[lit-ideas] Re: Shadows, Fog, and Money

  • From: Paul Stone <pas@xxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2005 10:43:06 -0400

>EY: We live because it's worth living. If it weren't worth living, we
>wouldn't do it.

I know why _I_ love my life, but in those dark moments, when you ask me to 
reflect, unfortunately, I only ask more questions about the point of it 
all. As I get older and older, it becomes increasingly pointless 
[philosophically speaking] and infinitely scarier. I didn't ask to be born 
but I HAVE to die. And I have to live KNOWING that I WILL die. I'm glad 
that I got the "opportunity?" but with the knowledge of death, is a 
terrible way to live and other than keeping busy, I don't know how NOT to 
ponder it. I don't think animals know that they are going to die. If they 
did, they certainly wouldn't lie around like the do.

Maybe Andy is right [shudder] and I'm just a control freak. The ONE big 
thing I don't have any control over is the inevitability of death.

But that brings up the concept of 'wasting time'. Most of us like to relax, 
but we do also have the reality that we're only immortal for a limited time 
so we better make the best of it while we ARE here. Whatever crazy force it 
is that makes the life-hunger drive is a genuinely fascinating one -- for 
it seems more and more that there is no point. And if at the end of the day 
(my life) it's all for nought, then I wonder why. I've had friends and 
people I know die and their memories are all we have now. Apparently, 
that's the legacy for most regular folk.

George Burns once said that the WORST thing about being 100 is that almost 
EVERYONE he'd ever really known has died. But I feel no commiseration in 
death. It doesn't re-assure me when my best friend says "it happens to the 
best of us". It doesn't help ME that HE's going to die. If the answer is 
'there is no meaning of/for life' then righty-o. But the thing is, none of 
us really knows and we'll never find out until that time that we either do 
or do not 'experience' death. Maybe when I grow up, I'll learn to accept 
it. Until then I'll rage, rage against the dying of my light.

>We tell ourselves the story about life and the characters--especially our 
>own--engage us and we want to be part of the
>story. If it were a bad story, we might just as well shut the book.

Yes, I agree.

>If you ever sit in the dark for a few moments and review your life, you
>may be flooded with the intricacy and depth of its plot, all the people
>and scenes and settings, its tremendous beauty despite its boredom and
>pain, the resonance of one time with another, of every moment of love,
>the anger, the waste, the joy...enough to find you in the dark crying
>for its beauty, or laughing for it, or halfway between crying and
>laughing (as I often find myself) wondering how you can let it go but
>knowing that you ultimately must let it go...and any thought of why one
>lives is not there at all.

As others have noted, this is wonderfully said. I often particularly like 
the realization that everyone in this room right now has been all over the 
world and yet, here we are, vessels of electrons containing all those 
hundreds of thousands of miles, each with our own pathway, with stories to 
tell and memories to last - well, unfortunately, only a lifetime -- and 
that always makes me smile and then cry. At other times I like being alone, 
in the middle of a wilderness with just me and the car/bike: no contact 
with others, but with the security that I will see them again.

If only we could upload our brains so that others could enjoy our 
experiences. I guess that's what stories, pictures, videos, anecdotes, 
journals, conversations are for. That's what makes this place so darned 
interesting. But WHY are we interested in things? Is it the same thing as 
liking chocolate ice cream? Why is life enjoyable? What is 'enjoyable'? I 
mean, qualitatively speaking, why is enjoyable better/more preferable than 
torturous?

Now I am rambling. I don't have any more answers than the next person.

To address the problem that several people have challenged me with -- 
namely, why wouldn't an Atheist want to live a moral/good long fulfilling 
life? -- I can only say that I can't see the point of believing that I 
return to nothingness when I die. It's would even MORE debilitating to me 
to think that happens than to remain uncertain. Of course all this is 
personal and I meant no disrespect to all the good atheists. Like devoutly 
religious people, I just don't get it. I probably never will.

living for no reason [apparently]
but enjoying it nevertheless.
p

##########
Paul Stone
pas@xxxxxxxx
Kingsville, ON, Canada  

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