re:mix

“Don’t let your experiences be your god,” Dylan said. “We all let our experiences define our beliefs and how we live.” The tight nexus between Perception & Praxis. “But sometimes we need to realize that just because something has been the same way for so long, that doesn’t mean it should be so or that it will be so in the future.” Our universe is filled with change, and how am I to assume that this change is to leave me unaffected? Dylan’s right: I shouldn’t let my experiences determine, absolutely, the way that I perceive the world. Our experiences play a key role in forming our worldviews, our over-arching stories, our meta-narratives, whatever the hell you want to call them; but yet it isn’t the experiences that play such a role but our interpretations of those experiences. Every experience, great and small, demands an interpretation. We interpret everything, seeking to bring an understanding from the woodwork of our lives. Some of us interpret experiences one way; others take entirely different routes of interpretation. My interpretations thus far have failed to bring into account a very important variable, which is what Dylan said: “Things change. Opportunities are found. And some, once cynical and stoic, can even find things they once believed they only believed because they experienced heartache and disappointment.” My current interpretations have at their foundation just that: heartache and disappointment, coupled with a fear of experiencing more heartache and disappointment.

The reality is that though things may continue on the same path, unabated, for a growing number of years, there will always be change. Our world is in a constant state of change; our relationships are in a constant state of change; our own selves are in a constant state of change. These changes swirl about us, pierce deep into us, and the results may be magnified within our lives, ballooning into a radical different mode-of-living congruent with an entirely different system of thinking. I must take into account the variable of change, the fact that while “there’s nothing new under the sun,” there’s a hell lot of shit under the sun that I haven’t experienced. Just because it’s new to me doesn’t mean it’s something different on the cosmic scale of things.

“Experience does not equal truth.” Again: it’s all about our interpretations of those experiences. To re:word something Dylan said, “Our interpretations of our past experiences don’t determine what our futures will be.” My future is yet unwritten. I wholly believe that. I don’t buy into the idea of fate, destiny, or God having a blueprint for our lives. There are blank pages demanding to be written in; and for a large part, the pen is in my hand. I can determine to take the story in different directions, though not knowing exactly what may lie in those directions; or I can set the pen down and just sit on my ass, doing nothing, refusing to pursue change and hoping that things will work out. I’ve made a shit-load of changes; and as I keep making changes, altering my state-of-existence, then it makes sense that these changes will, within the context of changing my state-of-existence, bring about conclusions that differ wildly from the conclusions already drawn. Heartache and disappointment will always be a facet of life; but to focus on these while ignoring the fact that life is also full of great joys and deep love is to become, in my own way, like that damn ostrich. I’m sticking my head in the sand and ignoring other realities all around me.  

“Fuck the past,” he said. “Don’t let it define your life. Look ahead and move forward.” This man knows what he’s talking about. In just over a month he’s leaving Ohio and heading off to Africa for 2 ½ years. He’s had his own fair share of heartaches and disappointments; we could swap stories day after day. Yet this man has hope, and he doesn’t let his past define his future. He’s plowing ahead, making changes, pursuing his dreams, and interpreting things from a different set of lens, a lens which serve more function than my own, because they make his life richer and more meaningful. FUCK THE PAST. I like that. I let my past, my experiences and the interpretations of those experiences, define my life. As an existentialist gathers his or her identity from any number of things, so I’ve gone the existential route and embraced an identity forged by what’s happened, even if those things have been entirely out of my control and thus have no bearing on any sort of “identity” that I may have. Look ahead and move forward, he says. Beautiful advice, and I think I’m going to take it. I will fight tooth and nail to disallow my past to determine my future; the past is powerless in doing this, but if I endue it with such power, then it will do exactly that. Acknowledging the past for what the past is—the past—then I can embrace the present moment of knowing and leap into the future moments of unknowing. I’m not quite sure what this entails, though I have a clue; but, again, the point is that I’ve been letting my past both define my perception and praxis; and the time has come to toss that shit out and do things a bit differently. 

en conclusio (?)

Incessant rains and vast flooding fit the mood of these posts quite well. I’m certain there’s a break coming, a shaft of light piercing the horizon, sunlight dappling through the breaking storm-clouds. But the storms remain ever-strong and ever-present, and the only light is that of the lightning, brief flashes that may inspire hope but in the end serve as signposts to the reality that the storm continues to rage. They say every storm comes to an end, and that’s true: but the damage exacted in its duration may mean that the storm’s end is but the beginning of more trauma to be undergone even under the daylight. The sum word of all these posts, which I hope to cease after this (but which may continue for as long as the shadow lies), is hope; and not just hope, but the yearning for that hope. I’m looking for any reason to have hope, and the two most obvious “hope-givers” end up being not as certain as it might appear.

Take the “secular” route, if you want to call it that. Yank God from the equation and what do you find? Hope is to be found in yourself, and you can manipulate your circumstances—a little thing called “wisdom,” there’s no need to attach religious lace to the term—in order to bring about a desired response. Going back to the mathematics, or blackjack, you can stack the cards in your favor. Some call it cheating, I call it wisdom. Yet no matter how you stack the deck, there will always be uncertainties; and no matter all your manipulations, no matter your air-tight wisdoms, there will always be the threat of a broken seal, of a flood, of something going wrong. After all, no matter what we may think, we’re not the gods and lords of our own lives. Even if there is no God, hypothetically speaking, we’re still at the mercies of the decisions of others and the fortunes of chance. No one’s really in control.

Now for the religious route. “Hope in God,” they say. And that’s fine and well. But often we hope in God for things we shouldn’t hope in him for; not because he doesn’t care, nor because he’s impotent, but because our hopes and aims may be selfish or, really, peripheral to God’s ultimate causes.  We tend to care about things he doesn’t. Yes, there are things to hope in God for; but there are things which we shouldn’t hope in God for because they’re things he’s not too concerned about. I know everyone says, “God cares about every little detail of your life,” especially all those uptight evangelicals who want to make everything a make-it-or-break-it spiritual moment (granted, not all evangelicals are like this; I know quite a few who are refreshingly down-to-earth); but I’ve studied the subject intensely, philosophically and theologically, and I’ve come to different conclusions, and I stand by them.

Hope is a shaky thing. You can spend your entire life hoping in something for it never to come to pass. When this happens, most often we thrust the blame on ourselves, or on others, or on God (I’ve done all three). But how often do we say, “Life’s a bitch, and shit happens”? The reality is that we live in a world that isn’t conducive to hope; we live in a world that isn’t yet heaven-on-earth, and to think otherwise is to become like the ostrich (a metaphor which I’ve beaten to death, but for good reason—those stupid bastards give us a little insight into our stupidity). I’m not saying that we shouldn’t hope, that I shouldn’t hope; and I’m coming to realize that hope is a good thing. It gives us sustenance, it breeds endurance, it keeps us moving when the world turns to shit both vertically and horizontally, diagonally and in multiple dimensions. But a little too much can be a bad thing: we use hope to suave the pains of life, and if we take too much of it, we’ll get sick. Think of it like easing a headache with aspirin: take a little, feel better; take too much, get liver cancer. Most often the effects of taking too much don’t become apparent till you’ve done it steadily for a long time; same with hope. The best route isn’t to toss out the baby with the bathwater, to curse hope as an illusion and escapist technique while abandoning all its good qualities. Perhaps a better route would be to embrace hope but with a realistic agenda: knowing that this is something good to pursue, and that it might come about, but that if it doesn’t, well… Life’s a bitch. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. 

a matter of statistics

And while we’re at it, tiptoeing without regard in this sea of rants and raves, what the hell is with all the screwed-up conceptions about dating? I mean, seriously: “I’m going to meet a great person, we’re going to fall in love, everything will work out perfectly!” Never-mind how this optimistic hope becomes nothing but a graveyard of tears and regret in fifty percent of marriages, when those “in love” begin tearing each other’s lives apart with selfishness, greed, and indifference. That’s a battle all on its own, but getting to the point where you can engage in that battle is difficulty enough. I’m a romantic person with romantic ideals, but my romanticism and skepticism clash, and which one wins out? Give heed to logic and embrace the knowledge of skepticism. As much as I may want my romantic aspirations to come true, I might as well admit that they won’t. Sure, bits and pieces may fall together; but it’s naïve to buy into this pie-in-the-sky romantic dream which itself is contrarian in nature to the way things really work.

Dating itself is a nasty business, especially if you’re like me and not looking for something casual. If you’re serious about finding someone you can commit to, marrying them, building a family with them… Well, the challenges prior to the engagement are daunting enough. You meet someone, and you like them (a lot) but they don’t like you. Big deal. Get over it. Or someone likes you, and they’re a great person, but you just can’t bring yourself to feel the same way. Maybe you’ll get lucky and like someone who likes you back. But more often than not, complexities overwhelm the situation, and despite any “chemistry” you may have, the relationship backfires in pain and disappointment. Or you like someone, and they like you, but apparently they like other people more, and you have the joy of finding out they’re sleeping with someone else, or using you to get to your best friend. On an off-chance you meet someone who’s exactly what you’re looking for, it’s not unrealistic to assume that the complexities and challenges will be overwhelming, and that either you or they won’t want to put in the effort involved. What’re the chances of finding someone you like, whom you even love, and who loves you back and wants the same things, a person who’s right where you are and wanting to be with you wherever that is? Slim to none, at least in my experience. The nauseating part is seeing friends after friends getting engaged and then getting married, and wondering what the hell is so wrong with you that the people you date turn out to be either (a) cheaters, (b) psychotics, or (c) great people but who have different ideals and desires for the relationship? I’m losing hope—no, scratch that, I’ve lost hope—in finding someone where the puzzle pieces of life can even remotely squeeze together.

It’s all a matter of statistics built up over a matter of time, variables taken into consideration and probabilities drawn from the rudimentary fabric. I’m no John Nash and no mathematician—though I have been watching NUMB3RS a lot lately—and even though I only got as far as Algebra 2 in high school, I know how to draw probabilities from gathered data. Statistically-speaking, the probability of me getting married is rising to a certain point four years from now, and after that point, the probability decreases. Yet, however, there are the anomalies to take into account, and drawing these together, I find that the probability of me getting married is steadily decreasing over time, thanks to (a) less frequent contact with women, and (b) the women I do know being either married or engaged, for the most part, or wanting nothing to do with marriage. At this point, then, I can comfortably assume that the probability of me getting married is dropping, and thus the plausibility of marriage decreases, too. Let’s not forget to incorporate my (a) social awkwardness, (b) awkwardness around women (which is my social awkwardness exponentially multiplied), and (c) the unfortunate reality that I look like I’m twelve and thus the only girls who flirt with me are usually in high school (and the thing is, most high schoolers turn 18 around their senior year, and so there’s no way of knowing if I’d be participating in some sort of pedophiliac activities). Oh, and there’s (d): I’m an excellent friend for women (most of my friends happen to be of the female persuasion), but there’s no romantic interest involved. Apparently I’m of no instrinsic romantic value for most women, and because I don’t meet many women, well… Ultimately, what I’m saying is that I firmly believe that my chances of getting married are dropping with each passing year, and my own cynicism increases with each failed relationship due to a host of factors.

It all ties back into the hope thing. I honestly don’t hope I’ll ever get married. I mean, I want to; but I’m not anticipating it happening. I can imagine everyone else getting married, but when I try to imagine myself getting married, as much as I love the idea, well… I just can’t picture it. I can’t imagine what it’ll be like, because I can’t fathom it actually happening. I’ve gotten to the point where I assume I’ll always be single, that everyone I know will get married, and I’ll die an old man alone without any children.

I always wonder why it is that I have such problems with girls. I’m decently attractive, I like to think, more attractive than a lot of guys. I’ve got that cute look going on, and I’ve been bulking up a considerable amount. But I’m not tall, dark, and handsome. I’m not “hot.” A lot of girls—at least the majority that I know—are concerned about one thing: how fun it’ll be to mess around with him. Yes, I know, that’s extremely stereotypical; and I know that seems very judgmental. Please bear in mind that I’m working with limited data: knowledge of girls I know, and love, and knowledge of girls I’ve dated, and even loved. But let’s be honest rather than skirting around the issue: when it comes to attraction, that’s the main driving force. “It’s all about personality, humor, how well you get along, chemistry.” Yeah, yeah, all of that shit is great, and it plays into it. But I’ll show you two guys, both with great personalities, humor, and good chemistry. One you end up being best friends with. The other you end up dating. The difference? One’s hot, one’s not. The same goes for us guys: we’re great friends with homely girls, but we want to date the hot ones. No one can get out of the guilt (if there’s even guilt to be had here; after all, the way we’re designed, we’d prefer the healthy girl to the overly-obese one). I’m speaking in stark terms here, and I realize this could offend some people. But get over it. You know I’m right. Physical attraction always—and by “always,” I mean fucking always—plays a critical role. And maybe that’s why I have such bad luck with girls. It seems I get the psycho or desperate ones, and the good ones I get end up cheating on me. That’s a whole other bag to go through, and I don’t have the time.

*SIGH* I don’t want to date some girl just to fuck her. I’ve had sex before, I’ve liked it, but it’s not what I’m looking for. Sex can destroy a relationship; not always, as some uptight Christians will tell you, but it’s a dangerous gambit with heavy stakes on the table. Throw out any “religious” or “moral” apprehensions to premarital sex, and you can still make a good case against it. I’m a romantic at heart, and I’ve dated all sorts of girls—girls varying in personality, physical appearance, everything—and I know that looks isn’t more important than personality and how well you get along (though I’ll admit, I’m not going to date a 400-pound girl; sorry, not happening, call me a dick but you’re no different). I want a girl to love and be loved by, to share life with—all the good stuff and all the bad shit that may come along. I want to be a good husband and a good father. I want to support my wife in her endeavors and be at her side when the shit hits the fan. I want my journey to become a co-journey. I yearn for the lyrics to an old song to come true in my own life, where “like vines we intertwined, carelessly growing up and growing old; life was on our tongues, it tasted heavenly so bad.” And yet the song comes true in my life every morning, when “I wake up and I feel alone, I was just asleep, right where I belong, inside this sad, sad song.” And all the while I’m “holding tightly my pillows, frantically searching for her, inside my head she’s somewhere, she is somewhere.” And maybe that’s where she’ll always be: somewhere in my head. 

the dayton days [64]

It is finished! The rough draft at least...

Monday. I worked a long-ass 11-7:30. At least Carly was shifting, it's always good to work with her. Sometime soon we're going to have a heart-to-heart about me *maybe* liking Jess.  After work I picked up a helmet from Wal-Mart for when I ride the bike, and I did some pilates before bed.

Tuesday. Joanne twisted her ankle, so I came in an hour early to cover for her. I worked 5-1:00, opening with Jess. Jess watched her nephew Luke after work and invited me to join, but Brianna wasn't home to OK it so that fell through. Dylan & Tyler came over: grilled chicken, baked potatoes, corn and rolls for dinner. We played on the Wii and laughed till we cried and they left. I biked a mile on the Cannondale. Tyler and I are going to bike together this summer.

Wednesday. I worked 5-1:30 with both Jess and Cars. Always good. I biked three miles when I got home, watched some TV, and then worked out. Jess, Cars & I hung out. We went to Emily's thesis defense at U.D., then fixed dinner at Carly's apartment: pasta, bread, some cheese dipping sauce. We had some good talks and watched Arrested Development. Jess & I shared a cigarette before she left, and then Cars & I talked about the whole Jess thing. Quite enlightening.

Thursday. I worked 6-2:30 with a great grew, then biked twenty miles from Waynesville to Fort Ancient and back. Really proud of myself. I spent the evening catching up on my PDP. 

Friday. I worked 5-1:00, then a smoke break with Carly (who doesn't smoke). I wrapped up my PDP by 2:30. Faith likes it; whew! Jessica asked me if I wanted to join her and Emily for the Reds Game, but I was too poor to afford a ticket. I felt pretty depressed the entire evening, went to work to do some journaling on the back patio (I incorporated the scribblings onto the blog, the "Death of Hope" series). Cars noticed I was looking rather gloomy, and I told her why: "Life's one disappointment after another, and in light of this the best thing to do is to crucify hope and embrace resignation." The wind is a bitch tonight, and my insecurities get the best of me.

Saturday. It was way too windy to bike today, so I just went to the Gym and worked out. I went by work to hang out with Carly and work on "Reframing Repentance." I finished the rough draft! Mom and I went out for Chinese (Dad's been gone all day on an Adventure Race). My fortune cookie: Time to tie up those loose ends into beautiful bows. Jess and I texted each other for 2 1/2 hours. I flirted, and I'm pretty sure she reciprocated. 

Sunday. I woke around 7:00, showered, dressed, and mounted up: I biked to work in the cold, had a coffee and read some N.T. Wright, visited with Jess who was working, and then headed back home. Jess said she was impressed by my biking. Dylan, Tyler, and Pat D. came over for a bit: cigarettes and coffee. At 5:00 I went to Jess' condo. Just the two of us. We chilled in her room, formerly off-limits, and went through photographs of some of her amazing artwork. We grabbed dinner from the Red House, a Chinese restaurant, watched some episodes of "How I Met Your Mother", and then I headed home. 

Yes.

I do like Jessica.

But she's leaving town soon for her Master's.

I need to be logical.

I parade logic as my god but succumb to fantasies so quickly.

Damn it.

the death of hope? (III)

They say that life teaches us lessons, and we’d damn well better pay attention. Yes, I despise and mock the idea that God or Fate or whatever the hell you want to call it is calling all the shots regarding our lives and that everyone’s life is flowing together into something good. I believe that God is in control of history, and that history is going somewhere, and that this “somewhere” is a beautiful and wonderful place and time; but that doesn’t mean everyone who’s along for the ride gets a rose-garden experience. At one time I did believe this; I did believe that God had a concrete will for my life, and that this will was something wonderful (and, quite tellingly about myself rather than about God, it happened to be what I wanted as well). As life began to do what it always does—you know, disappointment and regret, broken hopes and fractured dreams—I went to the route of cognitive dissonance; but no matter how hard I plugged my ears, I couldn’t get the scream of reality out of my ears. I broke, violently and bloodily, and I succumbed to resignation. Life was teaching me lessons, and I told myself that I’d damn well pay attentions. Amidst this resignation I sought rebuilding. I tried to restructure both my perception and praxis (the way I perceive the world and, consequently, the way I behave in this world) around a renewed worldview. I’m not claiming that my worldview is air-tight; I know it’s not, there are dark regions where light still needs to be shed, places where mystery and confusion, tinted with ambiguity, abound. But again and again my worldview is reinforced by my experiences (or, rather, my interpretation of those experiences, an interpretation which is intricately bound inside my worldview-paradigm; yes, a paradox). My current perspective on life is, in truth, a reaction against my old belief in destiny (our universe is built on cause-and-effect, on reactions to reactions; the way we view ourselves, others, God, and the world in general is no exception).

“How does life pan out? What carves the paths which we take?” There’s a fork in the road and we end up going down one path while leaving the other untread; who’s to blame? Some will point the finger at Destiny. “It’s Destiny’s fault.” Others will point the other way, to God: “He did this to me.” What’s the right answer? Are we so intelligent and insightful so that we can know without a shadow of a doubt? I highly doubt it; again: the dark nature of epistemology. I believe that there are four elements which play together, interweaving in a dance that can be tragic, comedic, and heartwarming all at the same time. But I didn’t come to this belief just by observing the world; this perception of reality came about when my own belief in Destiny was shattered. When this shattering happens, there are three routes we can take. (1) Cognitive Dissonance. We rebel against this shattering, refuse to acknowledge it; we play the ostrich with our heads in the sand, ingraining ourselves deeper into the prison of our futile hoping, ignoring reality, constantly telling ourselves that things will get better and that great things are in store for us. This route leads to deeper and more sustaining cognitive dissonance, so that the mind becomes so entrenched in this worldview that nothing short of a divine encounter can change it. (2) Resignation. With the shattering of the worldview, the person embraces resignation: resigning oneself to reality in great despair, plunging headfirst into the pit of helplessness and hopelessness. With the beloved worldview negated, such a person doesn’t believe there’s anywhere else to go. His world falls apart, a spiritual, mental, physical, and social Jericho. Few people embrace total resignation, and those who do go out with a bang (literally) or with a few vertical slashes to the wrist. (3) Rebuilding. A close cousin to resignation, rebuilding is often interwoven into resignation, perhaps flowing from resignation’s feet. This is observing reality and making adjustments to the worldview; it is remolding and reshaping our perceptions to fit better the reality that is presenting itself. The movement from Resignation to Hope in the diagram in the previous post has between it, with the arcing arrow, rebuilding; my worldview is in constant rebuilding, accumulating new data and making room for it, tweaking certain things here and there. No real changes have been made in the last 2-3 years, but I’m hoping (selfishly) that a change will present itself through a transformation of my circumstances (which I doubt). Nevertheless, through this rebuilding, I’ve come to the current conclusion that our lives pan out according to the complex interplay of four different elements:

(1) The Consequences of Our Actions. My actions and my decisions help pave the road which my life will take. This is no linear movement: it is dynamic and any attempt to chart it will result in frustration (believe me, I’ve tried and given up). The decisions that we make in our own lives play a large part in the way things pan out. Our decisions to get an education, to marry this or that person, to do this or that, etc. send our lives in different directions. But, unfortunately, this isn’t the only thing that matters; if it were, we’d be our own gods. Our own decisions are subjected themselves to the three other elements.

(2) The Consequences of the Actions of Others. The actions of others and the consequences of those actions come to bear on us. The decision of a husband to cheat, or the action of a gunman in a local grocery store, such events—spawned not by our own actions but by the decisions of others—can come to grip our lives in an iron vice, taking them in a wildly horrific direction. At the same time, not all’s doom and gloom: the benevolence, love, and generosity of others, acting from their own volition, can bring us great joy and blessings.

(3) The Actions of God. I believe in God, and I’m not a deist. I don’t perceive God as sitting high in heaven just watching the world spin beneath him, hoping we’ll figure out how the hell to be decent human beings so that we can get the world back on track (a staple belief in the Enlightenment and which continues to be embraced to this day). As a Christian, I am sworn to Christian theism. I believe in a God who is intimately involved in history and who is active in our lives. I don’t believe that he’s as active as some people presume him to be (in the sense that he cares about every little thing we do and that he orchestrates our lives to the very littlest detail), but I do believe that he is active, at the least sometimes, and that he works for our good (though “good” is a relative term and should be unpacked; but that’s not my concern here).

(4) Chance. I don’t believe in luck, but I do believe in chance. I define chance as those things which are the result of cause-and-effect relationships and which come to affect us. A tsunami of cause-and-effect ripples through space and time to bear on us in the present moment, altering our life in small or big ways. An obvious, caricatured example would be natural disasters. Take, for example, the recent Japanese tsunami. Geological cause-and-effects rippled (quite literally) to the shore of Japan, and thousands—no, millions—of peoples’ lives were changed forever, for the worse. This was not an action of man nor, I believe, an action of God; rather, it was the result of geological processes which came to bear on a portion of humankind at this moment in history.

This isn’t an optimistic nor pessimistic perception of things. On the one hand it’s liberating—if there’s no such thing as destiny, no such thing as fate, then we have a say in the matter as to how things will pan out. Of course, on the other hand there’s frustration: our own attempts to orchestrate our lives fall prey to chance events and the decisions of others who, like us, are attempting to have a say in how their lives pan out. Selfishness clashes with selfishness and people get hurt. And, on a third hand, it calls into question the substance of our hopes: if we have been hoping in destiny, or fate, or in some God-ordained blueprint for our lives, then we’ve got to find somewhere else to place our hope. This view may not be pessimistic nor optimistic, but I wouldn’t call it realistic, either. It’s a stoic approach to life, and to hope; calling it “realistic” is to monopolize the term, as if I’ve got some insight which no one else has. Damn epistemology! Nevertheless, I’d be naïve if I thought that my current worldview would remain with me forever. I may have more experience that will cement this view in my mind, or I may have experiences that totally bring this view crashing to the ground. I may be drawn to reinterpret the evidence, at some time or another, but this is my current perception. Life teaches us lessons, and we’d damn well better pay attention. 

the death of hope? (II)

I miss having hope, I really do. Hope sustains us, keeps us moving, fuels our diligence and endurance, is the catalyst for change and a source of great joy. Hope comes to define us, and we identify ourselves with our hopes and dreams. They become the origin of our identity, the fountain from which we drink and the birthplace of the name which we give ourselves. But as much as I miss hope, for all the good and bad reasons, I can’t bring myself to embrace it, unless that hope itself is logical. I feel like Spock, which is a Star Trek reference and I hope it’s legitimate, because I have never seen a Star Trek movie or TV show except for the most recent one. From what I know, he operates solely from the base of logic; while I don’t claim to solely base my decisions and behaviors on logic, logic plays a big role. I want to be logical; I want to use common sense; I don’t want to indulge fleeting fantasies, I don’t want to become the ostrich which sticks its head in the sand and lives in its own little world at the expense of observing all that goes on around it. I’ve observed my own life, all its peaks and valleys, and I’ve observed the world: I’ve seen how hopes disintegrate, how the tyranny of evil often gets its way, how selfishness and greed run the show. I’ve seen how even the most beautiful things wilt and die; the flowers of the field, pristine in their trimmings, return to the dirt from whence they came without even a whispered eulogy. My perception of the world (as with everyone’s perception of the world) is drawn from what I’ve observed in the world and, subsequently, my interpretations of those observations. This coupling of Perception & Interpretation spawned this little diagram which I pieced together a year ago.

I call it “The Life Cycle of Hope.” It’s a continuous and unbroken circle, and for a purpose. Begin, for instance, with Resignation, which is born out of the ruining of a hope. When this happens, we take the hope which we’ve called our own and smash it apart. We refuse to give it any thought, we call it out for what it is: a mockery and parody of reality. We decide that it’s better to face reality for what it is than to self-medicate with illusions and fantasies. We take, ultimately, the stoic route of accepting what will be as that which is and seeking to live in accordance with this as much as possible. But life without hope isn’t much of a life at all; while hope itself may be called an anesthetic to numb the pain of reality, that perception is lost when the pain of reality becomes too difficult to bear. We launch into hope again, though usually not the same hope. Perhaps a close mirror-image, except with fine-tuned details here-and-there. We buy into this hope and take a breath of fresh air and move forward. But the presence of hope doesn’t negate the presence of reality, and soon enough disappointment will take place. We put our stock in an illusion, and when reality bitch-slaps that illusion, we get bitch-slapped as well. Sometimes this happens slowly, something along to slow suffocation; other times it happens in an instant, like a gunshot to the head. Hope is killed by disappointment, and we become disillusioned. This can be a quiet, unsettling disillusionment, like something tucked away in the back of our minds; or it can be the shattering of an entire worldview and system of perceiving the world, bringing us to our metaphorical knees as all that we’ve “known” is shown to be self-trickery. The next step is resignation: we resign ourselves to this new understanding of reality. But this resignation doesn’t sit well with us; because, as human creatures, we need hope. We can’t exist without it, at least not in any more-than-functional sense of existence. And so we latch onto hope again, a reworked or revisited or renewed hope. And the cycle continues unabated, albeit with breaks here and there: but even when hopes are realized, we quickly learn that the realization of this hope doesn’t come with all the trimmings we thought it would. Reality’s still hell, life’s still unpredictable, and the result is that once hope has been reached, a new hope is raised in its place, because no matter come what may, there is never any satisfaction, we are always left wanting more, and reality continues to be unsympathetic.

I wish so badly that I didn’t think so much about these things. I wish I could be like those people who blindly embrace hope without giving it a second thought, those people who buy into all that bullshit about “God having a plan for my life” and “There’s a bright future for everyone!” I wish I could be so naïve as to believe in such a thing. Tell that to the eight year old girl raped again and again and then excommunicated from her church because she’s been immoral (but the elder who raped her isn’t even dealt with). Tell that to the husband who discovers his wife’s been spreading her legs to other men despite him having served her and sacrificed for her during the duration of their relationship. Tell that to the person who’s lost everyone and everything he loves and who has been abandoned by all his dearest and closest friends, except for that age-old friendship with whiskey and cigarettes—the only thing that gives him some sort of comfort when God is incredibly silent. Tell this, as a matter of fact, to those killed in the recent Japanese earthquake and tsunami, or to the thousands killed in ethnic genocide each year. The whole “destiny” thing is a caricature sketch of reality, yet another self-medication, a sort of self-lubrication to keep things going smoothly (and, no, I don’t mean that as a sexual joke; I’m being entirely honest). I’m of the conviction that it’s best to accept reality as it is than to buy into pseudo-realities that may be easier to digest.

At the same time, the dark reality of epistemology makes such “acceptance of reality” an unsure thing. My perception of the world is no more or less valid than any other perception; adequate perceptions will both (a) observe the world and (b) make deductions based upon that observations and seek to (c) interpret these observations while integrating them with the deductions in such a manner that (d) the observations themselves fit hand-in-glove with the interpretations given. The whole “destiny” thing fails at the first point, because it assumes that I have a good and beautiful destiny, and that all my sufferings are merely the road to that point; and it fails because it doesn’t take into account the overwhelming majority who do not reach any sort of good and beautiful destiny. People who buy into this belief, when faced with the realities of the world, undergo what’s called “cognitive dissonance,” where they become, in essence, the ostrich with its head in the sand. They plug their ears, scream as loud as they can, and squeeze their eyes shut, so as to drown out all the chaos and clamor of the world around them, a cesspool which highlights, again and again, that their worldview is defunct. I’m not sympathetic to this, only because I’ve been the ostrich with his head in the sand, and the breaking of that reality was a violent and bloody and painful thing, but I’d like to think that I’m wiser for it. Nevertheless, my current perception of reality (a multi-faceted perception which can’t be dumbed down a quip or cute saying) is to be held to the same rigorous criticism. It all comes back to the dark nature of epistemology, how we know and perceive things. We are finite creatures with quite limited brain capacity, and our perceptions and worldviews are not instilled within us but are developed over time, largely in place at a young age but susceptible to transformation amidst trauma or elation. How I perceive the world isn’t from looking round about the world from an objective standpoint; everything is subjective (and I say this as a modernist, believe it or not), and I’ve found that in our quest for an adequate understanding of reality, the deeper we go, the more ambiguity we find. The truth lies behind a thin veil, visible as if in a mist, and all our scratching and tearing won’t bring that veil down. Nevertheless I bank on the criterion above when it comes to a worldview: it must embrace the facts and interpret them in such a way as to be as true to the facts as possible. Such thinking has spawned deism, naturalism, and nihilism, and while I don’t embrace any of those, I’m sympathetic to those who hold such views. Christian theism can be a difficult pill to swallow. 

the death of hope?

A great sadness has come over me, a tidal wave of hopelessness and despair. Sometimes this happens, most often when I am reminded of the countless disappointments and empty dreams that have thus far characterized my life. A recent fantasy reached the point of critical mass and then deflated, and the result is that I am once again forced to look back, rather than ahead, at the portrait of my life in an attempt to understand why this happened and what went wrong. All sorts of answers bounce around in my head but none offer any solace, none are garnered with a lacing of hope. There used to be a day when I pursued my dreams; but I’ve come to find that now I am pursuing not my dreams, not even happiness, but the hope of happiness. My cynicism or stoicism or pessimism or realism or whatever the hell you want to call it demands that I not put my hope in anyone or anything, because every time I’ve embraced any sort of hope, that hope’s proven to be ill-founded. My current state-of-affairs is the result of fruitless hopes and wandering pursuits, all in an attempt to ascertain why things are the way they are along with the attempt to make changes. Changes have been made, to be sure: but the core reason why I made the changes remain unfulfilled. Except for the changes themselves, everything remains unchanged. I made the changes to reach a certain goal; the changes were made, the goal has not been reached. This tends to be a recurring theme, and it lies at the heart (I believe) of my own lack of willpower and resolve to continue making changes; "Why go through all the effort when nothing ever comes out of it?"). Having hoped so much, and been let down every time, I am burdened by the idea of hope.

Some time ago I wrote that hope is like barbed wire: the tighter you hold on, the more it hurts. And from this analogy I drew the conclusion that the best thing to do is to let go. To crucify hope and thereby escape the pain it causes. But what is there without hope? Hope is integral to human living. Because we live in the world we do, and because we are the people we are, a life without hope always—and I mean always leads to suicide. It is hope that sustains us, hope that keeps us going, hope that keeps us alive. Even those who refuse to admit that they hope are showing, by virtue of their resilience and determination in the face of life’s tragedies, that they are fools and self-deceived. Our hopes may not be big and glorious, but hope’s always there—even, in my case, the hope that hope can be found.

In these dark and quiet moments, I grit my teeth and push forward, refusing to give up. Perhaps I hope that things won’t get any worse without entertaining the idea that things will get better. But I want things to get better. I want my life to turn up (for once). I just don’t know what it’ll take. My horoscope said that the time for entertaining fantasies is over and that now’s the time for implementing a practical plan. I don’t buy into horoscopes (they’re on the same level as fortune cookies, in my opinion), but nevertheless it spoke to me: I spend so much time entertaining ridiculous fantasies (ridiculous because they deny what I know to be true, and fantasies because they are just that: fantasies, never to be realized in this sphere of actuality), when I should just be doing what I can to get myself out of this. But at the same time, I’ve done so much without any scent of change in the air. Now it just feels like a waiting game, and I’m growing impatient and hopeless. Logically, I know that things should turn out for the better; I know that life has all its seasons, and that we must all walk them; and I know that while things may seem awful at times, it’s all a matter of perspective. Nonetheless, you can’t just change the lenses through which you perceive the world, and my lenses are stained with all sorts of dark matter which make perceiving the world no different than looking into a mirror. My perception of the world is intimately connected to my perception of myself.

This may sound awful, but it’s the truth: I’ve stopped praying for help. Years and years of praying for help with no answers (or, rather, with counter-answers; everything I’ve prayed for myself has turned out getting worse). The message I receive is that praying for help is walking the bridge into an even worse situation. And when things get better, I fear thanking God for this, because every time I have, it’s not long before it falls apart and I’m left stranded, broken and bleeding, on the rocks. Magnifying the frustration is the fact that whenever I pray for someone—and I mean really pray for something—great and wonderful changes happen in their lives. Contemplating this, I have come to the borderline belief that God doesn’t answer my prayers but is more than eager to answer my prayers for anyone and everyone else. And then I begin to think he has some sort of vendetta against me, and that the current structure of my life (which, to be sure, is a result of failed hopes and futile dreams) is due to God himself. Of course I kill these thoughts; while I’m no deist, I think it’d be better to be that than to entertain the idea of a sadistic god plunging his sadism onto we pitiful human creatures, just to watch us squirm or to punish us. No, I do believe God exists and that God works in our lives. But for the life of me, even with imagination, I can’t see where he’s been at work over the last ten years—except for a handful of incidents, for which I’m thankful—and that affects the manner in which I relate to him.

This is a long post, and it’s over. Basically my point is that I want things to change, but I don’t think they will. My hope isn’t so much in a changed life but in the acquisition of hope for a changed life. I’m not on a quest for happiness but a quest for hope. Both seem equally pointless. Just being raw and honest. Perhaps the best thing I can do is just throw my hands in the air and give up. Accept the lot that life has given me and try to make it through the shit the best I can. That’s the stoic in me speaking. But lying dormant, barely breathing, is a different voice, a different whisper, something uncontainable, something un-killable, something undeniable: the conviction that there’s more, that the story hasn’t yet written its climax, that there’s more going on than meets the eye. I want to believe this, I really do: but at this point I can’t listen to that voice without a hint of mockery.