Personal Ponderings

This may be a 30,000 foot view of life.  He's been in the planes looking down between the clouds to see a landscape, one that looks miniature.  Tierra firme!  He's a terrestrial.  Feet upon the ground and brain sometimes in outer-space.

The steam of hot coffee, a Spring morning that is shaping up to be a Winter morning, but that is all part of the cycle of Springing in the Northern Hemisphere.  One cannot have Spring without som'more Winter.  Winter may not want to let go (please allow a personification), much like this man does not like to let go either of that which feels safe and the comfort of the "expected".  Then there is the "usual" which has changed and metamorphosed, and nothing is all that predictable.  Covid-19 perhaps it was more predictable than he or anyone thought possible.  Then there is the toy like scene from 30,000 feet of Ukraine and Monster Russia playing at something awful: war.  Predictable as well, he supposes, but this is not some miniature child's play, but then Putin is very childish: a child with nuclear weapons.

The man sits and types, and thinks.  He let's himself feel, the tears have not yet come, but they almost did the other day.  He almost prayed.  Then he remembered that there was no god to answer and thought about how fragile man is and how desperately we hope that hope will change something.  It does not.  Work does, science does, and people sitting down together may actually work, if we are willing to make it work.  

Then we don't listen until there is painful consequences.   But why do we have to resort to killing each other to get what we want.  Do we really want the results of war?  Maybe some part of us does.    Another part abhorred war, always abhorred it.  We keep promising ourselves that it is the "last resort".  We won't do war again.  This is the last war, and we keep breaking that promise.  It's all very terrifying.

We might be better off applying humanistic principles.   We might actually find a way to peacefully co-exist, even with the powerful world religions.  After all it's not religion.  It's people playing at beliefs.  Convinced people non-the-less.  What if we were convinced to destroy our weapons of mass destruction? 

He ponders what it would be like to be released from the "have-to-dos"....

"Dearest Dan...I've decided to retire.  Please retire with me.  Let's travel and sleep-in and eat good food  at fancy restaurants, dip our toes in the seven seas, go to the Black Sea and the Red Sea, kayak on the Yellow River and the Blue Nile, and float down the Amazon.  Let's pet a purple hippo too. Hee, Hee, Hee."

His husband-to-be just called, and heard him typing.  He requested a love note, and this is what came out.  He's (the writer) a very lucky man to wake up in a warm house, drink a hot beverage, microwave a warm breakfast in seconds, commute to his basement office, be able to complain about the weather, and the smaller first-world problems that any gay man wakes up to, one who is happily in love and feeling good about his future.

And there are the tiny problems crawling about in his head as ants do, and as brains go, it's not all that uncommon for brains to be doing what brains do until brains stop doing what brains do.  Brains do all sorts of things, like war.  Like peace, and love, and living, and showing affection and warmth and all that is very different from war and destruction.

His heart goes out to other hurting humans, there was the news flash early this week: "Daniel committed suicide in the Big Thompson Canyon", and the blast of  that single shot silenced a young-man's life and will echo in this man's heart for a long time, and in Mike's and Kathy's hearts (the parents) for a much longer time, and the pain does not stop, and we wish Daniel had not done it, and we wonder what we could have done differently, and this man thinks about his old friends, and wonders what it was that drove this young man at less than a quarter of a century of life to such a dead-stop end.  Things that brains ponder and think they can figure out, but cannot.  Plain and simple brain, you cannot figure it out.

A friend is slowing decaying of ALS.  Soon he will pass from this life.  That soon will be drawn out, and may even be slowed down by new and better medical treatments, and then there is the young and/or old doctor/scientist researcher who right now will have solved this ALS problem, this specific type of ALS, only after this friend is dead and gone.  Now we cherish the human, living connection, and think about the the shortness of life.  We joke, we laugh, we call, we visit, we try to be close, even though a new and deepening friendship is emerging, the shortness of it all will take both their breathes', and the mourning has already begun, after all this writer can think of many others that "deserve" ALS, and this brain bangs out a hopeless: WHY?

Across the world humans are living.  Joys and sorrows encompass our existence.  Perhaps enlivening and even enriching our existence.  Someone has just struck gold (literally) and another has just lost everything.  A birth, a death, a marriage a divorce, a spontaneous recovery, a sudden unexplainable death, a new job, a layoff....and your brain can fill in all the things that big brains are able to think of.  Most of us will "just" exist.  Not a bad proposition.  That "just" is pretty big, and really a huge accomplishment.

I don't know about you, but I agree with Frank's wisdom, the meaning and purpose of a humanist's/atheist's lived values is to be found in that beautiful "hedonic triad":  Love, Beauty, Creativity.  I think it's of value, and you should poke around on his thoughtful contributions:  frank-zindler.com  Another friendship that this writer values and appreciates, and one who will also be mourned when gone.  This man's short existence has amazingly has added up to almost 83 years, and hopefully more good years of meaningful existence are ahead before that certain ending comes.

If he can just work backwards from death, then possibly he will choose a life that will be the best he can make of.  This is the thinker's hope.  It may be a foolish approach, and there are the friendships with people my own age, and the worries of the middle of life worries, and all the disinterest in the old and the young, and all the "Why in the world would you waste your time...." and "I have more important things.  This is just plain depressing....and all such like thoughts you've had while reading this"....and then there will be the day that your mortality hits you like a ton of bricks falling out of an airplane from 30,000 feet, and the crushing weight of your mortality will grind you to powder.

The myth of the rising Phoenix.  The creative energy of big brains to absorb grinding weight and still manage resurrections.  That's what this writing is all about.  Rising from the ashes.  Stronger, healthier, more honest, hopefully more human and humane.  Finding perhaps ways to grow new wings to fly up, up, up.  Possibly spontaneously regenerating crushed wings, and eventually flying.  Yes, fly on wings to our own destinations.  Higher and further than anyone thought possible. Let's rise together or at least cry together (Phoenix tears) until we resurrect to new life and living.  Or not.  We can dream of beautiful purple hippos or go and paint one purple....and pet it together. Hee, Hee, Hee.