The Danger in Walking Away

We encounter daunting problems. Some of them seem utterly hopeless, and many people are inclined to walk (or run) away. They do not see any chance for resolution, are tired of dealing with it, and decide to wash their hands of the whole business.

[Note: In some cases, walking away is a viable solution, but generally only if BOTH parties are willing to walk away and start fresh. The situation I describe is one in which only one party gives up and leaves.]

The danger in giving up and walking away from a problem is twofold.

First, I believe that you are inflicting violence upon yourself. It causes a sort of spiritual damage to decide that you're helpless and the situation is hopeless. You are never helpless until you decide you are helpless. No situation is ever hopeless until you decide it his hopeless.

Second, you are inflicting violence upon those you leave behind. They needed your help in overcoming this obstacle. You can assist them in building a better tomorrow. Removing yourself from the challenge makes the situation that much more of a challenge.

Of course, we cannot solve or even work to solve every major challenge, but sometimes I think that just supporting the dream of a resolution in spirit and in voice counts for a lot, whereas saying, "This is evil, wrong, and hopeless and I'm out of here" resolves nothing.

Spirit-weary

In recent weeks, I have given myself over to a life based upon love more wholeheartedly than ever before. I am making a conscious effort to embody the peace that I am trying to create.

I am far from perfect, and I know this, but today I learned that I still thoughtlessly say hurtful things (so thoughtlessly that I cannot even remember what I said) and I am ashamed. I know that my mouth will not open as easily in the days to come, because I am acutely aware that my words are the most powerful weapon I bear.

I am puzzled by the fact that devoting myself to building peace has not just made me more determined, but more depressed. Perhaps having an eye on the ideal makes my flaws all the more conspicuous. What was brought to my attention today certainly doesn't ease this frustration.

I told Christopher just last night that I feel like I need to have a good cry, but that it just won't come. He told me that I've said that several times to him lately. I suppose the silver lining of today was that the tears finally came.

Oh, how long it has been

Years ago, blogging was an integral part of how I processed my life. It seems that the further I creep into adulthood, the less I desire to record my days. While some of this hesitance is due to a respectable craving for privacy on the Internetz, I fear that most is due to the fact that I just don't want to deal with things. I prefer to read a book, fall asleep, and start fresh in the morning.

However, my weak memory frightens me regularly—even more so when I read old blogs and realize just how much I have forgotten—so I will try to rekindle my love of the blog for my memory’s sake. I admit to substantial doubts about the odds of success, but I will try.

Is this what growing up is?

I read a quotation once somewhere (I think it’s a rather famous one) that insists we must live so that we are sucking the marrow from life. It’s a powerful metaphor, and something I have borne in mind since. Unfortunately, as of late, I feel that I have strayed. Life is sucking the marrow from me.

At present, my days are consumed by schoolwork, my job, classes, and a little bit of relaxation where I can squeeze it in. I enjoy these things, but I feel drained, primarily because there is such a dearth of true companionship in my day to day life. My friends have become people that I greet in the mornings and evenings, but little more.

I find myself with some free time in the evenings on weekends and I am craving some culture rather desperately—going out for dinner or coffee or to a performance of some sort. These are the activities I find fulfilling, in large part because they involve connecting with other people. I love deep conversation; not necessarily so intense as discussion about the meaning of life, (that’s what I’ve reserved this blog for, so that elsewhere I’m not burdened by these thoughts), but about my friends and their hopes and goals and joys and problems.

I feel truly fulfilled on the evenings when I go to bed having connected with someone. Unfortunately, during the only free time that I have, the social agenda seems to consist of getting gussied up for the standard college parties and bar hopping. These have a place in my life, too, to be sure, but not as a regular feature. When I wake the morning after “partying”, I feel spiritually vacuous. Following a night of superficial interaction with drunk strangers, I don’t feel particularly fulfilled when I don’t have meaningful interaction with friends (or potential friends) as a counterbalance.

Of course, I certainly carry much of the blame for this inner unrest. But after a long week of stress, perhaps I’d be happiest if I could just throw on some sweatpants, get a big old mug of coffee, and ask someone close, “How are you doing lately?”
 

A moment.

I am facing six midterms/essays in as many days, but I'm drawn instead to this blog. I don't have a particular spiritual fear to address this evening. I just feel like writing, and thinking, and being.

I have been grateful as of late. I live with the aim of always being grateful for what I have, but I've felt particularly attuned to it in the past couple of weeks.

I wonder where I will be in a year.

I wonder if I will ever conquer my temper, and learn to truly love those whom I truly can't stand.

I wonder at how it is that we are all so terrible and so wonderful to each other at the same time.

I wonder if I'll ever conquer my chocolate addiction, and if it will one day catch up with my figure, and if I will care.

I wonder when I'll have time to watch another episode of Lost.

Lost is possibly the most intelligent television show I've ever encountered. The symbolism and foreshadowing and plot twists and dynamic characters with dynamic stores, many of whome are aptly named after modern philosophers...it's like a novel on screen.

I wonder if I'll ever truly overcome my inclination to procrastinate.

Why do I still consider myself an optimist?

Tolstoy once referred to the realization of one's mortality as an "arrest of life."

I take great comfort in Tolstoy because, although he had no more answers than me, reading his thoughts is akin to reading a more philosophically elegant version of my own.

The phrase "arrest of life" perfectly captures the physical and emotional agony of experiencing my own mortality. My mortality hits me repeatedly throughout the day, every day...in the shower, sitting in class, whatever I may be doing. I can't stop it and I can't anticipate it, but when it hits it truly is an arrest. I feel as though life and time both stop for an instant and my mind reels in panic. Usually I instinctively touch my face, which I know is a gesture of helplessness. I'm reassuring myself that I'm still here, knowing all the while that it is futile because one day I will not be here. The first words that come to mind when I've regained hold of myself are usually, "Oh, God," or "Oh, fuck." The frustration and the inevitability are all but unbearable. Some philosophers argue that, upon realizing the futility of life, the only option is suicide.
I can't fathom that. The desperation drives me to cling to life.

I realized earlier today that I will never die and never experience death, in the sense that upon dying, I have been annihilated and it is therefore not something I will ever
experience or know. Certainly, I've read that before, but never today I actually felt it and took temporary comfort in the fact...but nonetheless, I still want to continue to exist! I want to continue to exist in some form or another and I try to rationalize it but I can't. There is no rational reason aside from existing for existence's sake. An unjustifiable attachment to my consciousness.

I ponder the alternatives. Immortality on earth is not appealing. I imagine that earth would become truly unbearable after a few hundred or thousand years. My Meaning of Life professor doesn't see why that is necessarily the case, but I can see it happening. So I ponder eternal nonphysical life after death. This could be desirable, assuming it opens me up to a sort of wisdom and existence in world utterly unfathomable by the corporeal mind, where time does not exist. However, because I can't truly think about what such an existence would entail, I can find little comfort in it. It seems, then, that I should welcome the end provided by death, but I do not.

Taoism offers some hope of internal peace. They say that in learning the Tao, one loses her fear of death. Death no longer matters because one has tapped into the one, the whole. Consciousness is insignificant and fundamentally nonexistent. All there is is the whole. It sounds trippy, but is really sort of a fantastic notion. I need to delve deeper into it, and explain more at some point.

There's always so much that needs to be explained, and never the time.

I need to chase these thoughts away so that I can go study...including the thought that all the studying in the world is done in futility.

How is it that I'm so haunted and yet still an optimist and still happy?
How do I still find so much beauty and joy in a life that often feels like little more than a cosmic joke?

A reinvigoration.

I stopped posting in here for several months because my hope and drive had faded. I sunk deep into a spiritual funk, and felt so lost and frightened anytime I tried to reason through it that I just gave up. I tried to ignore the questions that refuse to stop haunting me.



I've begun to regain a sense of direction and purpose and meaning, even in the face of what may be an ultimately meaningless life. I am enrolled in two classes, "Philosophy of
Mind" and "The Meaning of Life" that have the simultaneous, contradictory effects of pushing me closer toward atheism and closer toward some form of dualism. The end result is the realization of just how little we know. I find solace in that unknown.

I have long understood that a nonviolent existence is the only truly justifiable way to live one's life or, at the very least, the closest we can come to a truly justifiable way to live one's life. I was inspired when I first took the course "Philosophy, History, and Practice of Nonviolence," and reinspired when I became one of it's TA's. However, my drive begins to wear off when I am no longer actively engaged in its study. Earlier this week, Arun Gandhi, the grandson of the Gandhi, spoke on campus and I went. I was reinspired again...a reawakening, so to speak. I imagine it is the same feeling experienced by the religious who attend awakenings.

I have much to report about this reawakening, and how it is redirecting my life, but I would like to first address something that happened to me last night, which kept waking me up throughout the night and continues to sting this morning.

I believe this is how it started: I live with a girl who is vegan, and I was curious about the extent of her veganism. I asked her if she eats products that contain casein. I believe this led to the others present asking questions about veganism and vegetarianism.

It started off harmlessly enough, and I attempted to field their questions with my justifications for vegetarianism. But in time, the discussion started to feel like a hostile debate. I began to feel cornered, and I responded with a hostility to match the one I felt. I feel guilty about this, because that is not what vegetarianism is about. Vegetarianism is the embodiment of a lifestyle of love, and every time I give in to my anger, or superficiality, or downright bitchiness in any circumstanc, I immediately feel guilty. I'm often known as the tough one who will stand up to any sort of injustice of any degree, but I am far from mastering to art of assertiveness without hostility. Far from it. I feel guilty for any part my own weakness, in giving in to my frustration, may have played in transforming last night's incident form a discussion to something that closer resembles an attack.

I have been trying to understand why so many people everywhere respond to the notion of vegetarianism or veganism with such hostility, and I am leaning toward one conclusion in particular. If individuals truly thought that the consumption of animals was an entirely moral and justified behavior, then it seems that they wouldn't feel the need to try to shred vegetarianism. Surely a vegetarian diet is in no way harming meat-eaters, and if it is so wrong, it's foolish to waste energy trying to dispel it. It begins to appear to me that non-vegetarians feel compelled to undermine vegetarianism because of the fear the vegetarianism is actually right. I identity it as fear because individuals are afraid to face the implications of their actions and what is required of them, should vegetarianism turn out to be the "right" way to live (or, to be more specific, as close to "right" as the imperfect, limited human mind can discern).

Because vegetarianism is in no way harming meat-eaters, the flack vegetarianism receives is of a different flavor than the insults taken by, for one example, political leaders. Many of us do perceive that political decisions harm our existences, and have a very real stake in undermining the legitimacy of various political ideals. I cannot seem to extend that legitimacy to undermining vegetarianism in any respect other than the motivating influence of fear.

Furthermore, I can not speak for other vegetarians, but I tend to handle the situation in that I do not preach to people because that alienates more than it encourages. I will tell them my reasons for vegetarianism, should they ask, and more often than not, it results in fantastic philosophical discussion. I will not just start spouting off why vegetarianism appears to be the right way to live if I haven't first been asked. Therefore, I don't think I am engaging in behavior that encourages people to respond disrespectfully. I believe that the majority of vegetarians (with the exception of UR Veg) have the same sort of attitude as I do. Actually, I have met several that are even reluctant to speak about their vegetarianism at all, because they just don't want to deal with the trivialization and lack of understanding. If the majority of vegetarians is either quiet about their beliefs or will only begin to elaborate upon them if asked, it again leads me to the conclusion that the insults vegetarianism receives are rooted primarily in fear. I wonder how many other vegetarians have found themselves directly in situations that begin to feel hostile, and what their interpretation of the situation becomes.

I could continue, but I have to go to work. I hope to post again soon regarding the reintroduction of nonviolence to my life, and I hope to begin a pursuit of nonviolence within myself that far exceeds anything I've attempted in the past.