Sisyphean Task

I was reading J. M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year on a train from Minneapolis to Portland. I was sitting in a lounge car listening to a young man playing guitar while doing so, just letting the beautiful notes wash over me while the words directed my thoughts. Giving up direction, in a sense, to allow what is external to guide me. That is not entirely true, though. After all, I chose to walk into the lounge car, I chose to sit and listen, I chose to open the book and read, I chose to remain seated for as long as I did while listening and reading. In that sense, I had dance partners. It wasn’t clear to me, though, whether I was leading, Coetzee, or the guitar player. Maybe we were all doing our thing but in proximity with one another, I engaged with Coetzee and the guitar player even though Coetzee was not bodily present and the guitar player’s attention was directed elsewhere.

I suppose, because of that, I had a greater awareness of myself within a temporary ecosystem, an environment in which I played some part, but not an integral part at all … except for me. There were other “parts” of the ecosystem, though, too, parts I took for granted, parts that I am even now not considering. There was the train itself, the lounge car, the other passengers, windows providing views of the land we passed by, the tracks below I could not see, the seat in which I sat, the coffee I drank, the sounds of the wind and the creaking of the train, the smells wafting from elsewhere, the shoes on my feet, and on and on and on, perhaps endless if I allowed myself to consider all of it. How little am I ever aware of at any given moment? How little in each moment?

At a certain point, it all becomes idea, an understanding that I cannot give everything my attention, that my awareness, even when heightened, is utterly limited. Why doesn’t that terrify me more than it does? Have I accepted that I am relatively insignificant, that I cannot be omniscient, that even as a human being, no matter how advanced beyond a chimpanzee or a cat or a rat or an insect, that I am still closer to those other forms of life than I am or ever will be to any imagining of what it might mean to be a god or God?

How can I be responsible given all of that? How could anyone be? Responsibility seems to be an unfair imposition, an idea that is incoherent. If I cannot know all there is to know at any moment, how can I be culpable for anything I do? Yet, laws demand myself and others to be responsible in certain ways. In that sense, laws tell us what is important and what is not. My attention should be directed toward certain rules and regulations and my daydreams are nothing more than impediments jeopardizing my ability to follow laws.

In my arrogance, I feel this as an imposition on what I believe is my right to be autonomous. But what rights do I have at all if not for laws that grant me rights? I’m creeping slowly toward issues of power by thinking this way. Where will that go? Might makes right? Probably. So why go any further? I know the outcome because that road has been covered under layers of thoughts past, my own generated as much by encounters with the thoughts of others, thoughts written by others rather than stated.

I am on the verge of being untethered. I am on the cusp of liberating myself from consideration of anything at all. What would be the point? Self-preservation? A delusional belief that “figuring things out” could enable me to change anything at all? Should I just delve into hedonism or perhaps depravity? Isn’t that what leads men and women to acts of terrorism, of what is commonly referred to as “senseless violence”? Is it any more irrational to kill than it is to help others? If nothing can be known with certainty then aren’t choices reflective only of preferences rather than any higher-minded morality or ethics?

In the end, each one of us dies. If it is all transitory then nothing at all could matter in any way … other than what is preferred, even if (perhaps especially if) those preferences are arbitrary. Might has to make right. It could be no other way. In the scheme of things, might is not held by humanity nor by any other particular form of life. Life is an accident arising from lifelessness. Lifelessness, though, will correct itself and return the universe to what, from the human vantage point, can only be understood as lifeless indifference. Saving the environment, preserving life? Pointless endeavors. But what is life to do? Eliminate itself to accelerate the process of becoming lifeless? It doesn’t matter. Nothing does.

Do I really believe that? At times, maybe, but ultimately no, I don’t believe that at all. I believe my feelings have meaning. What I feel most deeply is love, love for my being and for the being of other humans. In fact, love for all that exists and has existed simply because all that exists and has existed has led to my existence and the existence of others. Why? It doesn’t matter why. What matters, to me, is that I love. Is love just my preference? Perhaps, but if preferences are all there are then I honor my preferences cause they are all that are. Should I honor what does not exist within me? Should I honor ideas that create vacuums of feeling within me? For what purpose? There is no purpose for nothingness. There is no such thing as nothingness. How could there be? As soon as nothing is imagined it becomes something and, consequently, no longer nothing. An idea of nothing, yes, but an idea that exists within me and, as such, an idea of something that is called “nothing.”

Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year covers nearly everything I have been considering over the past decade. Indeed, over the course of my life. In a way, it’s depressing. His well-formed ideas have anticipated all of my developing ideas. So now what do I do? I don’t mean strictly within Diary of a Bad Year; I mean also all of his novels. I wish I’d have read him earlier in life, but then again it is his writing in the 2000s that most distinctly covers the content of my own thoughts.

What is left for me to write, though, are my solutions for the means to collaborate collectively. He writes only briefly of the body, only briefly of how structures could be created that could be all-encompassing to account for how men, women, and children can live with meaning and purpose while fulfilling needs and desires without causing undue harm to anyone. Utopian, yes, but what should I otherwise write except for a practical and feasible utopia? The critical dimension requires continuous simultaneous universal voluntary commitment to collaboration, to loving others through empathy and laborious care. It requires coordination of vision, skills, abilities, talents, drives, all of the creativity and passion and reason that humans can muster.

Now, I say that it is practical and feasible because human beings can choose to do that. If I can then anyone can. The only reason it does not happen is because individuals choose to think, believe, and act differently than what any voluntarily chosen utopia requires. But that is no reason not to craft the way there. In detail, if possible. A monumental task, but what else should I do with my life if this is the only meaningful thing I can imagine doing. It may never happen, but it is certainly not foolish to pursue this end because otherwise I will be condemning myself to a meaningless existence. I cannot function as a human being without meaning and, due to my level of awareness, I cannot manufacture a false meaning for myself. This is my meaning and that meaning is true for me even if no one else in the world believes my purpose is feasible or practical. Idealism is foolish to a realist but for me, an idealist, it would be foolish to faithfully view life through the lens of realism simply because it is evident that contemporary reality has no collective meaning.

I have contradicted myself everywhere in this writing and it is, in its way, a rambling mess. But it does represent who I am as adequately as any writing can. My thoughts flit like this all the time, from one thing to the next and sometimes back again over old ground but with a new interpretation and sometimes with more clarity and sometimes with greater confusion. It is only through the mind of another that any of this might appear to be senseless. I know all of the unspoken words that would fill in the gaps of logic, all of the connections that I have not made apparent. It is my task to fill those in as best I can but I know it will be a futile endeavor so I wonder if I should bother. But then, what else should I do if what I want most is to adequately convey to others what I mean? I have to go back again and again and again and try to fill in the gaps, make clear the relationships that I have not made apparent. A Sisyphean task, I suppose, but it is my fate … if I choose that fate.