1.23.21 A Hint of “It”
4:58am
Setting: A rainy, quiet morning.
More and more I feel uncertain. I think that I am going through the motions and hoping to "fall in love" with life. Will life always have this level of uncertainty? I understand why people choose to retreat to seclusion and be self-sustaining. To be dependent on the motion of this world has its vulnerabilities.
I wake up every morning hoping to find "it". I buy new things, read new books, surround myself with silence. I focus on taking care of my responsibilities and enjoy the remaining years with my family. I am diligent and try to stay in motion. (My dad always tells me that the most important thing is to be constantly moving, or else an opportunity will pass over, under, or beside you.) So, I am going to work at 4-4, helping set-up dinner, and sleeping by 7. Rinse and repeat.
I've read countless books about the philosophies of life, spiritual advice, motivational secrets to success, but every morning I am anticipating something. What it is, I have no idea. I have been seeking "it" for 11 years, but I still have not found "it".
Being told to appreciate the present has its virtues. But my mind always looks to the future when circumstances seem bleak. Religion calls it faith. The world calls it hope.
I have struggled with religious texts that point to a spiritual awakening as a solution to "awake from the matrix". Some say to rid yourself of all desires, others to pursue all desires. My consistent searching, some diagnose as a symptomatic of "lacking authentic faith".
As I continue reading social theories of multiple lifetimes (Marx, Lenin, Weber, Durkheim, Gramsci, Dubois), all highlight the broken system. Theory after theory, all are subject to intense criticism and suggested an alternative, more plausible solution.
Answers that are classified as "eureka", are unexpected. I opened the preface of a misdelivered history book and found "it", a 15 year old thought.
"The ideologist thought they understood history. They thought history had a shape, a predictable outcome, a direction that could be joined. They were wrong. Some of them were intellectuals who shamed themselves and their calling by being superior mental powers to the defense of misbegotten political systems that were already known to be dispensing of misbegotten political systems that were already known to be dispensing agony to the helpless. Young readers will ... try to convince themselves that they would have behaved differently. But the way to avoid the same error now is not through understanding less. It can only be through understanding more. And the beginning of understanding more is to realize that there is more than can be understood." -Clive James 2006
Life is a continuous cycle of input and output. It is a eternal response to the energy of another individual. "It" will never be understood because it has no shape, has unpredictable outcomes, and patternless. This is the light that keeps the darkness at bay. "It" is understood through the realization that "there is more than can be understood".
"The long flight from our lives that we call erudition -Proust