Time is a cruel thing.  It passes by the slowest when you least appreciate it, and it passes by the quickest when you don’t want it to the most.  When you’re six, life goes by at 6 miles per hour; when you’re sixty, life goes by at 60 miles per hour. When do we start becoming aware of how precious time is?  Getting prophetic glimpses of a lifetime gone, in the blink of an eye.  Whenever it happens, that moment is only the first in a never-ending sequence of moments by which we’re humbled by our own mortality. I’d get sad, but then I’d be wasting what little time I have.  So I ignore that feeling and push it away, lest I become overwhelmed by a sense of vulnerability at the hands of Father Time.  But sometimes there’s no helping being a little melancholic at the thought of how fleeting our lives are, especially as compared to the extent of our hopes, dreams, and loves. The film that brought it all back, Summer Hours: Eloise:     Frederic thought you were gloomy. Helene:     Yes.  I spoke to him about my death.  It seems normal to.  They have lives of their own.  Their concerns aren’t mine.  A lot of things will be leaving with me.  Memories, secrets, stories that interest no one anymore.  But…there’s the residue.  There are objects.  I don’t want it to weigh on them.

Time is a cruel thing.  It passes by the slowest when you least appreciate it, and it passes by the quickest when you don’t want it to the most.  When you’re six, life goes by at 6 miles per hour; when you’re sixty, life goes by at 60 miles per hour.

When do we start becoming aware of how precious time is?  Getting prophetic glimpses of a lifetime gone, in the blink of an eye.  Whenever it happens, that moment is only the first in a never-ending sequence of moments by which we’re humbled by our own mortality.

I’d get sad, but then I’d be wasting what little time I have.  So I ignore that feeling and push it away, lest I become overwhelmed by a sense of vulnerability at the hands of Father Time.  But sometimes there’s no helping being a little melancholic at the thought of how fleeting our lives are, especially as compared to the extent of our hopes, dreams, and loves.

The film that brought it all back, Summer Hours:

Eloise:     Frederic thought you were gloomy.

Helene:     Yes.  I spoke to him about my death.  It seems normal to.  They have lives of their own.  Their concerns aren’t mine.  A lot of things will be leaving with me.  Memories, secrets, stories that interest no one anymore.  But…there’s the residue.  There are objects.  I don’t want it to weigh on them.

1 year ago  View Larger Image view comments

  Live life to the fullest.  It’s an easy maxim to recite but acting it out is a wholly different matter. I think it’s our tendency to imagine living life to the fullest as a picture of perfection.  A lot of laughing, having fun, being surrounded by good people - what montages are made of.  Of course, the mess-ups and bloopers are edited out.   But, aside from the fact that perfection is just not possible, isn’t it the imperfections in life, together with the near perfections, that give us the fullest experience?  The highs just aren’t that high when you don’t know what the lows look like.  Good is good; but when compared with bad, good is better.   One of the reasons Russell Brand’s character, Aldous Snow, uses drugs is because he rues the idea of worrying about things, of being bogged down by responsibilities - pretty much, caring too much.  He just wants to feel the high, even if it means being numb to everything else.  The consequence of that, in the words of his ex-wife, is a lack of intimacy.  Our flaws and weaknesses are innate, and thus, make us whole.  She could never feel connected with him because all he was was a drug-induced shell of his former, whole, self.   Of course we only want the good stuff in our lives, but I think living life to the fullest means embracing all of life, including the mistakes and the weaknesses of which they’re made.  Think about it - what TV character is there that lives a perfect life?  The only interesting characters are the ones whose flaws we identify with and who go through journeys of discovery, through trial and error.   Truly living life means embracing all of it, including the unspectacular, awkward, and downright ugly, to the fullest.  

 

Live life to the fullest.  It’s an easy maxim to recite but acting it out is a wholly different matter.

I think it’s our tendency to imagine living life to the fullest as a picture of perfection.  A lot of laughing, having fun, being surrounded by good people - what montages are made of.  Of course, the mess-ups and bloopers are edited out.  

But, aside from the fact that perfection is just not possible, isn’t it the imperfections in life, together with the near perfections, that give us the fullest experience?  The highs just aren’t that high when you don’t know what the lows look like.  Good is good; but when compared with bad, good is better.  

One of the reasons Russell Brand’s character, Aldous Snow, uses drugs is because he rues the idea of worrying about things, of being bogged down by responsibilities - pretty much, caring too much.  He just wants to feel the high, even if it means being numb to everything else.  The consequence of that, in the words of his ex-wife, is a lack of intimacy.  Our flaws and weaknesses are innate, and thus, make us whole.  She could never feel connected with him because all he was was a drug-induced shell of his former, whole, self.  

Of course we only want the good stuff in our lives, but I think living life to the fullest means embracing all of life, including the mistakes and the weaknesses of which they’re made.  Think about it - what TV character is there that lives a perfect life?  The only interesting characters are the ones whose flaws we identify with and who go through journeys of discovery, through trial and error.  

Truly living life means embracing all of it, including the unspectacular, awkward, and downright ugly, to the fullest.  

1 year ago  1 note View Larger Image view comments

I was surprised by how much I liked Alice in Wonderland.  Johnny Depp previously lost me with his manic turn as Willie Wonka, so I wasn’t looking forward to seeing him act a crazy again in another Tim Burton flick.  But as he plays the Mad Hatter, he does so with a sense of purpose and vulnerability that grounds the character and makes him likable.  In fact, he isn’t mad, really, he’s just child-like, which actually makes him the character that makes the most sense.   ”You used to be much more…’muchier’.  You’ve lost your muchness,” he says to Alice.  Sounds about right to me.  In the time she grows up, Alice does lose her confidence.  Despite everyone telling her it is her destiny to defeat the Jabberwocky, she is tied down by a sense of insecurity that keeps her from realizing her true potential.  Where once she is “much”, she is now not much of anything at all.   We can all relate to Alice.  Her second journey through Wonderland reflects the transition from the bold freedom of youth to the anxiety-ridden experience of adulthood.  Although many of us have a spirit of adventure, we have to fight through fear, whether created by society or our own failures, in order to maintain that desire to seek out the very best.  It’s important not to shy away from our destinies (however defined), as Alice does in the beginning, but to confidently say “This is what I’m here to do” and do it.   All it takes is maintaining the freedom we had as children, the boldness to try to turn our imagination into reality, and sometimes a little encouragement by a Mad Hatter to regain our “muchness”.  

I was surprised by how much I liked Alice in Wonderland.  Johnny Depp previously lost me with his manic turn as Willie Wonka, so I wasn’t looking forward to seeing him act a crazy again in another Tim Burton flick.  But as he plays the Mad Hatter, he does so with a sense of purpose and vulnerability that grounds the character and makes him likable.  In fact, he isn’t mad, really, he’s just child-like, which actually makes him the character that makes the most sense.  

”You used to be much more…’muchier’.  You’ve lost your muchness,” he says to Alice.  Sounds about right to me.  In the time she grows up, Alice does lose her confidence.  Despite everyone telling her it is her destiny to defeat the Jabberwocky, she is tied down by a sense of insecurity that keeps her from realizing her true potential.  Where once she is “much”, she is now not much of anything at all.  

We can all relate to Alice.  Her second journey through Wonderland reflects the transition from the bold freedom of youth to the anxiety-ridden experience of adulthood.  Although many of us have a spirit of adventure, we have to fight through fear, whether created by society or our own failures, in order to maintain that desire to seek out the very best.  It’s important not to shy away from our destinies (however defined), as Alice does in the beginning, but to confidently say “This is what I’m here to do” and do it.  

All it takes is maintaining the freedom we had as children, the boldness to try to turn our imagination into reality, and sometimes a little encouragement by a Mad Hatter to regain our “muchness”.  

2 years ago  2 notes View Larger Image view comments

I saw Crimes and Misdemeanors the other day, and there was a line that I thought was really interesting.  When faced with the prospect of consequences for his immoral actions, Martin Landau’s character states “God is a luxury I can’t afford.” Expanding God to mean any type of morality, it’s jarring and slightly unsettling to think about morality as a luxury rather than a necessity.  I can definitely understand, though, how people could feel like they don’t have the ability to stay accountable to a moral code.  When you’re a Jean Valjean, struggling to get by, you feel like you can’t sort through right or wrong because you’re faced with a graver dilemma – life or death, or something that feels like it. Would you throw God (or morality) away just to survive, or is God all there’s worth living for? Disclaimer: I understand that God may not be synonymous with morality, but for the sake of a simpler post, I’m treating the two as similar things.

I saw Crimes and Misdemeanors the other day, and there was a line that I thought was really interesting.  When faced with the prospect of consequences for his immoral actions, Martin Landau’s character states “God is a luxury I can’t afford.”

Expanding God to mean any type of morality, it’s jarring and slightly unsettling to think about morality as a luxury rather than a necessity.  I can definitely understand, though, how people could feel like they don’t have the ability to stay accountable to a moral code.  When you’re a Jean Valjean, struggling to get by, you feel like you can’t sort through right or wrong because you’re faced with a graver dilemma – life or death, or something that feels like it.

Would you throw God (or morality) away just to survive, or is God all there’s worth living for?

Disclaimer: I understand that God may not be synonymous with morality, but for the sake of a simpler post, I’m treating the two as similar things.

2 years ago  view comments

Into the Wild is a film by Sean Penn about a guy, Chris, who eschews worldly possessions and his parents’ expectations to find meaning in nature and to define his own existence. There were a lot of scenes at which I clapped and nodded my head in agreement.  One scene in particular, in which Chris burns his money at the beginning of his trip, got me really happy. It’s nice to fantasize about giving everything up for adventure.  I can only imagine how peaceful it can be to stand alone in the wild, with nothing but your thoughts, the thrill, and the beauty of nature. We idealize it so much, but is that necessarily the better way to live?  It’s exciting and challenging, that’s for sure, but I think there’s a certain amount of selfishness in that lifestyle.  Whether we like it or not, we’re born into a society, a network of interpersonal relationships.  We’re not here for ourselves, but for our families, our friends, our future progeny, and the rest of society, especially those in need.  It seems a little self-seeking to disown this civilization we’re born into, in order to retreat into a world where the only person you have to care for is you. You could say that you’re rebelling against materialism and the values that civilization has created, which are often at odds with what we feel and desire.  I wonder, though, how much of that is an active resolve to live the way you feel you’ve been called to live, in the very core of your being, and how much of that is reluctance to buckle down and work within the context of our societal responsibilities. I think it’s great to explore and discover, which sometimes requires giving up the conventions and norms to which you’ve been accustomed.  But I also think it’s easy to veil our quests as a search for truth, when really, we’re just running away.

Into the Wild is a film by Sean Penn about a guy, Chris, who eschews worldly possessions and his parents’ expectations to find meaning in nature and to define his own existence.

There were a lot of scenes at which I clapped and nodded my head in agreement.  One scene in particular, in which Chris burns his money at the beginning of his trip, got me really happy.

It’s nice to fantasize about giving everything up for adventure.  I can only imagine how peaceful it can be to stand alone in the wild, with nothing but your thoughts, the thrill, and the beauty of nature.

We idealize it so much, but is that necessarily the better way to live?  It’s exciting and challenging, that’s for sure, but I think there’s a certain amount of selfishness in that lifestyle.  Whether we like it or not, we’re born into a society, a network of interpersonal relationships.  We’re not here for ourselves, but for our families, our friends, our future progeny, and the rest of society, especially those in need.  It seems a little self-seeking to disown this civilization we’re born into, in order to retreat into a world where the only person you have to care for is you.

You could say that you’re rebelling against materialism and the values that civilization has created, which are often at odds with what we feel and desire.  I wonder, though, how much of that is an active resolve to live the way you feel you’ve been called to live, in the very core of your being, and how much of that is reluctance to buckle down and work within the context of our societal responsibilities.

I think it’s great to explore and discover, which sometimes requires giving up the conventions and norms to which you’ve been accustomed.  But I also think it’s easy to veil our quests as a search for truth, when really, we’re just running away.

2 years ago  1 note View Larger Image view comments

Jarhead got me thinking about why people go to war and what happens to them when they come back.  The film had a nice series of scenes at the end depicting the post-war lives of the soldiers - raising families, taking menial jobs, having successful careers, indulging in sex and alcohol.  I think it represents the challenge of finding meaning after something you’ve been consumed by, something as huge and draining as war, is now gone. All of this which begs the question, where do you find meaning? For some people, it’s found in what’s unseen, a spiritual calling to live right now for things to come.  For others, meaning is found in more tangible things like money and fame, a type of success that can be measured.  Some people find it in living out ideals, like helping the needy or raising a loving family - generally making the world a better place.  None of these are mutually exclusive, but I think they can be distinguished in terms of their priority in a person’s life.  You can find meaning in God, wealth, and family, but say you have to sacrifice one for another - which would you ultimately choose? In any case, life’s meaning is not some lofty, far-and-away notion.  It’s what helps us cope through each day, what drives us to wake up in the morning.  For those soldiers in Jarhead, maybe the biggest challenge wasn’t fighting in the desert, but finding a purpose worth pursuing, without having a sergeant screaming it out at them.

Jarhead got me thinking about why people go to war and what happens to them when they come back.  The film had a nice series of scenes at the end depicting the post-war lives of the soldiers - raising families, taking menial jobs, having successful careers, indulging in sex and alcohol.  I think it represents the challenge of finding meaning after something you’ve been consumed by, something as huge and draining as war, is now gone.

All of this which begs the question, where do you find meaning?

For some people, it’s found in what’s unseen, a spiritual calling to live right now for things to come.  For others, meaning is found in more tangible things like money and fame, a type of success that can be measured.  Some people find it in living out ideals, like helping the needy or raising a loving family - generally making the world a better place.  None of these are mutually exclusive, but I think they can be distinguished in terms of their priority in a person’s life.  You can find meaning in God, wealth, and family, but say you have to sacrifice one for another - which would you ultimately choose?

In any case, life’s meaning is not some lofty, far-and-away notion.  It’s what helps us cope through each day, what drives us to wake up in the morning.  For those soldiers in Jarhead, maybe the biggest challenge wasn’t fighting in the desert, but finding a purpose worth pursuing, without having a sergeant screaming it out at them.

2 years ago  2 notes View Larger Image view comments

Time is a cruel thing.  It passes by the slowest when you least appreciate it, and it passes by the quickest when you don’t want it to the most.  When you’re six, life goes by at 6 miles per hour; when you’re sixty, life goes by at 60 miles per hour. When do we start becoming aware of how precious time is?  Getting prophetic glimpses of a lifetime gone, in the blink of an eye.  Whenever it happens, that moment is only the first in a never-ending sequence of moments by which we’re humbled by our own mortality. I’d get sad, but then I’d be wasting what little time I have.  So I ignore that feeling and push it away, lest I become overwhelmed by a sense of vulnerability at the hands of Father Time.  But sometimes there’s no helping being a little melancholic at the thought of how fleeting our lives are, especially as compared to the extent of our hopes, dreams, and loves. The film that brought it all back, Summer Hours: Eloise:     Frederic thought you were gloomy. Helene:     Yes.  I spoke to him about my death.  It seems normal to.  They have lives of their own.  Their concerns aren’t mine.  A lot of things will be leaving with me.  Memories, secrets, stories that interest no one anymore.  But…there’s the residue.  There are objects.  I don’t want it to weigh on them.

Time is a cruel thing.  It passes by the slowest when you least appreciate it, and it passes by the quickest when you don’t want it to the most.  When you’re six, life goes by at 6 miles per hour; when you’re sixty, life goes by at 60 miles per hour.

When do we start becoming aware of how precious time is?  Getting prophetic glimpses of a lifetime gone, in the blink of an eye.  Whenever it happens, that moment is only the first in a never-ending sequence of moments by which we’re humbled by our own mortality.

I’d get sad, but then I’d be wasting what little time I have.  So I ignore that feeling and push it away, lest I become overwhelmed by a sense of vulnerability at the hands of Father Time.  But sometimes there’s no helping being a little melancholic at the thought of how fleeting our lives are, especially as compared to the extent of our hopes, dreams, and loves.

The film that brought it all back, Summer Hours:

Eloise:     Frederic thought you were gloomy.

Helene:     Yes.  I spoke to him about my death.  It seems normal to.  They have lives of their own.  Their concerns aren’t mine.  A lot of things will be leaving with me.  Memories, secrets, stories that interest no one anymore.  But…there’s the residue.  There are objects.  I don’t want it to weigh on them.

  Live life to the fullest.  It’s an easy maxim to recite but acting it out is a wholly different matter. I think it’s our tendency to imagine living life to the fullest as a picture of perfection.  A lot of laughing, having fun, being surrounded by good people - what montages are made of.  Of course, the mess-ups and bloopers are edited out.   But, aside from the fact that perfection is just not possible, isn’t it the imperfections in life, together with the near perfections, that give us the fullest experience?  The highs just aren’t that high when you don’t know what the lows look like.  Good is good; but when compared with bad, good is better.   One of the reasons Russell Brand’s character, Aldous Snow, uses drugs is because he rues the idea of worrying about things, of being bogged down by responsibilities - pretty much, caring too much.  He just wants to feel the high, even if it means being numb to everything else.  The consequence of that, in the words of his ex-wife, is a lack of intimacy.  Our flaws and weaknesses are innate, and thus, make us whole.  She could never feel connected with him because all he was was a drug-induced shell of his former, whole, self.   Of course we only want the good stuff in our lives, but I think living life to the fullest means embracing all of life, including the mistakes and the weaknesses of which they’re made.  Think about it - what TV character is there that lives a perfect life?  The only interesting characters are the ones whose flaws we identify with and who go through journeys of discovery, through trial and error.   Truly living life means embracing all of it, including the unspectacular, awkward, and downright ugly, to the fullest.  

 

Live life to the fullest.  It’s an easy maxim to recite but acting it out is a wholly different matter.

I think it’s our tendency to imagine living life to the fullest as a picture of perfection.  A lot of laughing, having fun, being surrounded by good people - what montages are made of.  Of course, the mess-ups and bloopers are edited out.  

But, aside from the fact that perfection is just not possible, isn’t it the imperfections in life, together with the near perfections, that give us the fullest experience?  The highs just aren’t that high when you don’t know what the lows look like.  Good is good; but when compared with bad, good is better.  

One of the reasons Russell Brand’s character, Aldous Snow, uses drugs is because he rues the idea of worrying about things, of being bogged down by responsibilities - pretty much, caring too much.  He just wants to feel the high, even if it means being numb to everything else.  The consequence of that, in the words of his ex-wife, is a lack of intimacy.  Our flaws and weaknesses are innate, and thus, make us whole.  She could never feel connected with him because all he was was a drug-induced shell of his former, whole, self.  

Of course we only want the good stuff in our lives, but I think living life to the fullest means embracing all of life, including the mistakes and the weaknesses of which they’re made.  Think about it - what TV character is there that lives a perfect life?  The only interesting characters are the ones whose flaws we identify with and who go through journeys of discovery, through trial and error.  

Truly living life means embracing all of it, including the unspectacular, awkward, and downright ugly, to the fullest.  

I was surprised by how much I liked Alice in Wonderland.  Johnny Depp previously lost me with his manic turn as Willie Wonka, so I wasn’t looking forward to seeing him act a crazy again in another Tim Burton flick.  But as he plays the Mad Hatter, he does so with a sense of purpose and vulnerability that grounds the character and makes him likable.  In fact, he isn’t mad, really, he’s just child-like, which actually makes him the character that makes the most sense.   ”You used to be much more…’muchier’.  You’ve lost your muchness,” he says to Alice.  Sounds about right to me.  In the time she grows up, Alice does lose her confidence.  Despite everyone telling her it is her destiny to defeat the Jabberwocky, she is tied down by a sense of insecurity that keeps her from realizing her true potential.  Where once she is “much”, she is now not much of anything at all.   We can all relate to Alice.  Her second journey through Wonderland reflects the transition from the bold freedom of youth to the anxiety-ridden experience of adulthood.  Although many of us have a spirit of adventure, we have to fight through fear, whether created by society or our own failures, in order to maintain that desire to seek out the very best.  It’s important not to shy away from our destinies (however defined), as Alice does in the beginning, but to confidently say “This is what I’m here to do” and do it.   All it takes is maintaining the freedom we had as children, the boldness to try to turn our imagination into reality, and sometimes a little encouragement by a Mad Hatter to regain our “muchness”.  

I was surprised by how much I liked Alice in Wonderland.  Johnny Depp previously lost me with his manic turn as Willie Wonka, so I wasn’t looking forward to seeing him act a crazy again in another Tim Burton flick.  But as he plays the Mad Hatter, he does so with a sense of purpose and vulnerability that grounds the character and makes him likable.  In fact, he isn’t mad, really, he’s just child-like, which actually makes him the character that makes the most sense.  

”You used to be much more…’muchier’.  You’ve lost your muchness,” he says to Alice.  Sounds about right to me.  In the time she grows up, Alice does lose her confidence.  Despite everyone telling her it is her destiny to defeat the Jabberwocky, she is tied down by a sense of insecurity that keeps her from realizing her true potential.  Where once she is “much”, she is now not much of anything at all.  

We can all relate to Alice.  Her second journey through Wonderland reflects the transition from the bold freedom of youth to the anxiety-ridden experience of adulthood.  Although many of us have a spirit of adventure, we have to fight through fear, whether created by society or our own failures, in order to maintain that desire to seek out the very best.  It’s important not to shy away from our destinies (however defined), as Alice does in the beginning, but to confidently say “This is what I’m here to do” and do it.  

All it takes is maintaining the freedom we had as children, the boldness to try to turn our imagination into reality, and sometimes a little encouragement by a Mad Hatter to regain our “muchness”.  

I saw Crimes and Misdemeanors the other day, and there was a line that I thought was really interesting.  When faced with the prospect of consequences for his immoral actions, Martin Landau’s character states “God is a luxury I can’t afford.” Expanding God to mean any type of morality, it’s jarring and slightly unsettling to think about morality as a luxury rather than a necessity.  I can definitely understand, though, how people could feel like they don’t have the ability to stay accountable to a moral code.  When you’re a Jean Valjean, struggling to get by, you feel like you can’t sort through right or wrong because you’re faced with a graver dilemma – life or death, or something that feels like it. Would you throw God (or morality) away just to survive, or is God all there’s worth living for? Disclaimer: I understand that God may not be synonymous with morality, but for the sake of a simpler post, I’m treating the two as similar things.

I saw Crimes and Misdemeanors the other day, and there was a line that I thought was really interesting.  When faced with the prospect of consequences for his immoral actions, Martin Landau’s character states “God is a luxury I can’t afford.”

Expanding God to mean any type of morality, it’s jarring and slightly unsettling to think about morality as a luxury rather than a necessity.  I can definitely understand, though, how people could feel like they don’t have the ability to stay accountable to a moral code.  When you’re a Jean Valjean, struggling to get by, you feel like you can’t sort through right or wrong because you’re faced with a graver dilemma – life or death, or something that feels like it.

Would you throw God (or morality) away just to survive, or is God all there’s worth living for?

Disclaimer: I understand that God may not be synonymous with morality, but for the sake of a simpler post, I’m treating the two as similar things.

Into the Wild is a film by Sean Penn about a guy, Chris, who eschews worldly possessions and his parents’ expectations to find meaning in nature and to define his own existence. There were a lot of scenes at which I clapped and nodded my head in agreement.  One scene in particular, in which Chris burns his money at the beginning of his trip, got me really happy. It’s nice to fantasize about giving everything up for adventure.  I can only imagine how peaceful it can be to stand alone in the wild, with nothing but your thoughts, the thrill, and the beauty of nature. We idealize it so much, but is that necessarily the better way to live?  It’s exciting and challenging, that’s for sure, but I think there’s a certain amount of selfishness in that lifestyle.  Whether we like it or not, we’re born into a society, a network of interpersonal relationships.  We’re not here for ourselves, but for our families, our friends, our future progeny, and the rest of society, especially those in need.  It seems a little self-seeking to disown this civilization we’re born into, in order to retreat into a world where the only person you have to care for is you. You could say that you’re rebelling against materialism and the values that civilization has created, which are often at odds with what we feel and desire.  I wonder, though, how much of that is an active resolve to live the way you feel you’ve been called to live, in the very core of your being, and how much of that is reluctance to buckle down and work within the context of our societal responsibilities. I think it’s great to explore and discover, which sometimes requires giving up the conventions and norms to which you’ve been accustomed.  But I also think it’s easy to veil our quests as a search for truth, when really, we’re just running away.

Into the Wild is a film by Sean Penn about a guy, Chris, who eschews worldly possessions and his parents’ expectations to find meaning in nature and to define his own existence.

There were a lot of scenes at which I clapped and nodded my head in agreement.  One scene in particular, in which Chris burns his money at the beginning of his trip, got me really happy.

It’s nice to fantasize about giving everything up for adventure.  I can only imagine how peaceful it can be to stand alone in the wild, with nothing but your thoughts, the thrill, and the beauty of nature.

We idealize it so much, but is that necessarily the better way to live?  It’s exciting and challenging, that’s for sure, but I think there’s a certain amount of selfishness in that lifestyle.  Whether we like it or not, we’re born into a society, a network of interpersonal relationships.  We’re not here for ourselves, but for our families, our friends, our future progeny, and the rest of society, especially those in need.  It seems a little self-seeking to disown this civilization we’re born into, in order to retreat into a world where the only person you have to care for is you.

You could say that you’re rebelling against materialism and the values that civilization has created, which are often at odds with what we feel and desire.  I wonder, though, how much of that is an active resolve to live the way you feel you’ve been called to live, in the very core of your being, and how much of that is reluctance to buckle down and work within the context of our societal responsibilities.

I think it’s great to explore and discover, which sometimes requires giving up the conventions and norms to which you’ve been accustomed.  But I also think it’s easy to veil our quests as a search for truth, when really, we’re just running away.

Jarhead got me thinking about why people go to war and what happens to them when they come back.  The film had a nice series of scenes at the end depicting the post-war lives of the soldiers - raising families, taking menial jobs, having successful careers, indulging in sex and alcohol.  I think it represents the challenge of finding meaning after something you’ve been consumed by, something as huge and draining as war, is now gone. All of this which begs the question, where do you find meaning? For some people, it’s found in what’s unseen, a spiritual calling to live right now for things to come.  For others, meaning is found in more tangible things like money and fame, a type of success that can be measured.  Some people find it in living out ideals, like helping the needy or raising a loving family - generally making the world a better place.  None of these are mutually exclusive, but I think they can be distinguished in terms of their priority in a person’s life.  You can find meaning in God, wealth, and family, but say you have to sacrifice one for another - which would you ultimately choose? In any case, life’s meaning is not some lofty, far-and-away notion.  It’s what helps us cope through each day, what drives us to wake up in the morning.  For those soldiers in Jarhead, maybe the biggest challenge wasn’t fighting in the desert, but finding a purpose worth pursuing, without having a sergeant screaming it out at them.

Jarhead got me thinking about why people go to war and what happens to them when they come back.  The film had a nice series of scenes at the end depicting the post-war lives of the soldiers - raising families, taking menial jobs, having successful careers, indulging in sex and alcohol.  I think it represents the challenge of finding meaning after something you’ve been consumed by, something as huge and draining as war, is now gone.

All of this which begs the question, where do you find meaning?

For some people, it’s found in what’s unseen, a spiritual calling to live right now for things to come.  For others, meaning is found in more tangible things like money and fame, a type of success that can be measured.  Some people find it in living out ideals, like helping the needy or raising a loving family - generally making the world a better place.  None of these are mutually exclusive, but I think they can be distinguished in terms of their priority in a person’s life.  You can find meaning in God, wealth, and family, but say you have to sacrifice one for another - which would you ultimately choose?

In any case, life’s meaning is not some lofty, far-and-away notion.  It’s what helps us cope through each day, what drives us to wake up in the morning.  For those soldiers in Jarhead, maybe the biggest challenge wasn’t fighting in the desert, but finding a purpose worth pursuing, without having a sergeant screaming it out at them.

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