I Wonder…

                I wonder how different I am from the person I used to be.  I wonder if I ever went to any of my high school reunions, if people would say that I’m the same or different. 

                I feel like a completely different person.  I feel like if I met myself in high school, I probably would have either gotten drunk with me or thought I was a complete bitch.  It’s a double-edged sword, I guess, because all the things which helped me bridge social classes in high school and “float” are both positive and negative aspects of personality. 

                This is why I don’t attend high school reunions.

                I will tell you a story:  I met a boy in high school who I thought was very cool.  I didn’t date him then, but we were cool and partied together.  When I went to South Padre Island on Spring Break junior year with my friends, I got horribly burnt (Nebraska girl thought baby oil would be a good tanning supplement on the Gulf of Mexico); he was the only one who stayed with me.  My friends all went to the bar with their fake ids, but this dude got us some pot and put me out of my painful, burnt misery. 

                Years later, in college, that guy and I tried to officially “date”, but I was too wrapped up in my own narcissism to give him the respect he needed, so I cheated and lied and was an general asshole (repeated theme, I know).   It didn’t work out.  I saw him years later at a concert of some sort and he had a beautiful wife and beautiful children and I was very happy for him.   BUT… the point of the story is that I saw him RECENTLY (about a year ago) at a show at the Slowdown.  I said hello, and he had NO IDEA who I was.   I had to introduce myself, and when I DID, he pulled away immediately.  What the fuck?  Apparently I used to be even worse than I thought.  I about cried just from the surprised look on his face.  And yet, when I looked at my senior year yearbook picture today, I look ABSOLUTELY NOTHING like I used to look.  I mean, seriously.  Nothing.  So… whatever.  I’m not the same person.  Why should people remember me?  I am happy every single day that I am not the person I was in high school, so I don’t know why it would bother me when people don’t see that girl.  I should be relieved. 

                I always thought that I was only good at being young, but it turns out that I am much better at being older than being younger.  I GET things on a level that I never understood when I was younger.  I think that adolescence is a social disease.  The drama is the contagion factor.  As an adult, I refuse to engage in the drama. 

                Don’t get me wrong; getting old sucks ass.  My body betrays me on a daily basis.   And to be honest, my brain does it too; but I am so much smarter than when I was a teenager.   (Let’s extend that into the early 20s, actually).  I was kind of stupid.  I just went with the flow, which is a really terrible idea.  Sheep die.  Lemmings stumble over the edge.  All it really takes to succeed in life is to not be a fucking idiot.  And (this is a semi-new revelation to me) to not lie to yourself.  See the world as it is, and interact with it.  The substance of life doesn’t have to rely on other people.  As a very relevant example, if I relied on my husband to help me create the meaning of life, I’d be fucking dead.  Or in a van down by the river.   

                What is the point?!  I think the point is that people try to find meaning in things that don’t really matter.  My new life goal is to simply find a way to mentally fit the mode that I am in.   All I need is a little peace and quiet.  

Today in Philosophy

                Today was Albert Camus and Immanuel Kant.  God, I love philosophy. 

                I know I’ve written about Camus before, but I would guess that was about a year ago when I was knee-deep in it.  Is it just that there’s nothing new to say philosophically in the year 2012?  Or why can’t I spew thoughts about life and angst and get paid for it?  Philosophy is no longer marketable, I guess. But Camus was fucked in the head.  He (like Sartre) lost his father when he was only a year old, and there has to be something about that in the strange path his life took.  No father-figure = angst?  But I had a really good dad, and I’m still fucked up, so that theory doesn’t work. 

                Camus offered a pretty simple premise:  How do we make meaning out of this life?  He offered three potential solutions:  1. Kill yourself.  2.  Give it all over to god.  3.  Accept the chaos and go with it.  Personally, I am not ready to kill myself, nor am I ready to hand my life over to something which doesn’t exist, so … I’ll go with option three.  It’s a bit hard for me to accept the chaos sometimes, though.  Let me refer (AGAIN) to Bruce when I say, “I want what I want when I want it.”  Chaos is both good and bad, and I want to have control.  But I’ll tell you what, my way of accepting the chaos is to turn on the music really loud and just get down.  Sometimes it’s going to be really deep Pearl Jam that gets inside me, but other times it’s going to be a little T.I. “Why You Wanna? all up in there.  I don’t know …

                Camus’ The Stranger suggests a pretty stark version of grief – Mersault feels nothing when his mother dies.  I get that.  It’s not that I don’t love my mother, but people feel different things when they grieve.  Some people are going to go silent, others will go get totally fucked up, and others will kick in with the type-A personality that plans funerals and deploys wills.  I would probably be either silent or fucked up.  Or maybe, if I was lucky, it would be MY funeral, and I wouldn’t have to deal with anything.  (Just kidding , suicide watchers.)

                As Thom Yorke keeps asking me, “how come I always end up where I started?”  I don’t know Thom!  Because I am a terrible learner, apparently.  I always seem to choose emotional suicide over the alternative, because if I lived in my own reality, I would slit my wrists out of abject unhappiness with my interpersonal relationships.  How about that for some upfront honesty?  If I followed Camus’ doctrine, I would have probably killed myself a long time ago.  I don’t know if that’s good or bad – maybe I should have.  Wasn’t it Neil Young who said it was better to burn out than fade away?  I’m fading.

                All I know is that these philosophers get in my brain and make me better.  Defying all logic, they make me happier, just like Florence + The Machine makes me happy when I hear the song about the boy who builds coffins.  I am Wednesday Addams, apparently.  Whatever.  If it makes me okay, I don’t care what it is.  If John Mayer singing about gravity bringing me down brings a huge smile to my face, I’m not going to argue.  Find happiness where you can, even if it seems like a kind of dark place.  At least it’s a reprieve from feeling nothing or being bored out of your skull.  

The Buddha

                Are you ready for it?  The four noble truths:  1. Unenlightened human existence involves suffering.  2.  Reflection, meditation, and direct experience all combine to help understand existence, 3.  It is possible to break free from wanting things we don’t have by renouncing materialism, and 4.  Through a combination of wisdom, ethics, right-mindedness, and concentration we can achieve happiness.

                I am basically stuck at number one.  I think most people are, actually.  Life tends to revolve around acquisition of STUFF.  Wealth, social position, power, and sex are what most people fixate on.  Even super-religious people are preoccupied with looking pious or hoping for some great “wealth” in heaven.   

                What I really like about the Siddhartha Gautama’s ideology is that there has to be a middle way – life isn’t black and white.  We should never accept things without question, nor should we wallow in skepticism.  Extremes are unrealistic and unnecessary.  If we want to find the closest version of enlightenment, or truth, then we have to avoid dogma. 

                I also love that he wrote nothing down.  His teachings were simply passed down orally for centuries.  I may be wrong, but I think I say a lot of valuable, insightful things throughout the course of my days of teaching, and if someone was just there to tweet my brilliance, I’d be set.  (Unfortunately, there’s a lot of irrelevant, irreverent, asinine, offensive commentary in my speech as well.) 

                And karma.  It’s a bitch, yes?  As I have said (ad nauseum), I was an asshole back in the day, so I am imposing karma on myself.  I suffer because I think I deserve it.  I put up with shit because I used to put other people through shit.  But I am done with that, because I have done my penance.  Karma has recycled, and it’s time for me to reap the benefits of my martyrdom and sacrifice.  (Doesn’t that sound ridiculously narcissistic and jihadist?  Maybe I’m still an asshole.)

                Anyway, I am going to try very hard to stop being a bitch to certain people, because it will not help me in the long run.  Even if I am totally fed up with and tired of these certain people, it doesn’t benefit anyone to be a bitch (even though it feels really good sometimes).  Kindness begets kindness, so I will try to be a better person and treat people with respect. 

                Is this a ridiculously overdramatic proposal?  Maybe .  But that’s okay, because I want to grow, and sometimes growth happens semi-accidentally.  I’ll try, and if I fail, that’s okay too.  At least I can say I wasn’t blinded by stupidity or arrogance.  And I absolutely believe that a person can be ethical and moral without subscribing to a religious doctrine.  Religion is just a way for people to feel like they are part of something and that their lives have meaning.  I don’t need a figurehead priest to affirm the meaning of my life.  I will either find personal salvation (happiness) or not; churches are just (sometimes) pretty places to admire (one of the rare things the Catholics did very well – build architecturally inspiring buildings).  Most of the people speaking for the church are other narcissistic assholes who think their opinion is somehow better or more relevant than other people’s.  (They are wrong.)

                Bottom line with the Buddha:  good actions produce good consequences and bad actions bad ones.  Yes.  Agreed, sir.  The stunning thing is how many times I have chosen the wrong path, knowing that it’s wrong and knowing that the consequences will be dire.  I can’t be alone in this humanistic stupidity.  People make bad choices sometimes, but I think that’s (maybe) the only thing that makes me interesting.  I fuck up all the time, and that’s the part of me I like.  I don’t like the anal-retentive part of my personality, but it’s the part that gets things done.  Once again, it’s not all black and white.  The combination of good and bad is what makes people conceivable and interactive. 

                If the Buddha was right, and life is like recycling, as of right now, I’m doomed to repeat the process, because I definitely haven’t figured it out.  I have not found my fig tree under which I become enlightened.  I’m still looking for it.  I will find it.  

House-Hunting

I have spent HOURS on the internet looking for a house to rent this summer. I can’t afford it, but I look almost every day anyway. I look at houses on the beach, boasting stunning ocean sunset views and proximity to all kinds of cool shit. I browse through the photographs of other people’s homes and day dream. I’m not sure why I do this to myself, because it does nothing more than make me remarkably unhappy in the long run (since I always end up turning the computer off in disgust rather than actually booking a trip). I look for college teaching jobs that I don’t want just because they happen to be near the ocean. I actually don’t want another job, I just want to be able to go the ocean a lot. Vacations are good enough – I don’t need to actually move anywhere right now. But … the last vacation just reminded me how much I don’t want to be stuck here all the time. So many I’m wrong. My inability to be happy with what I have is a disease. Back to the houses: who are these people who own huge beautiful homes on a stunningly gorgeous beach and DON’T LIVE IN THEM?! Do they have something better to do than live in a castle by the ocean? Perhaps they have several castles on various beaches? Where do these people get all that money? Literally nothing I could do would allow me the ability to afford such a place. I have no wealthy relatives who will hand down an inheritance, my job is at the bottom of the food chain, and I didn’t marry rich. I have no marketable skills – well, highly LUCRATIVE skills. I feel like I did everything wrong – made all the wrong decisions – and got stuck in a big, fat, steel trap. I would have to gnaw my leg off to get out, and I’m not willing to be legless quite yet. Maybe if I just got myself into one of those homes, I could claim squatter’s rights or something. Hole up with lots of weapons and refuse to leave. (That would probably ruin the California ambience, though.) Maybe if I quit something and saved all the money – quit going out, no more restaurants, bars, new clothes, shoes – then I could squirrel away the money. The problem with that plan is that eating out and seeing live music are probably the only things which keep me sane in this place. So I guess the choice is more vacations but more depressive mental illness, or the status quo banality of life. Shitty choices. But I have to go now, because I haven’t looked for houses yet today, and words are not my friend right now. I’m going to mentally check out and pretend to be what I’m not … YET.

Philosophy 101

What makes a philosopher? Interesting thoughts? (check) Borderline craziness? (check) Broken interpersonal relationships? (check) The tendency to brood over life events? (check) Theories about human behavior? (check) The ability to provide psychological support systems? (check) Past and/or present substance abuse? (check, check)

I’m a dead lock for “philosopher of the year.”

Now, onto the question of why I’m not.

As I’ve said a thousand times before, I have no attention span. I blame ecstasy. Let’s just leave it at that. Remember when people said that drugs were bad? Turns out that in many respects they were absolutely right. Long term effects of substantial and abusive drug use do, in fact, suck. Perhaps the only bonus is the ability to look at life through a completely different lens than most other people. Could I have done that without train-wrecking my head? Maybe. But probably not. (at least not in my case). Not to be redundant, but I used to be a huge asshole. In many ways, I still am, but I am now (unlike when I was younger) hyper-conscious of the world around me. I am affected by things which should have absolutely nothing to do with me, because I feel like that certain part of the collective unconscious is thumping in the back of my brain. People are people, which is why I am constantly stunned by other people’s enthusiasm for unethical things (like killing, enslavement, and obnoxious narcissism). I just don’t understand why people are such assholes.

Now, to be fair, most “philosophers” don’t talk like that. They exchange crude words for “socially conscious” words, but I simply don’t want to care. I will never be Jean Paul Sartre, because I am not … 1. French, 2. a soldier and escaped POW, 3. in love with another philosopher with whom I exchange sexual partners, or 4. cross-eyed. And since he’s my hero – well, let’s be honest, Nietzsche is my favorite crazy person – I can’t live up to the existential hype. I can live my personal angst every day and blog about it, but I have no audience. What I feel is what a million other people feel. I have nothing original to say. BUT … the fact that so many people feel lost and in crisis nowadays is probably something we ought to pay attention to. Life is not something to be taken for granted. It’s necessary to take risks and make changes and then take responsibility for the things we do.

This is where I suck. I know (and HAVE known) for quite some time that the life I’m leading is not the right one. I rationalize my current life by saying that I cannot afford to change my circumstances and I do not want to disrupt the lives of those around me with my personal issues. I willfully admit that those excuses are a total cop-out. If I really felt so strongly about the misdirection of my life, I would change it regardless of the consequences. Unfortunately, I empathize too much with other people, so I can’t screw up their lives just to make myself (potentially) happy. I will do the martyr thing and wait it out. It sounds ridiculous because it is, but I haven’t found another realistic choice yet.

Living the philosophically true life isn’t easy.

Crazy? Or Just Like Everyone Else?

I am absolutely overwhelmed every time I read the newspaper. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to just sort of go into a trance while I read it, and then it’s not as depressing. So many things that people do are unexplainable. Irrational. Depraved. I’m no model of perfection; I may even be an anti-example of behavioral traits, but I have no idea what twisted shit goes on in some peoples’ minds.

---

I just stared at the screen for a while there, laid down in bed, stared at the wall, and couldn’t put together any coherent thoughts about news or politics or humanity. I know that I often put on this face of cynicism and misanthropy, but at the core of my human crisis is a tragic idealism which paralyzes me. In response to such overwhelming inertia, I do nothing. I can’t help it. I want to change the world. I want to contribute something worthwhile, but I can’t. I can’t write about anything, because I get engulfed with the single-minded thought that nothing I do will be good enough, so I do nothing. I get tired just thinking about writing another shitty book. (And they are shitty. They’re tragically autobiographical, thus essentially worthless to anyone but me.)

I write on this blog. No one reads it. Why would they? I teach in a school where no one listens. (At least most of the time.) And I live in a house where no one appreciates anything I do. So the essential question is why do anything? If what I do is not worthy of a footnote, then what am I doing? I felt more alive sitting on a beach two weeks ago reading a book than I do most days living my “normal” life. How do I change what I’m doing if I don’t know what I want to do? For too long, the answer to that question has been … do nothing. Hope it will get better somehow. What a stupid way to think.

I wonder where people get their hope from. I think mostly they get it from either religion or ignorance. Blind hope or general blindness. I’d like to think that I can change the course of my personal life, but it’s too late to do most of the spontaneous things I want to do. When I do them now, it’s just irresponsible. What an onus to bear. Getting old sucks, especially when you don’t have money to buffer the rocky reality of life.

I had a quarter-life crisis long ago which involved copious amounts of drugs and alcohol, and now I seem to be having a mid-life crisis in which I can’t shed the extraneous baggage which tethers me to the mediocrity of a failed marriage and suffocating debt. Some days I want to swallow a bottle of sleeping pills with a bottle of wine, and the next day I want to dance in the rain simply to celebrate the weather. Like Jimi Hendrix said, “I know what I want, but I just don’t know how to go about getting it.” That sounds about right.

---

Another admission: I just spent the last hour wandering around my house and then reading other peoples’ stupid facebook posts. I can’t help it! My ADD is taking over. I am doomed to be a high school teacher with little to no relevance forever. insert sad face here. If you know me, you know that mediocrity will kill me faster than pancreatic cancer would. Someone please volunteer to smother me if I look too boring :)

(Insert positive words of wisdom here.)