Passion II

Following some good advice, I took another look at what I love to do, rather than the things I must do. I departed from the comfortable norm, and drove two and a half hours to downtown Manteca last night, performing a four-minute set at a two-hour comedy show for a good crowd.

The upside: I got a respectable amount of laughs. I stolidly acknowledge that I didn't bring down the house and that there were many funnier, more experienced comics in attendance. No posing here.

That said, I must also say that it was thoroughly exhilarating to have done some time and not only not embarrassed myself, but to have acquitted myself reasonably among local peers. As wordy and mild as that last sentence is, the buzz of the experience carried me home and kept me awake for hours last night. Opiates have nothing on the joy I felt last night.

Making it up as I go along

Perhaps my needs for something metaphysical in which to believe would be served well enough by creating such icons and avatars from whole cloth, out of my own imagination and experiences. I certainly find the idea no less valid; if anything, believing in things I dreamed up for myself is more legitimate than that of someone else's mythology, not less. What do they know of life, death and afterlife that I don't? Nothing, that's what.

It's no surprise, coming from a guy (me) who coined his own faith years ago, that of "Solipsistic Pelagianism." The description, whose motivations are self-evident from its name, is a little less attractive to me lately because it still implies an attachment to religious leanings, which I have less and less anymore. But, it's still as accurate as I can be with such few words.

Hmmm. I'll have to ponder this a while longer, but a homemade belief system seems an attractive and useful option.

I need a spiritual Tom-Tom

In the movie "Big Trouble in Little China," there's a secondary hero who early in the film fails to perform some bar trick with a meat cleaver and a liquor bottle (it's a fun film like that, you should see it). He blames his failure on the fact that (I'm paraphrasing - give me a break, it's likely been decades since I've seen it) "my mind and my spirit are going in different directions."

Aside from the fact that I don't prescribe to eastern (or any other) spirituality, this accurately describes how I feel lately. Conflict within and without, wall-to-wall dissonance. All my energies are poorly aligned and allocated, and it literally feels like they're piling up inside me, and not comfortably, either.

I've been here before, and it's presaged the lower points in my sense of well-being. I feel like I'm a few hundred yards into a rutted, gravel road, with a long, shitty, teeth-rattling journey ahead of me. I'm desperately searching a blurry, poorly-marked map for an alternate route.

Don't tell me it's rainin'

I've been idly ruminating on the usefulness of myths and religion and the positive effects of self-delusion.

It is so comfortable and sustaining to have a belief system whose tenets exist largely outside the tangible or scientific realm. It almost doesn't matter what it is - whether you pray to Jehovah or Zeus or send silent pleas and gratitude to a faceless, nameless cosmos, having the belief that somebody out there/up there looking out for you, planning, scheming, directing events and taking blame for incidents in your everyday life, it really adds a cushion to the harder knocks of each day's trials and triumphs.

Think about it: assigning unseen hands to the otherwise random forces around you is a powerful method of redirection. Lost your job? It's for a higher purpose. Got a tumor? It's all part of the Lord's plan. Atheists and agnostics have no recourse but to sit and ponder the stark and often bland realities, while the more imaginative among us can find pixies and leprechauns in any event or object under the sun. How liberating that is!

What more powerful example than love? It is a truly intoxicating state of being, where the slightest whims and whispers teem with meaning, questions and promise. What an exciting state of affairs (so to speak) when one's mind is completely enveloped and engaged in the thoughts of another! No action or happening can be too miniscule to elicit pain or joy. At least with love, there is often a likelihood that the object of your affections and dreamy calculation does exist.

What more sinister example than the slogan "Arbeit macht frei," or "work will set you free," which according to Wikipedia: 'was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps "as a kind of mystical declaration that self-sacrifice in the form of endless labour does in itself bring a kind of spiritual freedom."'

How many people over the centuries have slaved tirelessly away at grueling labors, motivated by the bizarre and sometimes perverted psychological alchemy where increasing hardship and toil equals some benefit seen only by the slave, like a seat in heaven?

Grim as this account is, the idea is certainly not all bad. How many people struggle through their workdays even now, tolerating tedium and conflict, sustained by thoughts of loved ones or material reward? How many kids sweat through and endless summer of lawnmowing or burger-flipping, thinking about a shiny new bike or their first rusted-out set of wheels and the new opportunities they bring.

I find that having abandoned the mental mirage of being watched over and fated to certain outcomes by larger forces, it is like losing cartilage in a joint - the bumps are bumpier. However, I also find that it's worth that loss of manufactured comfort. If it's not real, I'm better off without it. Still, if I could find a more romantic view of the world that works for me, and doesn't make me feel like such a sucker I'd happily embrace it. I'll have to keep an eye out for one.

...

It occurs to me that I may have answered my own questions. Reading over the above, it strikes me that I should be investing more "money in the love bank," and working harder to please my wife. If I'm looking for a romantic world view, I could do worse than to start there.