Sunday, April 08, 2007
Walking in a meadow, I grimace, smile, and worry all at the same time. Taking in the Sun and the horizon of existence it floats upon--I wander through the weeds, the shit, the flowers, the butterflys, the chirping birds. The sounds, the smells, the sense! All overwhelming! Something has changed, however. Something is different. When I used to walk like this, I was dreaming. And, in those dreams the meadow was beautiful, the flowers transcendent, the birds harmonious; but there was no weeds, no shit and no screams to match the chirping. No, something has changed. Now, they all reside together. And, now, I am not dreaming. What now? In this world beyond dreams, are the flowers less aromatic? Has the Sun rescinded a portion of its life? Do the sounds, the colors, the Present of this life carry any less beauty? Less wonder? Less hope? No, smelling the shit, seeing the weeds, being stung by the needles--they haven't lost their luster. I hear the birds less often, the flowers bloom only in Spring (if then), the Sun shines and the skies bear blue occassionally, but, now, when they do, they seem all the more luminous. Walking in a meadow, I grimace, smile, and worry all at the same time.
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I remember innocently running in the meadow. Full of light, every blade of glass radiant. Do I remember the beauty of the world around me caste luminous through the lens of my misplaced hopes?
The Psalms asked and replied:
‘Where does my hope come from? My hope comes from the Lord, the Maker of Heaven and Earth.’
Now, hope is a funny thing. In what did one, should one, does one place one’s hope? What happens when the foundations of one’s hopes die? Where does new hope come from?
Shopenhauer reflects that the only truly valid (Christian) argument against suicide is asceticism – the realisation that the end of life is suffering (the Cross). This rejected, only the fear of what comes next supposedly prevents us from taking our own lives. Perhaps there is hope to be found in asceticism; but it is surely not the fear of a supposed afterlife that keeps me living. Maybe it is a sense of responsibility to family, perhaps after all it is a hope.
But for now I continue to scurry past the meadow, although I can’t help giving it a quick sideways glance. I guess I’m still dreaming. I guess I don’t want asceticism to be my hope. I’m afraid too that asceticism may just be another, darker, dream? And I wonder too if it’s worth going to the meadow at all if I can never run in it like a child. Maybe we’re all dreaming. Maybe life without dreams truly has no hope. Maybe what Puddleglum says in the Silver Chair is true: ‘Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all of those things--trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones.’ For me, I’m not sure. I certainly wish the darkness could make the light more luminous rather than just casting a shadow.
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