On Philosophy and Life

Day 1

Everything here was written in October-November, 2022. There are 52 posts total, one for each day I wrote. 

    So I suppose that I should start with who I am, why I'm here, and what I'm writing: I just graduated from college with a 4-year degree, and I don't really know what to do with my life...no, that's a bit of lie. I have absolutely, 100%, to a frankly embarrassing degree, no idea or plan whatsoever. I know what I don't want to do, or at least I've had a few examples in my life of what I don't want to do – I don't want to work under a boss. Bosses are ok sometimes, but its still galling to be ordered around. At the very least I see myself as a partner, as being of an equal level with other people I am working with, doesn't matter what job I'm doing. Do you see the difference? Even if I am doing menial labor, I am still choosing to be there. As a manager, or as a line worker, we all have our jobs to do. None of us is really on top, because all of us can leave at any time. I, even as a peon, have other options, and I feel that when you are stuck in a job with a boss, it is easy to forget that. At the very least, I'd like some direct correlation between how hard I work and what I get paid.... As I recall, this what one of the prime complaints that I felt I had as a peon worker. That if I was to be praised for doing a good job, or given a commemorative pin, or given a pizza party, that I would almost certainly have rather just had money... Not because these other ways of being 'paid' aren't nice, but because unless you are doing a job that you love, you are, in a way, forced to be there. I know that doesn't sound like what I said before, but just because I have choices doesn't mean that these choices happen instantaneously. Even when I want to switch jobs, I still have to put up with what I don't like doing for a while, and I still need a job that results in me making money in some way, so that I can live. Now, sometimes the jobs that you had are not that bad, and most jobs are more on the level of a dislike, than an absolute loathing of them. You can still learn, and often it is the people that you work with that make the job a little more bearable. After all, you don't want to let them down, and every job has its private jokes.

    This, though, feels like a bit of a trap – its a trap sweetened with honey, but one which imprisons you nonetheless. Most of the folk I have worked with are nice and hard workers, but, and don't get me wrong here, I wanna be selfish. Now I'm naturally selfish of course, but I'm also naturally unselfish, like most people. I want to help, but I don't want to care too much. Mainly, I feel, that is because I am tired and easily distracted. What I am trying to get across by this is – I don't want to be bored. I enjoy traveling around, meeting people, experiencing life, and learning new things. I've pursued this goal quite steadily. However, I am also incredibly shy. How do these things go together you might ask? Well, it turns out that I am willing to talk about anything, and I can babble for hours on end, but I'm also usually going to wait to see if you want to talk to me first. Go ahead, come up and start up a conversation about anything, ask me a question about anything, and I will be happy to answer, as long as I feel that we aren't just talking past one another.

    My talents are, if anything, in analyzation. I think things through, and ten years is hardly enough time to understand even a short poem. What I find this results in is that it is hard for me to be offended, but that it is easy for me to offend others. I don't really intend to do so, but I can certainly ask questions about things that people don't want to question. Ethics and science are all interesting, and certainly there are things that I don't know much about, but I could go on about if I had to. How deep do you want to go? How much can I learn, how much can I explain or link to other ideas, how much have I forgotten that's relevant to this, are all concerns one can have. I freely admit that I don't know a lot, and that I am often mistaken, and that I change my mind quite often, but so what? I can go through life scared of reaching out, stuck in a hole writing to myself, but frankly I've already done that. I've lived a life in fear of going outside, in fear of confrontation, in fear of consequences, and frankly I'm tired. I'm so tired – When I was younger, I used to read a lot of books. And I mean a lot of books, maybe twenty or thirty a week. Mostly these were fantasy, science fiction, and the occasional general knowledge book. I love reading, and I still read at least a book a week, and sometimes more. Anyways, I remember thinking that perhaps I would be a librarian when I grew up, or own a book store. Yet, I graduated with a degree in Philosophy, not Information Science or Business. Why is this?

    I feel that the answer lies in other concerns of mine. See, now we move onto – Why philosophy? I remember my first philosophy class, a general intro at my first Community College. What I remember most clearly of all isn't the class, or the people, the teacher or what I learned. Rather, what I remember most clearly is a thought that I had during the second class – that “This isn't work...I do this anyway”. That is, that what we were trying to do in philosophy class, just thinking about and analyzing ideas, is something that I do anyway. I have notes going back to when I was fifteen see, and if you read these notes they sound an awful lot like philosophy. Thoughts about life, death, wants, good and bad, reality and dreams, on and on. I still keep these notes today, writing hundreds of them a year. See, for me philosophy isn't anything special like the study of problems, the analysis of language, or the figuring out of the great mysteries. Rather, philosophy is simply life. I once said to a good teacher of mine that “Probably, the only philosophy that is really worth doing is that which results in you either crying or screaming.” Philosophy is intense, it matters, it is about living. All else, the puzzles and logic, the history and human connections, are secondary to living life, to figuring out what to do. At the end of the day, we philosophize because we are desperate. Desperate for answers about life, about living, about understanding world around us. I can dull my mind, become obsessed with a game, a book, or a beautiful dame, but eventually I'll snap out of it. Eventually there will come a time of quiet when I'm walking around, or trying to go the sleep, and I'll have a thought. A thought that is a revelation about sometime in my life, that helps me to understand or deal with a stress, that suggests something important is around the corner of my mind, if only I cold go a little further on this path. See, at the end of that class, I distinctly remember the teacher talking to me on the last day and asking if I was planning to pursue more study of philosophy, and that he'd be happy to give me a recommendation if I ever needed one. What I said to him was something like: “I don't think so. I prefer doing philosophy instead of thinking about it.”

    In the same way, as a child I realized one day that I didn't want to just be reading stories about heroes and villains, about travelers and travails, about cool things and wicked events. Rather, I wanted to be one of the characters in the story, to live a life that was something like what I had been reading about for so long. I wanted to dare, not just to dream, but to scream a little. To shake the foundation of the world, my world, just a little. This isn't an easy task. It is so simple to fall into old patterns, to think old thoughts and live old lives. I could see myself being happy doing something or other, being a librarian, running a business, shuffling paper in a backroom somewhere during the week while I played video games on the weekends and took my two-weeks of vacation every year to go see something famous. Loving sports teams, playing tennis, cooking and eating.. all these things are fine and good, and if they make you happy go ahead and do them. For my part though, while I find happiness and fulfillment in doing so, it doesn't last. Eventually something in me will turn, will yearn for something more and make a break for it. Philosophy, for me, is everything. It is everywhere, and the study of philosophy can be the study of anything. Witness every book on a topic, that they inform. Science, as we know it, is based in philosophy. Art has philosophies, the construction and design of buildings is philosophy, the why and how of running, the methods of teaching and learning, the styles of programming and the makeup of languages – these are all, somehow, philosophy. I think that the formal study of philosophy has philosophy living at the edges and the core of all things. Any course of study has a basic philosophy at its core, a plan or method of what to do and why, a way of looking at the world, and a way of relating to other ideas. Philosophy lives at the edges as well, revealing issues of edge cases and definitions, or showing links between academic and practical issues that were never seen as related before. Philosophy can be professional as in the academic study of formal logic and metaphysics, but it can also be unprofessional, being concerned with what do to, how to react, why to live, where to go, and all the struggles of life.

    So I know what I don't want to do – I don't want to have a boss, I don't want to be bored, and I don't want to be trapped. Now, I'm a weak person in all sorts of ways. I'm am, on occasion, cripplingly shy, prone to distraction and forgetting, physically small, become ill easily, have a bad knee, shoulder, and eyes at my tender age, and am prone to panic when under stress. I don't know much, if anything, about all sorts of topics and don't have any sort of plan. Now, this was the same for me ten years ago as it is today. So, what I resolved to do, was to try and work on some of my weaknesses. I think that I have succeeded to some extent. There isn't much I can do about physical problems, but a better diet, exercise,and sleeping ten hours a day can at least make life bearable. I may get weekly headaches still, but I know how to deal with them now. For being a bit of a dunce, I've tried to, and sometimes I'm fine, but sometimes I manage to miss my train stop because I can't figure out how to open the door in time. All I can do is try to be more cognizant. However, what I've found is that, up to a certain point, we've got to take ourselves as we come. Got to realize how we work, and just roll with it. I tend to ask questions out loud and then answer them myself. Some-one found this very annoying, and asked me to just ask myself those questions silently. I replied – that's not how it works. I function in a certain way and though I can modulate it to some extent, it is often the case that I should take what works naturally for me and exploit it better. As well, I tend to panic when under stress. What I manage today is still to panic, but then to move through the panic. I look, and sound like an octopus looks, when surprised and forced to do something suddenly, but now I only do that for a few seconds. See, I can spend a lot of time and effort telling myself not to panic, trying to calm myself, but then I'm fighting myself. Instead what I have found works is to deal with myself as myself, as if I had good reasons for what I do and why I do it. To trust myself a little more.

    My other weakness though, and the one that I have the most trouble with on a daily basis, is shyness. I'm what you might call 'slow to open up', where once I know you I'll jabber all day, but getting over that first hurdle is incredibly hard. Now, I've still managed to make friends and have acquaintances, but most of the time they approached me first. Thus, I tend to make friends through some activity, being it computer games, ping-pong, Yugioh, or class projects. However, this shyness can be an issue in dealing with strange people. Hyping myself up to talk to call somebody on the phone, spending an hour crafting a two-sentence email, or being overcharged at the grocery store yet not wanting to spend the enormous amount of energy and effort it takes to bring that to the cashiers attention, are all common occurrences. I know this is an issue of mine, I've known for a long time. So, I resolved to do something about it.

    I decided to travel. See, I know that I'd probably never get to the point where I would just 'get over' my shyness, and that if I just told myself to talk to stranger that it would never happen. That is, forcing myself to act in a certain way isn't the answer. Therapy isn't, because talking to somebody is the issue in the first place. I don't need encouragement, and I know what I want to do, sorta, I just occasionally find myself not talking to anybody for weeks on a time quite often. What I figured out I needed to do, was to put myself in positions where I couldn't run away. I traveled outside the state for college to a town where I didn't know anybody so that I would be forced to develop new relations. I joined clubs which I knew nothing about, because I had to ask questions to understand what the club was concerned about. Never mind that I only got four hours of sleep the night before the meeting worrying about it; If I couldn't force myself to talk to people, I could at least force myself to physically enter the room. I went to foreign countries where I didn't speak the language, places in Asia where I stood out, and lived in Mexico where I had to struggle to manage daily living. You can only point and gesture to communicate so far – at some point, you and the person you are trying to communicate with enter into a mutual effort at communication. What I gained from this was the realization that I was probably going to stand out anyway. Doesn't matter if its true – perhaps I fade into the background – but telling myself that I was already doomed made living with the doom a whole lot easier. After all, if you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't, then you may as well just do what you want. Paradoxically, you enter the trap to become free.

    So all of this leads me to today. I'm currently writing this while living in a small apartment in Finland. I'm here for about two months, and I have resolved to write something every day of these two months. (52 days total) From my travels, I have gained the precious ability to babble inanely, and to write, if not an enormous amount, at least a few hundred words at a sitting without issue. I firmly expect that a great deal of what I have to write down will be meandering in its form, but I do intend to write about some topics for certain, mainly a few philosophical ones. That of course could mean anything, but I'd like to at least flesh out some of the ideas in my notes, and write a bit about how I see and understand the world. I don't know if I expect to be understood, but when in doubt I find that recalling a few sentences of Emerson helps to give me a bit of a push: “Does he lack organ or medium to impart his truth? He can still fall back on this elemental force of living them”.*

* Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar Address