May 29, 2004

Saturday Morning… School’s Out for Summer.



I do like Alice Cooper. Like Zappa, he is a satirist of the first water. Enough of that, however. I am not writing about satire or even music. This is supposed to be about me. Solipsistic, you say? Not to my way of thinking.

On to the stuff of personal reflection…

I’ve spent a couple of days really exhausted. I think that all of the rush with school and doing hours at CG Elementary took its toll on me. Really, that amounted to several 16 hour days, inclusive of all of the travel time. I’ve decided that this summer will be more moderate. I will do some of the tests that I have to get off of the plate for employment, play my guitars and basses, record, and – most importantly – spend time with MM.

My younger daughter is here. She will help me organize my home as a birthday present. My older one sent me a really interesting CD for my birthday. I asked her to send me “some music that was not known to me and that she felt I should know.” She succeeded admirably.

I am looking forward to slowing down for a bit. Though I have to think about becoming employed again. I am coming to the end of my funds and need to stay on course.

Life feels good today, despite a bit of birthday depression.

The interesting thing about that is that, in the past, I could have remained depressed for the whole of June and part of July. I thought about my life – as anybody who read my last depressing entry could see – in terms of meaninglessness. I am still not convinced that there is any ultimate meaning to life. We are not creatures that traffic in absolutes or the eternal: we are ephemeral and exist in this moment. I suppose that any meaning for us need not be eternal, but would be found in a life well lived. That is really the honest measure of the man or woman. I do love Hamlet and Macbeth. But I am neither; nor am I Miniver Cheevy. I am me. A man whose life is lived in this moment and who is very much in love with a wonderful woman that I cannot bear to be apart from for more than a few hours. That is the measure of a life well lived, I think.

It is hard to be depressed when I know that somebody loves me as passionately as I love her. Lutherans think about faith as a corporate expression of grace (watch the use of those terms, they are not interchangeable). If I cannot believe, or find faith, the body of Christ will believe for me until I find the ability to believe for myself. I have always wondered if the manifestation of grace is that one does not have to believe, but to live a life that honors God by caring for one another. Justification by grace through faith was Luther’s way of freeing the individual from a need to be saved. The rationale for this was for the individual to live a life of compassion and care, free from the need to save him or herself. Being free from myself, I can be for others. How does this relate to my topic sentence? I think that love is the measure of our humanity and thus our purpose for this life. Depression is anger turned inward (pace Freud); inward hurt at being “less than…” constitutes depression. But if one is loved and loves, how can one be less than the object of another’s delight and joy?

And I believe that she believes in me and loves me even when I can’t.

It will be a good day. MM loves me. And I love her.

It will be a good day, indeed.