What does life mean?

lI teach high school special education. Today, in health class, I asked my class to tell me what is the meaning of life. This is a hard question, one that has flummoxed wiser people than me for generations. Here are some thoughts that my kids shared in their papers today.

Some of Your Ideas About the Meaning of Life.

“…I’m afraid of dying young and I also like to make my parents happy.”

“I will not regret my life at all. I need to know myself. Who am I?”

“The purpose of life? The question confuses me.”

“Most people hate life. I don’t; I love life. I think everyone should live life to the fullest every day.”

“The meaning of life is going to school and having fun…”

“I want to live my parents’ dream, to be someone in life.”

“…you never know what can happen, you might end up dead and in a ditch.”

“The purpose of my life is for others. I’m afraid to die. I wish I can be young forever.”

“I see no meaning in life or living because I regret my life… All I do is deal with it.”

“I think the purpose [of life] is to help people that need help or to talk to… a lot of people tell me I am an angel because I am there for someone when they need someone…”

“…to go to heaven.”

There seem to be a few nascent philosophers in the class!
-tDF

On Hiatus

I am in the process of moving to a new and more beautiful place. Even though I live in a small apartment, it is a lot to pack! Shall be in touch in February.
- tDF

A thought for those of you still reading from Monty Python. I want this song sung at my funeral. I don't want a religious service; I want a really good party with great food, great drink, great music and this song.

Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown
And things seem hard or tough
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft
And you feel that you've had quite eno-o-o-o-o-ough

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned
A sun that is the source of all our power
The sun, and you and me, and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour
Of the galaxy we call the Milky Way

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars
It's a hundred thousand light-years side to side
It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light-years thick
But out by us it's just three thousand light-years wide
We're thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point
We go 'round every two hundred million years
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whiz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know
Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is
So remember when you're feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth

See you all after the move to my new place, on the beach in Ventura!

An Interlude: Stream of Consciousness

one hundred suits all the same to be worn on consecutive years until they wear out or until I do and I shall buy several bumbershoots so I may be arrayed like a proper gentleman ready in the face of the rain that falls eric satie and ambient music speaking not to the immediate consciousness but to that which dwells behind words ambient is not necessary background but context And I shall drink absinthe dancing with the green fairy communing with the images that only the wormwood and the gall can reveal those dark murky moments in the subconscious Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun The Mess Around Ray Charles and Ornette Coleman COLTRANE Yes Coletrane spoke the truth about God, life, death, and discovery of a meaning beyond Satie Yes and I will wear my suits and walk in the rain wondering where I left my keys and if I am in key or if my life is a syncopated stumble where others march never hearing never hearing never hearing the beat of a different drummer I saw a young man taped to a tree the other day Several students watched him as he was bound I cut him free from his bounds with my car key It should havebeenamomentofgreatermeaning but meaning is as meaning does, so Aristotle would have it so much of how we think is posited in what is effected at the expense of affect – a child drumming her fingers in the dark sauntering and singing at the top of her lungs in a casual blues on a Thursday afternoon while the moon is full and high in the sky how horrible that the sun shone in the middle of the night, ruining our fun and that was odd if a maid swept with all her might; if I slept through all the night if you were not consumed with such dreadful fright I needed to do a load of dishes and clean my shoes I should have done laundry but I drank a glass of wine instead this young man was taped with binding tape to a tree nobody asked the tree what it thought – can we discern the deepest thoughts of plants and trees I was reading my cookbook I just thought to take a break to sauté a mushroom or to learn to use a program on my computer –is software the same as a program – I like the Japanese Iron Chef better Julia Childs meets Hulk Hogan lamb battle Chairman Kaga and Sakai dancing with poulet frances to a danse macabre complete with fiddle folk music enfusing life lost in stale classicism are all innovations considered to be vulgar at first who is to say what makes I love venison but could never hurt Bambi’s mother art and who is to say how art develops into a style that is discernable call it a double standard but it is as it is or is it as it does who does is done will do will have done started a dialog in cyberspace with people that I don’t know but call friends intimate strangers dancing in the dark on the back of electrons to music unknown that exists without the benefit of sound is music sound or is sound the metaphor a similie an image of paradise lost found mortgaged and mamachinationsandlostdesirefindingthattheyarelostyetagainde accessible but only experiential but will not climb the cats jump and meow they want food but god gave them music and they did feast and sing and celebrated the beauty of communication beyond the bounds of species but went with insatiated longing unrequited hunger like unrequited love is a bitter thing yet beautiful unless your heart is broken Like a sonata for strings played out of tune no longer well tempered as a clavier but broken like my heart shattered like class on a sidewalk slicing the flesh and leaving blood behind a print of one that has passed this way before a sly shadow that stands between death and life calling us to question what is real and what is or is not on a Thursday morning howling at the moon with a madman holding a lantern at noon shining it in my face telling the truth that there is no truth – contradiction paradox parabolic reasoning reflection refraction reality reason gone awry Words And the rest is silence like Chaucer on the streets the wife of bath in rap bitch use vulgarisms in place of thought and profanity in the stead of wit what is art if not offense what is obscenity if not a break from the norm a devaluation of valued cliches apotheosis of necrophilia and lust for a glorious past that never was howling at the moon like a loon with a spoon singing out of tune and sinning against the will of a god unknown that makes agnostics of us all can we ever really know was Heizenburg right how can observe the truth if emperical method changes the experience and experiment and then there is the issue of my shoes yes I will buy one hundred suits all the same to be worn on consecutive years until they wear out and I shall buy several bumbershoots so I may be arrayed like a proper gentleman ready in the face of the rain that falls

From It to Thou - Part 1

Maybe Hegel was onto something when he suggested that history is cyclical. He tended to see this as an evolution, a development to a higher consciousness that moved from East to West. From Asia to Europe, the development of humanity, pace Hegel grows from superstition into philosophy, from basic implements to technology. I have never been overly enamoured of Hegel: I do believe that history is cyclical, but I find it difficult to equate progress with the passing of time.

Santayana and Willful Ignorance
“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." The question is not whether we have become cleverer, but whether we have become wiser. I am typing on a computer. I recall a time when a computer called the Univac was used to forecast the outcome of the 1964 presidential election. Bearing in mind that I was a very young fool at this time, I was struck by the faith in technological progress that was being touted at the execution of a good statistical model and a machine the size of a small building that ran the calculations. Truly, there has been little progress in the theory of computers. The basic theory remains the same: a switch is turned off or turned on. What has changed is the application of the theory. We have become more proficient at turning switches off and on. We have miniaturized and hastened the process. But the process itself remains much the same as it was when the first computers were conceived.

What we have missed is the ability to develop morally and spiritually. I will make a statement that may sound cynical: I do not believe that we are physically capable of moving beyond the immediately perceived pragmatic need of the faction of humanity that is in power. We have developed – evolved? – as predators. The act of predation is to find weakness and to exploit it to the advantage of our faction, our tribe, our need. Identity, power, and intelligence have all been as deeply seeded as our DNA to create us as we are. St. Augustine would have called this original sin: hubris and egoism that disallow selflessness. I am not convinced that history is a process of evolution. I believe that it is a cycle of destruction and rebirth that will continue until we ultimately destroy ourselves. It is not a lack of intelligence. It is a lack of vision that will be our demise.

Conflict that Drives Evolution
The study of history is a study of conflict. This is a given that requires little amplification. The engine that drives progress was defined when we were little more than small apes in competition for limited resources; we ate meat and the proteins caused our brains to grow so we could learn to hunt, kill and eat more meat. This biological necessity has become the mother of warfare, capitalism, politics, religion, and even philosophy. All are predicated on a conflict of needs and opinions, competing visions of meaning or competing for a scrap of food: progress remains a process of elimination, just as definition is a process of exclusion.

The great irony of humanity is our ability to live a nightmare and to dream such dreams of beauty and wonderment. It is the gap between day and night that causes our darkest fears to drive our lives while our deepest dreams remain unrealized. Who among us, liberal or conservative be damned, does not want to live a life of peace and joy? And yet we cling tenaciously to penultimate and finally insufficient dogmas that serve to promulgate the evolutionary conflict. There will be one winner. And when that last person is standing, she or he, too, will die. For what? A doctrine? A life-style?

Diogenes’ Lantern
I have shone the light of Diogenes’ lantern on my face and I have to say that I have failed the test, too. I am not such a cynic as all of this implies. The fact that I dare to dream, and belong to a species that dreams, says that there is yet hope. The evolutionary imperative toward competition must be altered. The competition has to presuppose that there is one humanity. We are not liberal, conservative, communist or capitalist. We are not of a race or of a sexual proclivity. We are human, first, last, and always.

What does history teach us, what is the lesson that we must learn and have, as a whole, failed to grasp? I will be presumptuous and hazard a guess: It is to see that we share a common destiny.

Beyond the First Person Singular
Forgive the awkward grammatical image: What has hurt us and has created us is the drive to assert “my” right to live over and against “your” right. Buber would have called this an “I/It” relationship. The other is a means to an end, an obstacle to overcome. Think about the epithets of warfare. The enemy is never thought of as human. The enemy is a “gook,” “heretic,” “nigger,” “fag,” and so on. The uglier the epithet, the greater the fear. Really, what have to fear in each other? Why do we need to be the greatest at the expense of the other?

More to Life than Sex

I HAVE BEEN AMAZED At the number of hits that my blog has gotten in the past several weeks. A quick perusal of the search strings shocked me, however. There are folks that love poetry and have searched poems that I have quoted. There are those that have searched liberal politics, social ethics, and other ideals that I hold dear. The most active referrer was, by far, was this: http://www.blogwise.com/search?q=sex. Yikes.

Keywords Chosen Quickly
I suppose that I could have been more circumspect when I selected the keywords to associate with my blog on Blogwise. I put “sex” on the list naively. I was thinking that this is part of being human. My blog is an exploration of my humanity: of loving and loss, of politics and play. It was never intended to be an erotic blog. I have no difficulty with eroticism. Sex is good; it is full of emotional connections and has deep spiritual overtones. It is no mistake that all religious traditions have much to say about it. As a theologian, sex is a natural area for thought and discussion. Nevertheless, this is not porn! Out of twenty-five referrals today, 21 of them had to do with sex. I can only imagine what type of dance the fool might be doing!

In all fairness, let’s look at all of the keywords that I listed: music, life, sex, philosophy, god, mid-life, rock, jazz, death, theology, blues. Music and life were ahead of sex. Philosophy and God also got listed, right up there with mid-life, rock, jazz, death, theology and the blues. There has got to be a song in this. I think that in my mid-life that I am facing a curious turn in the road. But, come on people… sex is fun to do. Reading about it is just not the same. Besides, who wants to read about the sexual misadventures of a 48-year-old high school teacher? Who even wants to think about their high-school teachers having sex? I just did it (no you perves… not sex!), I just changed the keywords to read “liberal” where sex was and to include “politics” before “philosophy”.

Desire and the Will to Power
I think that the interest in sex as a prurient theme has to do with power and domination. The language of competition is used (scoring). Much of the language surrounding sex is violent (banging, screwing) and ultimately dehumanizing (doing him/her, getting some). The person becomes an object of an action rather than a participant in a shared experience. This is true whether a person is trying to dominate or control or is being humiliated and seeking to be controlled.

Control is predicated on a need and a desire to feed the ego. This differs from asserting one’s humanity. To assert humanity is to find joy in being physical, spiritual, intelligent, and in community. This means that we also recognize and celebrate our fellow humans. Some is sexual, to be certain. Most is not. Power is not evil. A will to dominate is and is ultimately a sign of weakness and fear. Love casts out fear. Love is powerful stuff. Make love, not war.

There is nothing wrong with physical pleasure. The question that needs to be asked is whether my pleasure is hurtful to another. This is as true for the food that I eat as it is for the people with whom I am physically intimate. It is a myth to say that my body is mine alone. It is the means by which I live in community and through which I encounter other people. We are somatic spirits. It is simply inconceivable to say that my physicality is divorced from my humanity or from others.

Happiness and Joy
These two words have regularly found their ways into my musings. While they are similar there is a significant difference in nuance and derivation: happiness has to do with luck, happenstance. Joy has an object and finds itself in relation to something or someone else. Happiness is concerned with luck and good fortune; it tends to pander to the ego. Joy reaches beyond the ego to stand in relation to another.

People, there is more to life than sex. There is joy.


Ah, but I am only a fool…

Another Meander, Another Turn in the Stream

SL called. We spoke for about an hour. She was slightly tipsy, a factor that generally leads to her calling me. Our conversations have a well-worn trajectory. We talk. I ask how she is. She tells me how unsatisfied she is with her partner. One of us makes an off color joke. We recall how passionate our intimate life was and we make an arrangement for a tryst. Tonight was different: I told her I was moving in with CN.

The Heart Has Always Eluded Me
SL and I had taken a break from our moments of desperately trying to cling to a relationship that was unsustainable. She was involved with another guy and wanted to see if it could work with him. I had been with MM and wanted that to work. There had been interim moments, but they had tapered off since I became serious and then when she did as well. But there was so much more than mere sex with familiar flesh: there was fire, hot and totally consuming fire. We made love when we following the filing of our divorce decree. We made love that made the gods envy our flesh. Our coupling was the stuff of which primal myths were spoken in tones of reverence and longing.

We could not, however, sustain the relationship. Like Chronos and his offspring, our passion, and the chaos it created, consumed our future.

I have thought much of SL of late. She sometimes haunts my dreams. I know that on my deathbed that I can say, “I was once adored…” But like so much that we adore, desire becomes an unrequited longing that becomes a dull ache in the heart. SL and I were not able to make it work. She was often dishonest with me; I was often unkind to her. We both share the blame for our demise and both have, in her words, “our fingerprints on each others’ hearts.” We loved deeply. We were also fatally flawed.

She made the comment that this is the bar that has been set for any other relationship. I know better. I never want for that to happen again. There was too much that happened that was hurtful. Too much pain. Too much grief. Too much fire, not enough water. God knows that I tried to bring us back together. She never intended to return. But she did, and as quickly left.

Loving and Loss
I know that I have written somewhere in these entries that whomever said that it is better to have loved and lost never lost at love. I am beginning to think that all love is loss. We lose ourselves in love and call it passion and wonderment. We lose ourselves again when it dies and we call it grief and pain. We lose ourselves with the hope of finding ourselves and in this endanger our souls. We play the game, gambling with our very hearts and spirits hoping that, against all odds, we might find that person who is the mirror to our souls. I thought MM was. I thought SL was. I thought KJS was. Indeed, I am learning that there is no “other self.” There is only the hope that we can love and be loved.

There was a time when I would have said that I have a talent for loving women that cannot or will not be with me. Readers of this blog have only to run a quick search of this blog, reading what I wrote about MM to see how true this is.

I have always longed to be loved. I can become Freudian and postulate that it is an extension of my inner child not having been loved. I can talk about the strange life that my mother and father created for me; seeing a marriage that was dysfunctional on a good day and dangerous on a bad one, having that as my pattern for intimacy. No, I think that gives too much power to my family of birth. I am a romantic. I long to care for somebody and to be cared for. Mutuality: Ah, there’s a word full of historical significance in this Fool’s autobiography.

Mutually Yours
LAP, early in our relationship, signed a Christmas card “Mutually Yours.” She was nineteen, I was twenty-two. We had dated for such a short time and wanted to be in love. We paired off and built a marriage on a chimera of a foundation: the irony is that there was no mutuality in our relationship. I was the air; she was the earth. I was a butterfly; she was a creature of the earth, seeking safety in its dark caress. There was noting mutual. We remained together for 11 years and several months when it came crashing to the earth. She accused me of an infidelity that never happened. That was her escape. No matter: Neither of us was faithful. We were monogamous, but we did not keep faith with one another. For the record, I was not intimate with KR until after our marriage failed, and that was following a drunken evening that began by our bemoaning how our marriages had failed and ended with each other awkwardly in the other’s arms. Mutually yours? What a laugh.

Sex, Drugs, and Rock’n’roll
“Wine, women, and song…” Just a classy way of saying, “Drugs, sex, rock,’n’roll.” I tried that, too. I broke my twenty-five year hiatus from grass a few years ago. I rarely smoke now, though on occasion I spark up. I used sex as my favorite drug, but it did little to mask the pain. Music… there is a balm for my soul. I rediscovered music. I was never a great player, but I love what music does for my spirit. It is my best medicine, by voice, and the language of my heart. CN “gets” music. More than just being a player, she “gets” it. She knows jazz. She knows classical music. She plays bluegrass and loves blues.

It is time to move beyond the hot fire of all-consuming passion. It is time to build a life. It is time to do something new, to find a new song and learn to sing it well.

Ah, but I am only a fool…