How do we do it?

Intro: Consciousness, what's the point?

A wave of awareness and sensitivity to death and loss had sprung upon me just moments ago, after opening a Christmas letter from my grandma. And now it's gone, and I feel no pain. As I begin to write I enter a contemplative stasis, and I don't know how reach beyond a mere observance when the object of my inspiration vanishes so quickly. So I will record my observations.

I am either writing to explore the implications in this human response with the aim to communicate what will hopefully be my better understanding of human nature, or I am exercising this particular expression to perform a required function in the duty of living. The process at which I manage the day to day emotional and physical obstacles may vary, but the outcome remains the same. Whether I write about it or not, I keep on living. Maybe this just makes it easier.

P.S. I don't always think of life as a duty and the day an obstacle. That would be...uncouth. And besides, I don't think I could live like that. This is the kind of irony that inspires my cynicism ;)

Part 1: Someone has a problem. Let's talk about how it makes me feel, because now it's giving me a hard time.

When we see a problem and we don't try our best to fix it, are we wrong? If a problem doesn't concern me directly I usually don't get involved. Although I could help, I generally do nothing or very little. I think about it sometimes, but how often do I actually go out of my way? When I consider the opportunities could take, and the opportunities I do take to do something extra, I feel like I'm not doing enough. I feel I should mention two presuppositions vital to the conception and development of these ideas. First, I am like you. I might be a Mac, you a Windows, and that person a cell phone or whatever, but we're all computers (people). Secondly, most people do not act in ways they truly believe to be wrong. So how do we do it?

I would not admit living in denial, but it does seem reprehensible to acknowledge the wrong, the unfair, and the hurtful in life, and to continue living ever the same. In my case, wanting and wishing to help more, but discouraged by my indefinite limit in sphere and impact, all the while too slowly improving my ability to make a positive impact, and most definitely not maximizing each moment's potential to achieve the most good. Because every moment is one spent for eternity, and every opportunity has an end; if you wait long enough.

On Christmas Eve, I saw the homeless man at the gas station shed a tear after informing him that I could not give him any cash and I did not have time to stop at an ATM. As I filled my car and then rushed off to my gig, I hoped the someone else would help. I would like to believe that the others who shunned him out of fear also hoped he could find something to make his life better. Nevertheless, this event creates dissonance in my mind, and not the kind that can be soothed by handing over a few bucks. It also extends to more than just the people being asked for money.

Even if I had money in my wallet, or taken the time to get some, it doesn't change the moral question of settling for a less than ideal outcome. There is no limit to generosity and self-sacrifice, so why stop at one dollar for one homeless person? There is no limit to need and want, so continue the fight to everyone in poverty! Help someone sad. So many things can be done to make things better, but we only do some of them. Why? Pathos cries for everything possible to be done, but if that were all it took the I wouldn't be thinking about this.

My skeptic tells me that even if I did give him money, or someone else did, the rewarding feeling of selflessness is marred or outweighed by the selfish avoidance of discomfort. And I do think of myself as a genuinely nice person, but I don't often meet people who openly share thoughts similar to my own, so I doubt that as well.

Judging by my habitual indulgence in myself, such as buying things I don't need and spending time doing things simply for my own enjoyment, it looks as if I've accepted a resignation of the overtly idealistic, romantic notion of doing literally everything in my power to fix the world's problems. But this fanciful impulse still plagues me, and I'm left grasping for an explanation of the motives of myself and others like me. 

Excepting Jesus, and a few other saintly figures who have come close, this vexation can perturb every mind from the most altruistic to the one who has little and does little. Now I look over to the social gospel and its' intellectual leaders, realizing that the answer to my problems has most likely already been revealed by better and smarter people, and you may say that I should research them before jumping to conclusions about how to fix things. I am more interested in understanding how my mind can work, and by extension, the average person. 'Can' is the key word. Knowing my potential for greatness and mediocrity and landing somewhere in between, by what means do we rationalize the gap? Willful ignorance may work for some, but like a lot of people I like to be aware of how I can improve. Pelagius believed we are all capable of living a sinless life, and Augustine believed we are all sinners and not capable of perfection. I struggle to reconcile the thought that I cannot live the pristine life I am capable of imagining. So now my religion helps me find peace. I know I'm flawed, but I'm forgiven since God loves me and I put my faith in Jesus. So now what? I do my best to live like him and wait till kingdom come? Then the world will be right.

It would be easy to stop there if I knew that I, and most other Christians, were making all the choices necessary to live like Jesus (with let's say a small quota of slip-ups, since we're all sinners). But while like Pelagius, I believe I could act like Jesus, there have too many times where I haven't and I don't exactly foresee divine intervention in my decision-making process. That makes me feel bad, so I hop over to Augustine and say "Can't be perfect, I'm a sinner!" But we don't believe you can "sin boldly" over and over and over again... But for a lot of us, this kind of happens. Then I point to really sinful people and defend myself saying something like, "Well I could be a lot worse, and judging by the look of it and the world's batting average, I'm making out pretty well. So if you don't mind, my dear Conscience, take a hike!" I'm sure I've tried this but when it comes down to it, I don't believe it's the way to go.

So it seems like I've narrowed down some options to ease my mind:
a). Start being as perfect and blameless as possible (tomorrow) and convince myself that I'm doing all that I humanly can.
b). Accept that I while I can try to be like Jesus, I have not and will not ever deserve comparison, so just keep living, sometimes giving money to a homeless person and sometimes looking them in the eye and saying "sorry, don't feel like it today." But by grace I am forgiven, so I can stop worrying about how I fall short and just live my life.
c). Your ethics and morals are just things people told you when you were a kid, there is no real right and wrong, it's invented to provide order and help people make sense of life. The reality is our survival, and to justify its' cost we create this structure in our mind that helps us keep living. So keep believing because the alternative is a meaningless life and death. And we wouldn't want you committing suicide when it gets hard.
d). I don't have time to think about this. I have to go practice.


Part 2 (In progress):

I came across, in this order, a blank Christmas card, a "thinking of you" card filled with writing not addressed to me, and several half pages of notebook paper, red ink scrawled across in what I understand as the hereditary gift bestowed upon moi as well as the inevitable devolution of my handwriting.

Moments ago, the nagging consciousness of impending loss was replaced with a full frontal gaze into what I think of now as the other side. In abstract terms, an abyss of unbearable thoughts. Specifically, pondering death, failure, aloneness, abandonment, and the list of stuff that's hard to live with goes on. It is with death the powers of my mind are working. First, with the suicide of my mom's old best friend, and second my fathers mother, to whom I owe so much and yet know so little, is going to die. Not immediately or on some set time-frame, but no longer is it a realization to be pushed away to be dealt with by "future Ben." "Present me" is growing up and is trying to take responsibility for hisself.

Cynic note: So again we are back to, "How can I help myself?"

Try for a time truly leaning into the full meaning of these thoughts and feeling the effects. Can they really be controlled? Because for me, with these thoughts came emotions, but the emotions are not coming back. Or if they are they're not as strong. Is it just another of our plethora of survival features, as if this were the vaccine for the pain I will experience? Perhaps with just enough small doses of the symptoms we fear, then actualization of which may be endured. How does this work? In my pursuit of understanding, I have found it enlightening to observe my actions through the base lens of survival. The belief that our actions are tainted more by motives unobserved than rational, self-aware discourse either stems from an evolutionary distrust of what I see, or simply has come into being through rational self-awareness. No matter how I spin it, it's complex and I realize there are many things which I can never fully grasp without misunderstanding.

The Breeze

Outside a stirs a Breeze. This breeze is not distinct from any other, yet she exists a conspicuously lone entity. She bristles as if in a struggle to reconcile her aspiration for a peaceful, non-turbulent life, with her conflicting raison d'être. During the fracas, the environment around her, disconcerted by this uncalled-for disturbance, precipitates a propulsion to expel the breeze from her fragile ecosystem. Rejected and distraught, the breeze gusts out in an inevitable act of nature, drawing even more undesired attention, and pushing her further and faster away on a meteoric path of upheaval.

Winding along, somewhat settled into this new flow of life, the breeze suddenly, as if in an act of fate, lands "plush," right in the midst of the leaves on many wiry, swaying branches. She is momentarily stilled, and complacently ensnared in the thick of the elastic framework of a Weeping Willow.

Alas, infuriated at the unconditional and indiscriminate acceptance of this drooping magnificence, and at the swallowed opportunity to be sad and free, the stifled breeze writhes and pleads, "Please, I should be free to flee from these groping leaves!" Then, through a combination of the tree's characteristic rigid compliance, and the breeze's classic series of evasive maneuvers, that which ceased to be upon collision was extracted amidst the groans of this ostensibly pliable willow.

The proud and lonely tree, wistfully watches the breeze ricochet off to another. All the while the World observes, amused at the irony of their lonely plight. For no tree can hold a breeze.