Category Archives: Articles
Opening and Breaking
It’s a strange feeling to realize that the expressions used for denoting both a person who chooses to fall in love and a person who has lost the love of someone both make use of the image of having an open heart, on the one hand, and having one’s heart broken, or “broke open” on the other. That is, having one’s heart open denotes both choosing to love/be loved and losing the love of another; the experience that causes us to feel pain when we lose the love of another is intimately connected to the act that allows one to fall in love in the first place; the experience that allows one to fall in love is the same experience that results in pain if and when the love is lost. This cannot be a coincidence. One chooses to love and one chooses to be vulnerable. One can’t love unless he or she is willing to open up their heart, knowing full well that the very act that permits one to love can result in a painful experience if and when the love is lost.
A Few Things on My Mind
When parents ask their kids what they want to be when they grow up, children are encouraged to give answers such as: an engineer, an architect, a teacher, or a policeman, and not things like happy, compassionate, thoughtful, self-aware, or a good listener.
There is a missile called ‘the peacekeeper.’
On the news it was mentioned how ridiculous it is that people are so concerned with whether the Patriots used inflated footballs while there are insurgent groups around the world killing civilians, not realizing that the same argument should be used to show how ridiculous it that sports matter as much as they do when wars, and many other such problems, are engulfing the world.
What Philosophy Has Meant To Me
In February I receive my undergraduate degree in Philosophy. I therefore felt it a better time than ever to briefly express what philosophy has meant to me over the years, and why I’ve always felt attracted to it.
In 2011 I travelled to Turkey. At the hotel in Istanbul my friend and I entered into conversation with two male employees of the hotel who were also university students; the one studied business and the other psychology. After hearing that I studied philosophy one of them replied, “You will have a rich life, and I don’t mean money.” I was floored by his comment. I was floored, not simply because it had been uttered by a young kid, but because such a statement would hardly ever be uttered in America, a place where the use of the word ‘rich’ to denote anything apart from material wealth would be seen as ridiculous or bizarre. Yet other countries value philosophy and acknowledge its worth in ways that are largely alien to American culture as a whole. In other countries it still seems largely understood that material possessions cannot replace the wisdom and satisfaction gained from trying to understand what life is ultimately about, to find lasting satisfaction and not just material comfort, to make life meaningful as opposed to simply making a living.
Philosophy for me has always been about wisdom and not knowledge. This is not to say that philosophy does not inform knowledge, or that knowledge is not important. For me, however, my drive to acquire knowledge has played a secondary role compared to my drive to acquire wisdom, where wisdom is associated with an understanding that gives life lasting meaning.
When we say a person is ‘wise,’ we do not necessarily mean that such a person is smart, though being knowledgeable and being wise are not antithetical. Generally, for a person to be wise means he or she has an understanding of things that encompasses, not just the world of facts, observations, etc. but the world of the living human, human life, or the existential life. A wise person is someone who has an understanding of how to maximize life. Sometimes it is shortened to an understanding of the “real world,” but that too misses the mark for the “real world” is usually in reference to the world of having to make a living, a world that is important, but nonetheless fails to take into account the full human experience.
By a “wise person” one means someone who has the ability to differentiate between what holds a temporary significance and what has lasting value, what can bring temporary satisfaction and what can bring lasting happiness, what one temporarily holds true and what one will come to see of lasting importance. By this it does not simply mean knowing how to make a living but knowing how to make living meaningful; one can make a living and still be left with the question, “What was the point of it all? Was it worth it?” For me, philosophy is about understanding who one is in respect to everything else, the rest of the world, how to find meaning in it. This “meaning” is the aim of wisdom.
Unfortunately, the distinction between knowledge and wisdom is one that is given little attention, even in academic philosophy, though the term ‘philosophy’ itself means ‘love of wisdom.’ Knowledge lays out a set of observations, principles, and facts. Wisdom is what allows a person to apply the later successfully. It is one thing to collect a set of data and draw concluding principles from it, it is quite another to reflect on the ramifications of said principles and successfully apply them to how one decides to live; more importantly, how one decides to give life meaning or purpose; how do the facts inform questions that sit at the core of being human. These are questions that humans end up having to ask about their personal lives; what is the meaning of my existence? What can give it lasting happiness? What do the facts mean to me? How do they inform my actions? Do they make me happy? Such questions are often pushed aside for the sake of more “practical” issues, but with the cost of isolating a person from an acquired understanding of life that can have perennial value.
Philosophy for me also has more of a practical side as well. Though I value it most as a way to understand wisdom, philosophizing nonetheless provides one with a set of skills that I have found applicable to almost every aspect of life. The most frustrating question I, or any philosophy major can be asked, is, “What can you do with a philosophy degree?” It’s frustrating because the answer is so obvious to me – anything one wants. Of course there is no job or profession called ‘philosopher’ like there is for other fields; for instance, one who studies engineering gets a job as an engineer, accounting, an accountant, law, a lawyer. But this quality is philosophy’s strong suit. Whereas other studies are largely defined by what one will become professionally, the study of philosophy is defined by how one chooses to apply the skills learned from it. As such, it is more a way of life. The skills of analysis, critical and imaginative thinking, and assessment are skills that can be applied to anything. There are arguably no fields where the ability to think, assess, analyze, imagine, and critique are not important.
Philosophy has been important for me because it embraces that part of myself which is not simply content with the practical matters of making a living, or obtaining knowledge, but with the part of myself that wants to give lasting meaning to my life, and to understand it deeply when every aspect of it is taken into account.
Poetry
Three new poems and one very old one: Poetry.
Quotes
Paragraphic :
Catching Falling Objects
I don’t remember exactly when, but at some point I realized that when certain objects are about to fall, it is better to let them fall as to catch it, instead of rushing to try and grab it. When one realizes an object is about to fall, one frantically lunges for it in panic, yet with little time to stop it. However, one has time to prepare oneself to catch it. And so I put my hands in the path of the object, where it will fall, knowing I will get it. Such an act seems like the wrong kind of investment; letting an object fall, a counter-production. But in this case the action is disguised and the best option is that which comes through counter intuition, a counter-reaction.
Quotes
The Return
It was one of the last great ironies of the adventure that he chanced to be reading a particular book at such a fortuitous moment. The book was “A Hero With a Thousand Faces” by Joseph Campbell, a book that famously inspired George Lucas to write Star Wars. Chapter 4 titled “The Crossing of the Return Threshold,” of Part 3 “The Return” has these opening paragraphs:
“The two worlds, the Divine and the Human, can be pictured as distinct from each other – different as life and death, as day and night. The hero adventured out of the land we know into darkness, there accomplishes his adventure or again is simply lost to us, imprisoned, or in danger; and his return is described as a coming back out of that yonder zone. Nevertheless – and here is the great key to the understanding of myth and symbol – the two kingdoms are actually one. The realm of the Gods is a forgotten dimension of the world we know. And the exploration of that dimension, either willingly or unwillingly, is the whole sense the deed of the hero. The values and distinctions that in normal life seem important disappear with the terrifying assimilation of the self into what formerly was only otherness…
How teach again, however, what has been taught correctly and incorrectly learned a thousand times, through the millennia of mankind’s prudent folly? That is the hero’s ultimate difficult task. How render back into light-world language the speech-defying pronouncements of the dark… How translate into terms of “yes” and “no” revelations that shatter into meaninglessness every attempt to define the pairs of opposites? How communicate to people who insist on the exclusive evidence of their senses the message of the all-generating void?
Many failures attest to the difficulties of this life-affirmative threshold. The first problem of the returning hero is to accept as real, after an experience of the soul satisfying vision of fulfillment, the passing joys and sorrows, banalities and noisy obscenities of life. Why re-enter such a world? Why attempt to make plausible or even interesting, to men and women consumed with passion, the experience of transcendental bliss? As dreams that were momentous by night may seem simply silly in the light of day, so the poet and the prophet can discover themselves playing the idiot before a jury of sober eyes. The easy thing is to commit the whole community to the devil and retire again into the heavenly rock dwelling, close the door, and make it fast. But if meanwhile some spiritual obstetrician has drawn the rope across the retreat, then the work of representing eternity in time, and perceiving in time eternity, cannot be avoided.”
Thus I found myself reading these pages in the Dublin airport having just arrived from Munich, awaiting my flight back to the States after being away for over a year. Seven years prior I left Iraq for the second time, stopping in Munich before catching the last flight home.I couldn’t help feeling something had gone full circle in the seven years since. And so with inner expectations that I might miss home, I found myself at the US border clearance in Dublin surrounded by other Americans awaiting their departures to a place most of them probably called home:
I went to get some food prior to boarding; Standing in line, I can feel the presence of America; a crowd of poorly dressed and overweight people complaining through horrible American accents (one I regrettably share) about how fast the food is being served. I shudder at the thought of going home as the reality of it crashes down onto me. I desperately begin thinking of a future where imagination alone constructs the parameters of one’s home. I think about my level of French, if it’s any good, how fast I could reach fluency if I decided to move to France. I go through the other countries I’ve been to and those I have a desire to see; could I live in them; doing what; surly something? Is there a foreign woman I could marry to save me from this place?
I board the plane and chance to find myself next to an American gentleman. Unable to hold in my frustration I tell him, “I don’t want to go back to the States.” “Why?” he responds, “You don’t like it?” “No,” I reply. We start talking. It just so happens this man lived in Europe for seven years and moved back to the States in 2009. “ I know exactly what you’re going through,” he says; “I felt the same way when I came back; I still do, but you can’t escape it. It will always be home.”
These are comforting words, but I can’t help and think how none of this was ever about escape. There was nothing to escape from; the trials one must go through, experience, and reflect on, will follow one until the end. Nonetheless I find a bit of respite. I sink into my chair and let out one of those exhalations where the air exits in one loud smoldering tuft, as if the breath itself felt fatigued.
There is no doubt that I’ve come to know of certain characteristics of myself that are a result of the culture I was born into, characteristics that could be called ‘American.’ Amidst crowds of people from other culture and backgrounds one’s own set of attributes and impulses stand out like candle light in a dark room: I am eccentric and passionate; I say things like very delicious or very very delicious – At a gathering amongst both French and English, a French woman told me it’s correct to just say ‘delicious’ and not ‘very delicious.’ I replied that I often say something was ‘very’ or even ‘very very delicious’. An Englishman overheard the conversation and said, “Of course, you’re American.”
I have a sense of humor that can’t resist the possibility of a good laugh even when my sense of humor itself knows it’s a bad idea i.e. Hitler jokes.
I’m unreserved and unrepressed about my thoughts and feelings; an admirable quality I noticed in other Americans abroad. There is a problem of course in that most Americans, although comfortable with voicing an opinion, express views that are often uninformed and ignorant.
Perhaps these are to some extent “American,” perhaps not. Nonetheless, going home I think of possibility. I remind myself of the willingness and drive I have to leave, wander, and explore, and how such qualities will always give me the option to get up and leave when the lust for other worlds becomes too strong to put off, and where ‘home’ can mean more than just a particular culture one was born into.
Existential Conversations 