Schopenhauer & My Hippie Heart

or, why I am not a philosopher.

I keep telling myself that I am a fun girl, despite having spent the past two and a half hours of my life discussing the philosophy of suffering. At least, in comparison to the philosopher Schopenhauer, who considers optimism a great cause of suffering and who sees suicide as a very attractive option, I really do consider myself a fun girl. However, here is what I'm mulling over tonight - my dear Schopenhauer says: A man can be himself only so long as he is alone. This man of Schopenhauer's appears to me like a page of an anatomy text. Diagrammed out are his traits - his intellect, his grand thoughts, his physical appearance, and ... little else. I don't see anything about his morals, his character, his convictions, or even his mannerisms - because these things cannot exist so long as man is alone.

The source of my current frustration is this - that Schopenhauer ignores what I consider the essence of life. The person I am, or even the person I want to be, has nothing to do with the predetermined aspects of my identity. When I am alone, my intellect, my thoughts, and my physical appearance simply are; they exist in my seclusion, but the things that I think actually matter are nowhere to be found. In the moment that Schopenhauer says I am myself, I am nothing that I want to be.

The things that matter to me are people - first, the ones that I love, then, the ones I know, followed by the ones that I can relate to, even if only through our ties of humanity. When I am alone, I don't see how I can have morals, how I can have a character, how anything that is truly me can exist at all.

All of this boils down to the following - I believe in Love - from God, for all, through God, to all. I see myself as part of this cosmic net where my living a life of love matters, where my finding joy in this life of love matters, and where I can only be what and who I want to be when I am in that net, when there is love in my life. I don't know what Schopenhauer would say - maybe that in the moment when I'm loving others, I'm just not truly myself. If that's the case, I hope to be myself less and less, and to find my identity in my relationships (to God, then to others) more and more.

why loving matters

A brief synopsis of my world: housemates - gone, moved, flying on with life. Mother - California. Brother - busy. Andy - well, Illinois, per usual. Me...here. There is a very solitary aspect to my life right now. Part of it is related to my health and the extraordinary amount of self-absorbtion that has accompanied my dietary exclusion of gluten and dairy (which I can't say I blame myself for). Still, this solitary edge (ok, .... loneliness) is frolicking hand-in-hand with my self-absorbtion. This, I think, is common enough - when I (perhaps even we as humans) spend so much time focusing on the Self, on ME, on Mary Elizabeth Shreve, I am forming a shell around myself, narrowing my world view to one solitary individual, effectively shutting myself off from the world around me.

I suppose this is a simple enough idea, that it's even on the obvious side, but I find it surprisingly hard to deal with, despite its equally obvious solution. Clearly, if self-absorbtion and its extremely limited perspective leads to loneliness, one should stop being self-absorbed. Which isn't difficult at all. Here I find myself at an intersection of two thoughts: 1) really, I have learned a thousand times that too much inward energy is a bad thing and 2) there are real factors that make the inplementation of this lesson difficult. Simply put, I am missing a lot of loved ones right now. Along my roads, I have learned that I need people, that I need to be codependent to flourish, that I need love in my life as much and as intensely as I need food/water/shelter/oxygen. A sliver of me resents that after learning I lack any ability to be independent, I feel like I'm put in a situation where I need to be. So that sliver of me is giving God a miffed look.

As I'm writing this (thank heavens for epiphanies), I'm realizing I'm learning to lean on people...and that sometimes, I am going to be needy, but dammit, it's better to be needy and ask for (and receive) love than to be needy and alone. So I've been asking, accepting that I'm needy right now, and thanking the Lord for giving me people who I can trust, depend on, and who love me enough to meet my needs. This thread of love is the trail of crumbs out of the forest; if I follow it outside myself, I can start loving other people. Actually, by just putting effort into loving other people, the shrinking space capsule I built around myself starts to dissapate. I think it's easier to recognize our inherent need to be loved, but there is an equal need to love. Without actively loving, something is missing - the inhale/exhale, wax on/wax off is abruptly halted. I'm glad that I've asked for extra love this weekend, but even more that I expended some mental energy on loving today. You know, those care packages I started for my housemates might have given me more than their future recipients. Which is kind of beautiful.

may you walk in love.

I still have something to say.

I may not be in Italy for this round, but I still have something to say, some obtrusive thought rearing it's bud green self through my cerebrum. Today the bud is called Rightness, the smooth slip of Cinderella's shoe or that the 'freckles in our eyes are mirror images, and when we kiss they're perfectly aligned' (thank you, Postal Service).

In the clarity of hindsight, I'm shocked at the amount of rightness that entered my life while across the pond. The girl who flew out of the Charlotte-Douglas Airport on January 6, 2009 lacked a great deal of things that she brought back with her. There are the clothes, obviously, the culture, the language, and the experiences, none of which are to be undervalued in anyway, but most unexpectedly, I came home with shiny new relationships that glistened with promise and overflowed with Rightness.

Primarily, I'm referring to Andy, the long-distance boyfriend, and Rachel, the underdog roommate turned best friend, neither of whom I was expecting. Ironically, upon my departure, my philosophy on relationships during Italy was this: Make casual friends because you need to, but don't build anything serious because a) this semester is only a semester and b) you have plenty of relationships back home that need to be maintained. Isn't that cute? I read that now and feel I should chuckle, or perhaps like God already is.

Italy was a relationship incubator for me. I suppose the ratio of free time to people I spent time with was at an all time high, but I feel very much like the unexpected bloom of these relationships had more to do with Rightness than a function of time. I remember two defining moments, early on, which made the outcome inevitable.

With Rachie, it was after my hellish voyage into Florence, after I'd spent those 12 extra hours in Germany, when I already felt comforted just knowing that I would be stumbling into an apartment with one familiar face. Rachel and I settled into our best friend beds that first night, which were already only four inches apart, and I swear, it was already done. Somewhere between Germany and Florence, Rachel and I were set on a trajectory that would lead us straight to being BFFs in the truest sense. I mean, jeeeeez, we peed into a hole at a Italian gay club called Crisco, which, really, is what friendshp is about. Rachel's entry into my life was a divine convergence. Doubtless.

Andy. See, with Rach, I feel like everyone will think it's cute that I think we're soul mates, but I feel like some will read my doe-eyed conveyance of my boyfriend and have an eye-rollling, 'she's young and in love and isn't it cute' moment. Still, I'm going to fiddle out my tune of Rightness. The first moment I felt like Andy and I were on our current trajectory is laughably trite. It was leaving a crowded bar, many moons ago, and somehow we grabbed hands. In my slightly altered state, I was completely absorbed by the way our hands glided against one another until our fingers interlocked. Perfectly. In the middle of this dark, crowded, 80s glamourista club, with chandeliers, black velvet couches, and the steady thump of heavy bass, our hands fit. Can I be more of a cheeseball? I was done for, hook, line and sinker.

There are things in my life I have trouble seeing come to fruition. I start to think about graduating, Andy and I finding jobs in the same city, and it scares me a little, because well, I have a degree in Religious Studies, the economy is bum awful, and I don't see how things are going to woorrrrrrrkkkkkk. I am the one of little faith. Despite the fact that I was led across an ocean, to a medium sized city, to a program of about 200 people, directly to two of the most important relationships I have, I have trouble seeing the next year of my life being orchestrated with the same cosmic overarching theme of Rightness. I hope this makes God chuckle, too, and that if I find peace in knowing that somehow it will all work out, He'll enjoy throwing beautiful, grandiose, massively Right curveballs into my life.

sweet

Sail Away

Things I would enjoy doing today:

-sailing, so I could laze on the deck and bronze myself, sundrenched and saltsprayed, surrounded by COLOR. sparkling blue sky and sea, diamond white sprockets of water, and the blinding white of the boat.



-going to an Enya concert in a huge field of clover, clouds darting along with the mellow streams of vocals. everyone there, obviously a vip invite list of those who are both chill and delightful, could bring their yoga mat and acapella voices, making it a jam session of epic proportions, also sundrenched and rosy. please prep for enya acapellooza this summer by absorbing 1:55 into your vocal cords.

THE WHOLE WORLD

For the full extent of my life, the sphere of my life has been primarily concentrated in Virginia and the Carolinas. I have a few friends and some family outside of those states, but they are outliers, exceptions to my small-town, east coast rule. While there are more than a few loose ends about "what I've learned" in Italy this semester, one thing is certain: that narrow world view has been crushed, snuffed out like a cigarette ground into cement. I have friends in new places, old places, foreign places, and strange places, their steadily burning love offering up the simple flame of a friendship, despite the miles stretching in between.

In a dream I once had, I sat on the cold tile floor of my bathroom as tears stumbled down my face, dripping heavily onto the white, felty wool of my arms. After my eyes tired of feasting themselves on the coal-color of my hooves, they traced the line of the soft green print of the custard colored walls, a path broken by the cherry molding. Dreamscape expands, until my vision encases my family, emotions as tangible as my own, their body language, stance, and identity unquestionable, despite their incarnation as sheep. Another expansion, pulling farther away from the smallness of my own mind and the slightly bigger capsule of my home, showing me all those that I love, and widening the focus so that every mountain I've ever known is filled with a smooth white layer of sheep, all the world tucked into the fold of the same flock. We are all sheep, all God's children, sharing the same fundamentals, from streaming flaws to hearts that delight in loving.

In that dream, as I was pulled out of my selfishness to see those I love, my gaze was not pulled that far, geographically. Not that distance prevents loving, but it makes that love a bit bittersweet. Still, I know after I leave that I'm going to cherish the soft glow of the lights I've encountered here, that I will pray for the perseverence of those shining stars of Florence Gospel Fellowship and all those who have sounded the trumpet with the bright light of God's love, letting their love beacon boldly. When I put it like that, how can I be anything but thankful?

...children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life. [Philippians 2:14-16]

I like....

-the word juxtapose

-boats

-the unexpected

-new music

-families