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.

A philosophical creative writer? A creative philosopher?

I am ever so slowly slipping into panic mode. And the further I slip, the faster the slide becomes. I have only a few short months before I have to decide what direction I am taking after graduation.

It's going to be either philosophy or creative writing.

If I pursue philosophy, I will spend every day for the rest of my life haunted by the questions that already deprive me of my sleep. The further I move toward enlightenment, the farther away I'll actually become. My mind has already become an agonizing place. I am generally happy to escape into the pragmatic superficiality of the music industry and whatever other part time jobs I fall into.

(At times I think I really want to remain in music...
"Then he suddenly saw that he was leading a strange life, that he was doing many things that were only a game, that he was quite cheerful and sometimes experienced pleasure, but that real life was flowing past him..." -Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha)

If philosophy becomes my job as well as my past time, will I be able to handle spending 24 hours a day haunted by the questions I cannot answer? If philosophy doesn't become my job, will I be able to live with myself knowing that I ran from these questions out of fear?



I want to publish a novel. Books have always spoken to me. Literature is a magical thing. It provides an escape from the world, but it also crafts a certain perspective of the world. Literature has taught me to see the beauty in life, even during its ugliest moments, and it has taught me to be grateful for it all. I have stories to share, but my lack of professional experience with crafting fiction makes me hesitant to pursue it in graduate school. I also worry that developing this craft will pull me away from my pursuit of answers to life's big questions, though I realize that the greatest novels are fundamentally philosophical pursuits.

These pesky questions about the nature of life terrify me, but I am as frightened of living without them as I am of living with them.

Why are we here? Where will we go?

An irrepressible part of me hopes that there are answers, and that I can find them. As long as this hope remains, I am afraid to abandon the search.


Can I combine philosophy and creative writing? Perhaps I can pursue a dual PhD/MFA...and perhaps that would be even greater torture than just living with these unanswered questions!

Hello.

I was a pioneering blogger back in 1997 and 1998, before these nifty little auto-blog-me sites existed. I blogged before it was called blogging, when online journal-keeping had to be accomplished the old-fashioned way with blood, sweat, tears, and raw HTML. I mastered frames and splash pages and articulated the daily ardors of my young pubescent existence, tastefully garnished with snappy PhotoShop graphics.

Unfortunately, my hosting site revamped their design and, in the process, deleted my years of middle school labor, and so I succumbed to the burgeoning teenopendiary.com and, later, the popular and intensely emo-driven livejournal.

But the time has come for a fresh beginning. For the past six months, I have been overwhelmed by an impending sense of mortality and the desire to come to terms with this beautiful, quirky thing called life. I wanted a place to sort out my thoughts, to center myself, and hopefully, over time, to encounter others who have embarked upon the same sort of journey.

This is that space, appropriately named the Tao of Chelsea, as Taoism is one spiritual philosophy I have found myself closely identifying with and, of course, Chelsea is myself. It must be admitted that the name is somewhat of a take on The Tao of Pooh, a little book I highly recommend for those that would prefer to begin their spiritual exploration with the comfort of having Pooh, Piglet, and all the rest along for the ride (and I freely admit to being one of those people myself!).

That should be a sufficient introduction. I suppose the rest will reveal itself as the days pass by. In the meantime, I really must fold the laundry I've been watching wrinkle for the past hour and prepare myself for the Sunday joys of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and HBO's Big Love.

And with that, I'll depart, with the acknowledgment that I've probably destroyed my credibility before this blogging adventure has even begun.