Did I really have that conversation with that woman? She had no mouth! Did I even meet her? I remember meeting her two days ago. Can I trust any of my memories, though?
I have a memory of a guy named Larry Wilson, hearing a story from a mutual friend that he had killed a little girl. I remember this vividly. The story I was told was that he crushed a little girl’s skull with a hammer. He was sixteen at the time. The little girl was only nine. Did she really threaten to tell her parents that he was using drugs? She had walked into his house looking for his little brother who happened to be a classmate of the little girl. Larry’s parents had gone to Vegas and taken his little brother with them. She saw a bong on the table. How did she know it was a bong? Was Larry really doing crank, too? And possibly LSD? What kind of insane drug cocktail had he put together for himself? Would I have made a similar cocktail if my parents had left me alone to go to Vegas when I was sixteen?
How did the girl know it was a bong, though? Did her school’s D.A.R.E. program train her to identify drug paraphernalia, to report drug use to her parents or the police? Is D.A.R.E. a Nazi Youth program? Would the little girl still be alive today if she had been clueless about bongs and just skipped back home after discovering her friend next door was out of town? Would Larry have merely gone back to getting high, enjoying his weekend of freedom and debauchery? Would he have never been arrested, convicted, and imprisoned? Might he have cleaned up on his own in life, maybe after high school, and lived a life neither harming nor killing anyone? Could he have lived an enjoyable and even generous life rather than spending 25 years in a maximum security state prison in Arizona?
What is the relationship between choice and chance? Can such a relationship be known beforehand? Or even in the moment? Is anything meaningful certain? If nothing substantial is predictable then isn’t absurdity as legitimate as reason?
Can I trust anything at all: memories, ideas, potentials, feelings, sensations? Was I ever married? If I was what does that mean now? Do the memories of being married mean anything? Does the past exist in any meaningful way? If so, what do those past years mean? They are only accessible through memory, those years, my memories and the memories of others. I am no longer married and if memories are unreliable and the past no longer exists then what am I to think of the present? My moments now will soon be past as well and, thus, equal in relevance to moments further past no matter how much I care about one past moment over another.
Future moments, too, will eventually become past and thus equal to other events in the past … unless I give some memories more importance than others. But if I should not live in the past and I know the present and the future will become the past then where am I to live? The past is the only thing that exists because the present disappears instantly and the future becomes now and then “then” in a flash. There is, then, only the past and the past that hasn’t yet become the past.
Do any moments matter? How could they if they disappear into a past that cannot be relived? Does existence have meaning? Is the command to “live in the moment” really a damnation to “live in the moment that has no meaning”? This is the beginning of nihilism, perhaps, the loss of the foundational basis for all thought, all belief, all experience. Would it matter if one was powerless or powerful?
Is the asking of the questions a denial that the concepts hold any truth? Is life a denial of the meaninglessness of life? Is life, then, a struggle to create meaning out of meaninglessness? Is the goal of life to transform meaninglessness into meaning? Couldn’t anything be believed as long as it provided meaning?
Perhaps … but perhaps not. If a belief fails to sustain life, life as the creation of meaning out of meaninglessness, then it must be a false belief. A belief must renew meaningfulness. Any belief that can disprove its own foundations threatens life and thus the possibility of itself as a belief. Meaning must be based on beliefs that are believed to have sustainable foundations. The past must be as meaningful as the present must be as meaningful as the future. To make meaningless any moment that has, is, or will exist is an effort to invalidate every moment and thus life itself.
The logic isn’t perfect but no logic is. Absurdity may be a necessary element in the creation of meaning. Reason may invalidate life itself and if reason is but a tool of the mind then it must serve the purposes of the mind: To make meaning out of meaninglessness. But perhaps too much of one thing is not good. Perhaps it is the tension created by doubt that churns meaning into being. A momentary belief that life has no meaning must give way to a belief that life has meaning must give way to a suspicion that there is no point must give way to an inspiration that moments are fulfilling. Peace must be married to conflict, a harmonious balance between creation and destruction. The individual, perhaps, has meaning in relation to a whole that does not. Or the whole may have meaning in relation to an individual who does not.
But there can be no lost souls for sustainable meaning: The shepherd leaves the flock to find the one lost sheep. One means as much as all. All only means anything if each one is meaningful. May there be an indispensable relationship between each individual and the whole of humanity? If it is widely believed that one is unimportant then there is reason to doubt the importance of any individual. The value of one’s own life, under such a belief, is impossible. Why? On what basis could a person be important if other persons are not? There is no fundamental difference at the level of being between any two individuals. Quality of life is window dressing, preference rather than substance. To believe that one is not valuable is to believe no one is valuable. This is the defeat of meaningfulness.
The meaning of life is, perhaps, to create a sustainable meaning of life by reconciling the absurdity of life with the reasons for life. Perhaps that is done best through a belief that the lives of each individual has meaning. Hmmm. The world would look very different if that was believed.
I went to high school with a kid named Kenny. He was just a goof. Got high, dated some girl named Patty. I sold Kenny a rat once, all white female. I didn't see him for a few years after graduation. Then one day I was walking into an elevator at the hospital to visit a friend. There was Kenny in hospital togs. He had a low-level maintenance job. We talked, said so-long. Three weeks later he stabbed his girlfriend's mother 19 times. That was almost 30 years ago. He's been in the State Pen ever since.
ReplyDeleteI guess we've all run across our share of people who defied our perceptions of them. The guy I mentioned as Leonard (not his real name) was a guy who seemed like a hippy pacifist. I knew him mostly through mutual friends, saw him at a few parties or at school. He always had a dopey smile, seemed constantly high, always laughing. I could never get my head around the idea that he killed that little girl. The only way I can picture it is that he got freaked out by her freaking out and acted out of fear that he'd get busted and go to juvy. That's why I wrote what i did about DARE. I know that they had a DARE program in her elementary school and I wonder if she had never been informed about drug paraphernalia if she'd still be alive today. Who knows?
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