Joy in suffering

For a while now I had been content with leaving difficult and tortuous questions unanswered. Hoping to ease their burden on myself, I fantasized that questions which perhaps couldn't be answered are better left undisturbed. Well, I may have ignored them, but they refused to lay down. If a thorn be lodged under my skin and it cannot be ignored, then I must find joy in the hope that it is at least movable and that I may someday in some way succeed in understanding how to nudge it. Inspired by C.S. Lewis's THE GREAT DIVORCE, which captivated and inspired me to keep trying.

A Life's Worth

What a shame.
How utterly unforgettable is the loss of a comrade.
Though you are now gone, by your own accord,
No dishonor is allotted you, no honor stolen away,
Though no honor is here amassed in your name any longer.
Destiny here stopped and fate here also decided
Where a young soul over come with sorrow, angel or foe but evil still
Here where you breathed an air of despair which was your last
Here you leave behind awe struck faces that bid you farewell
With tenderest love and Hope reserved in our hearts for exactly a moment such as this,
Now staring blankly outside windows, but seeing nothing there to steal the mood.
Those who did eagerly await your return shall fail to cease doing so
Until their own twilight befalls them and bright palace doors open wide
When there is no where to go but up or down.

"`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! -
Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted -
On this home by horror haunted - tell me truly, I implore -
Is there - is there balm in Gilead?"

Despair

Prayer.
To find the peace that I once had in you
Which now and then returns unseen, like a ghost.
Now uncertainty runs rampant, desolation abounds
The soul is no man's land, between "what if?" and "how come?"
That simple faith that once irrigated this land
Those clouds have since gone with the virtues
I'm left without Grace, although I breathe it in the morning
And let it go in the evening.
Still, I can't say how it came to be
That son grew apart from father
That youthful eyes saw lies
That a true soul was lost in the same place it first learned to never feel fear.
Restore the indwelling spirit that first altered this life.

What if?

The other day while I was listening to Coldplay's song entitle "What if?" I was struck by one of their opening lines. "What if there was no light, nothing wrong, nothing right…what if there was not time and no reason…" I know, it's heavy stuff even for Coldplay. So I got to thinking particularly about the part about there being nothing wrong and nothing right. It reminded me of the book "1984" by George Orwell. He depicts a totalitarian government that wages wars against itself and watches everyone all the time, and eradicates anyone who dares to be different. You might have heard of the phrase, "big brother is watching you." In this society, the cameras constantly monitored every aspect of one's life to keep one from committing thought crime. Thought crime was the act of thinking anything negative or different from what the government wanted everyone to think. In the book the main character, tries to explain how society has changed because of big brother and thought crime. He says that there is no right or wrong in this society because there are no laws. Everything was right, but thought crime would get you killed. There was no choice. You either obeyed big brother or you died. So I think that Coldplay were talking about wrong and right in terms of morals. If these morals didn't exists then government could create its own idea of right and wrong and become totalitarian. Which In turn leads to lack of choice. So if there was nothing wrong and nothing right, there would be no choice at all in anything. No individuals, only a society like the matrix could exist whose whole existence it completely fabricated.

Delphic Maxims and Aristotle

Delphic Maxims

Know yourself.

Nothing in excess.

Aid friends.

Control anger.

Shun unjust acts.

Ackowledge sacred things.

Hold on to learning.

Praise virtue.

Avoid enemies.

Cultivate kinsmen.

Pity supplicants.

Accomplish your limit.

When you err, repent.

Consider the time.

Worship the divine.

 
 

Those are just a few of the Delphic Maxims. At the beginning of the semester I came across these Delphic maxims and thought about writing a blog concerning them. However, at the time it didn't seem interesting enough to me or I didn't see anything too exciting about them back then. So I was looking over the complete list of Delphic maxims (which can e found all over Google) and I realized that a lot of them actually seem like they could easily be integrated into my life if they weren't already. I think that they cover a lot of moral ground. It's sort of like Aristotle's moral virtues hidden in aphorisms. But still the suggestions don't tell you what you're aiming for like Aristotle does in the nichomechian ethics. There are only suggestions, some that seem perfectly normal and good and other that seem pointless and misguided. So it all depends on the "good" that you're trying to achieve whether or not the Delphic maxims could acts as the nichomechian ethics. Before we read the N.M I thought that the Delphic maxims were good tenets to live by, but now I think that they fall terribly short and could lead to any kind of life unlike the virtues taught in the N.M which Aristotle goes to incredible heights to show that they aim towards the greatest heights.

 
 

 
 

Zeno's Paradoxes

As I was reading Zeno's Stadium and Achilles paradoxes, I discovered something that I found very interesting. The paradoxes themselves make sense to me, but that's not necessarily a good thing. I think of the implications of such paradoxes and it makes me very pessimistic. What are the implications of the Stadium paradox for example? If there are infinite half-ways, and it makes theoretical sense, then why is motion for point A to point B practically possible? It signifies to me that there is a disconnect somewhere along the way and I'm afraid that the incongruence arises from us. How can we grasp that it's theoretically impossible to move across the room, yet acknowledge that we still perceive it to be possible? And what if we could somehow free ourselves from this practical world. What if the theoretical matched the practical? Imagine one day waking up and finding that it's impossible both theoretically and practically for you to walk across your room? Certainly, life would be a whole lot more interesting. Oh… and the paradox of Achilles and the tortoise that makes all physics classes I've ever taken seem so useless! No matter how much I try to reconcile the two, they seem like opposites. I can't decide what realer; the theoretical world or the practical world that I experience every moment of my life

Letter to Purpose

Difficult

You're one stubborn…You're just impossible

What do I have to do?

Live here, just live, looking for you only to find I'll never find you

What do you have to do with all of this?

There's no life without purpose

But what if there's no purpose?

Nothing worth noting

And how will we know when we find you.

To do what you're meant to do? Who says?

I'd like to think that purpose is another way of saying you're free to do whatever you want.

That we have the choice and we always have

That we're meant to do what we do, but that what we do is completely up to us.

That's not the case, not the case for me anyhow.

There's something that my soul yearns for, Something that seems right and purposeful.

Something unrecognizable and that's not of me

An outside influence upon my life, within me but foreign to me.

One day I'll know what it is, that which my soul yearns for

Which is attainable, but impossible to keep

That which once attained, the soul needs it no more

That which the mind doesn't care for, but it can't ignore

That which my heart can't live without

If all else disappeared, it would still remain completely self sufficient and unbounded.

Purpose… I can't make it appear, disappear or reappear.

Always in motion, in every thought in inside me mind.