restricting myself to coffee only once or twice a week, so I ESPECIALLY enjoy it when I get one!

So the point of the foregoing is that I think a big decision is coming. Some big change is coming. I may start writing a private diary only. I need to get more seriously into new activities, and I'm going to contact that professor about the Ph.D. thesis, at least to have a discussion. All good stuff! Happy weekend to everyone!

12:09 p.m. - 2009-03-07

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

previous - next

other diaries:

stepfordtart
ohell
awittykitty
annanotbob
manfromvenus
smartypants
fifidellabon
hungryghost
hissandtell