And so it goes…

“I think the worst thing to contemplate is this – it’s all happened before, how soon will it happen again? Fifty years after Waterloo Napololean was as much a hero to English school children as Wellington. How do we know our grandchildren won’t idolize Von Hindenburg the same way?”
“What brings it about?”
“Time, damn-it and the historian. If we could only learn to look on evil as evil, whether it’s clothed in filth or monotony or magnificence. “
F. Scott Fitzgerald

This quote strikes a part of my soul that has been deeply troubled since my youth. While some find the circularity of life and death to be truly beautiful and inspiring, I find it to be horribly twisted. I can feel it pulling at all my attempts at relationships. I see it in my day to day activities. I see it in conversations. I see it in my classes. No matter how different my life has become, I find myself in the same haunts with the same feelings and the same melancholy aftermath.

It seemed that last year was this great transformative year raging with utter despair and isolation. Looking back, I understand that my hopelessness resulted from a lack of intimacy and understanding. Now I lie in my bed with the same thoughts cycling in my head fueled by each steady beat of my heart. I can feel that pull towards old relationships, the temptation to try again. (She is beautiful and he is beautiful and I have failed ) Thus, I attempt to capture the hearts of others. Yet, I know that my time is limited. I know now that relationships are riddled with hurt. How long? How long do I have? How long can we make good times last? Damn Time, and damn my folly and damn past restraints and damn new uncertainties.

back to school

“I couldn’t manage to share in the joys and activities of those my age, and I had often been consumed with self-reproaches and worries as if I were hopelessly cut off from them, as if I were shut off from life”
Hermann Hesse

So much has happened in the last year to make this quote literally an embodiment of my life. Was something wrong with me? Why was I filled with self-reproaches? Why couldn’t I get along with people my age? Why do I feel that horrible restlessness rising in my chest, that venom in my tongue, my feet running to the door?

Every time I went to a party I felt this deep loneliness building and building. It felt like my insides were bubbling with anguish. I would drink deep to try to make the feeling cease, smile my cheshire cat smile, and bat my pretty dark eyelashes. Yet, the artificial lens would wear away and I was once more staring at the door, fiddling with my keys, begging for an escape.

And why was I so filled with this hatred? Why loathe the girls in their heels and tights, cooing to the closest boy? Why scoff at the boys yelling obscenities and play fighting? It wasn’t jealousy but perhaps instead a sadness that I could not possibly have fun in such an environment. I couldn’t understand how anyone could be laughing in the midst of such excess and nonsense. Yet, what was so funny? Why couldn’t I also be entertained by it all? Thinking back to the loneliness of growing up, I wondered if I would ever truly enjoy being with people.

So now I find myself in this same place again. I will once again be dropped off in the jungle of hormones and irresponsibility. Will I tolerate the heartache by trying to socialize with my peers or will I end up lying alone in bed in loathing the noises I hear from my window pane?

Perhaps I will try to be moderate about it all. Only time shall tell.

Grey.

“Destiny. My destiny! Droll thing life is — that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself — that comes too late — a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be.”

_Joesph Conrad in Heart of Darkness_

I found this passage particularly moving and exact. When I feel my soul swelling in fury at the condition of this life, I am only reminded that nature is cruel and that my anguish shall have no justice. Conrad conveyed this concept so beautifully. To seek the self remains the only discernible goal of this existence. And how disheartening to know that to find is to lose. Eastern philosophers think that the only way to know thy soul is to remove the cloudy lens of experience, to strip away judgement and see all for the essence of its being.

One of my professors asked one of the theists in the class whether it mattered to her if she went to heaven as her pure soul or as her current identity. Naturally, the fear of losing self-awareness ensured that the latter was the case. Yet how silly to think that the individual identity is an option for eternity. To be eternal is to be apathetic, “the impalpable greyness.” To find oneself is to allow the identity to dissolve, allowing the indifferent soul to shine.

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Found this related Hesse quote in my stack of papers. What a beautiful man

“It was wrong to desire new gods, it was totally wrong to try to give the world anything! There was no duty for enlightened people, none, none except this: to seek themselves, to become certain of themselves, to grope forward along their own path, wherever it may lead”