I am conflicted about The Stranger. The self reflection found in this blog is a testimony to my constant quest for value and meaning, which goes directly against the idea that the world is absurd and meaning cannot exist. But recently I have found myself living more and more in the present rather than hoping for the future or reflecting on the past (less clear due to the angst present in this blog). I know it's a popular philosophy to live in the Now, but for me it's a little uncomfortable to experience life and not analyze because I do believe in an organized universe sculpted by my Creator. I believe in meaning, invest my life in meaning, and Camus' philosophy in The Stranger contradicts that.
But on one hand, I'm not quite convinced it does, and that scares me.
I began this unit with disagreeing with each of the statements on the anticipation guide except for the "I can only obtain true meaning in life after I have reached a state of nothingness" which I agree with when looked at through a Christian lens as it echo's the idea of John 3:30 "He must become greater I must become less"
I ended this unit questioning my stance on the first statement "existence is absurd and true meaning in life is impossible." I'm not striving for meaning, am I still as invested in it? I will admit that most of my knowledge of existentialism and absurdism along with Camus' beliefs comes from Wikipedia and I am really confused by it all.
All I know is that the chart on the Absurdism wiki-page makes me think that my own philosophies don't necessarily contradict Theistic Existentialism or Absurdism. But I meet the rest of the information mostly with disagreement.
In my last last post I look for hope, hope not being antonymous with despair, but instead the ability to look forward into the future. Hope is what is missing from the end of The Stranger, and this lack of hope is what most prevents me from accepting the existentialist/absurdist philosophy, but is also the very thing that leaves me with Camus' words uncomfortably echoing in my head. With my own future chocked fully of ambiguity I don't have the same type of specific optimism that I've had in the past. I am looking forward to the coming times, but I don't know quite what to look for, so I have found myself focusing more on the present and assessing less value to experiences, just letting them exist. But more than ever, I want hope, I want anticipation, I want to keep looking forward. I don't want to be like Mersault, I don't want ever to be able to identify with the closing statement of this novel:
"As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world...I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate" (page 122-3)
I think the only way to cope with returning is to keep focused on the future (listening to my bros Tennyson and Sophocles), to make each end a new beginning, so I guess the next question is how does one keep their eyes on the hopeful horizon and move on?
Camus gives me this question, but provides me with no answers.
Title from "Winter Song" by The Head and The Heart
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Saturday, January 21, 2012
"I know that we all have to go our own ways, but hey, I still miss you."
Last semester, through literature and experience, I think I came pretty close to an answering my question in a way my heart understands.
Change is inevitable during each stage of life, as noticeable as physical growth or geographic displacement and as subtle as the feelings I have no words for. Coming home sets in action a change that is different from day to day transformations or the sudden difference that leaving causes; coming home requires reconciliation of past with present. And the only way to cope with this change is by embracing it. Fighting change and fighting only for the past, whether the past I had before I left or the past I had during the adventure, leads to painful reminders of what has been left behind. But forgetting the impact of past journeys negates their value and is emotionally impossible.
The Samurai's Garden by Gail Tsukiyama told me how to embrace change. The idea of a clean slate was something brought up again and again during my semester at HMI. In January we were told to give others and ourselves a chance to be something different than we were at home and to give the semester a slate free from expectations and a chance to just be RMS XXVI, wholly ours, unique from the 25 before us. In May we were told to give home the same clean slate; rid our friends, our families, our schools from the burden of expectations and comparisons. That was much harder said than done, and I must have missed the part when giving ourselves another clean slate while going home was mentioned, because I certainly have struggled with letting myself be free to move into a new life with it's changes, subtle and not, from my life at HMI as well as before it. But embracing change means giving myself a clean slate to transform. My essay I wrote over The Samurai's Garden dealt with Tsukiyama's use of a water motif to represent the necessity of change and the growth that comes from it. But more importantly The Samurai's Garden and the essay I wrote about it mirrored the excitement and pain of moving on, of saying good bye, of giving clean slates but not forgetting the wonderful past that has lead to now.
So, I sit here now wondering if I'm ready to move on to a new question. Is returning home still something that is weighing heavily on my heart? On Thursday, one year will have passed since I left on my semester adventure, and next Monday will mark 8 months since returning and it feels a little ridiculous that it's taken twice as long as my semester to stop "returning" and be ready to just get to the living.
Though part of me is scared to move forward, clutching to the past as not to forget a thing, I know I need the hope of today and the hope of the future to fill the lonely nights when once-tangible things fade to what seems like only ghosts and dreams.
title from "Angel Rays" by Trevor Hall
Change is inevitable during each stage of life, as noticeable as physical growth or geographic displacement and as subtle as the feelings I have no words for. Coming home sets in action a change that is different from day to day transformations or the sudden difference that leaving causes; coming home requires reconciliation of past with present. And the only way to cope with this change is by embracing it. Fighting change and fighting only for the past, whether the past I had before I left or the past I had during the adventure, leads to painful reminders of what has been left behind. But forgetting the impact of past journeys negates their value and is emotionally impossible.
The Samurai's Garden by Gail Tsukiyama told me how to embrace change. The idea of a clean slate was something brought up again and again during my semester at HMI. In January we were told to give others and ourselves a chance to be something different than we were at home and to give the semester a slate free from expectations and a chance to just be RMS XXVI, wholly ours, unique from the 25 before us. In May we were told to give home the same clean slate; rid our friends, our families, our schools from the burden of expectations and comparisons. That was much harder said than done, and I must have missed the part when giving ourselves another clean slate while going home was mentioned, because I certainly have struggled with letting myself be free to move into a new life with it's changes, subtle and not, from my life at HMI as well as before it. But embracing change means giving myself a clean slate to transform. My essay I wrote over The Samurai's Garden dealt with Tsukiyama's use of a water motif to represent the necessity of change and the growth that comes from it. But more importantly The Samurai's Garden and the essay I wrote about it mirrored the excitement and pain of moving on, of saying good bye, of giving clean slates but not forgetting the wonderful past that has lead to now.
So, I sit here now wondering if I'm ready to move on to a new question. Is returning home still something that is weighing heavily on my heart? On Thursday, one year will have passed since I left on my semester adventure, and next Monday will mark 8 months since returning and it feels a little ridiculous that it's taken twice as long as my semester to stop "returning" and be ready to just get to the living.
Though part of me is scared to move forward, clutching to the past as not to forget a thing, I know I need the hope of today and the hope of the future to fill the lonely nights when once-tangible things fade to what seems like only ghosts and dreams.
title from "Angel Rays" by Trevor Hall
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Ulysses
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
that loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known---cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honored of them all---
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end.
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me---
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads---you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
the sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are---
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Tennyson, that guy knows what's up.
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
that loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known---cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honored of them all---
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end.
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, my own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle---
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me---
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads---you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
the sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are---
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Tennyson, that guy knows what's up.
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