March 8th, 2004
A friend of mine wrote the following to me in email:
"... feeling trapped and depressed about having to wage slave ... for a lifetime in a system increasingly stacked against oneself. I'd rather study art, the classics, and go yachting in Cebu instead ... (the usual items do act as carrots-money, subborning ourselves, become uxoriously fond of [women], clean and vaccuum, act educated and 'modern or hip') ... Whereas, dogs, World events, CIA coups in Haiti, and cosmology I understand. I also understand there are no certainties in life other than debt, dust, and dirty dishes. Pass the bonbons, please...."
I replied that there always seems to be a subtext when people are involved. I just miss it frequently. I'm not exactly an expert with people; In fact, for me the only truly understandable things are A-minor chords, Information Mapping, bags of barbeque-flavoured corn chips, and my cat's steady and omnipresent need for love and affection.
You know, I came up with what I think is an adequate definition of life: "Life is a dynamic and temporary reprieve from total entropy."
That is, there is no static state that makes life possible; just a series of changes that, as conditions alter, life can get a temporary toe-hold ... with the Final Reward always in front of us.
I heard an interesting statement on CNN last night (can you imagine it? Something half-intelligent on CNN!) Here it is paraphrased: "Each generation has its own historical event. It may think that it has reached some point of stability only to be reminded of the instability in the world by something cataclysmic."
Yeah, I like that one. I think it's true ... it works on a much smaller, personal scale, too: Any time I've reached a point of stability in my life, whether happy or unhappy, something inevitably comes along and pulls the rug out from under me.
One very happy time in my adult life stretched from March 29th, 2002 to December 3rd, 2003: The time between living in my new home, away from the madness of living with certain other people, and being laid off from my last company, where I was master of my own universe, and very comfortable with and knowledgeable about the product I was working on (and the technology it was designed to work within). Not bad, that. 20 months.
Then layoff ... then fiancé ... then new job ... then completely stonkered by new job becoming old job plus extra work. Now I'm at square one again in 2/3rds of my life. My condo has changed because of my fiancé being here, and for the better. See, I'm not saying I'm all-of-a-sudden unhappy ... I'm not. In fact, I'm a very very happy man these days ... but that sense of stability wavered. In a previous incarnation with my former wife, the sense of stagnation was uprooted in rapid fashion, and for the (much) better.
I guess what this all boils down to is that situations, no matter how good or how dreadful (like everyone else, I've had both) always come to an end, and a new situation begins. I'm not fatalistic and proposing that everyone just stop marching and sit down in the mud, just that the external influences on one's life are unstoppable and unpredictable.