Vaguely paraphrased from one of the more humorous movie reviews of our childhood (http://io9.com/5576076/m-night-shyamalan-finally-made-a-comedy), this post's title draws attention to the lack of purpose evident in the characters' actions during the film. Having seen the film, I'd actually challenge the assertion, but it's almost irrelevant. There's a more interesting question, I think: is this thing, this lack of purpose, bad?
This isn't without context either. As I get older, I definitely feel less and less sure of what I'm doing. One of the nicer things about high school was that there were clear goals. We had a lot of choices pertaining to which goals to pursue, sure, and it wasn't always clear which goals were best or why, but even when we tried to figure out what we cared about, what we wanted out of life, there was structure.
That structure has all but vanished for me by this point. You have some idea of what you're working towards generally, and you make plans based on what your vision is at any given moment. But your vision changes with time, because even if you're not changing (a highly questionable assertion, as has been brought to my attention by one of my more hideous friends), most everybody else is. So you end up with a collection of plans, based on different visions from different times, and then you stop and ask yourself, well...what does it all mean!
I'll challenge that idea though. Frankly, who the hell cares. Hopefully at some point, things will change less and less, and plans will become more consistent with each other. Until then, though, lack of long-term fruition doesn't mean the short-term fruition is any less valuable. There's a really moving instance of this in Children of the Mind:
'"Not one moment of my life with my family has been wasted," said Olhado quietly.
"But the point of it is to go on, isn't it? To connect with the future?"
"That's one part, yes," said Olhado. "But part of the purpose of it is now, is the moment. And part of it
is the web of connections. Links from soul to soul. If the purpose of life was just to continue into the
future, then none of it would have meaning, because it would be all anticipation and preparation. There's fruition, Grego. There's the happiness we've already had. The happiness of each moment. The end of our lives, even if there's no forward continuation, no progeny at all, the end of our lives doesn't erase the beginning."
"But it won't have amounted to anything," said Grego. "If your children die, then it was all a waste."
"No," said Olhado quietly. "You say that because you have no children, Greguinho. But none of it is
wasted. The child you hold in your arms for only a day before he dies, that is not wasted, because that
one day is enough of a purpose in itself. Just because we might all die here on this little world does not undo the lives before the deaths."'
Even the word fruition is a little misleading. Sometimes it's very clear when an individual act is worthwhile, but other times we pursue silly, meaningless things which, in retrospect, were incredibly fun for no readily apparent reason. I don't think anyone can validly claim that these things aren't worth our time. And while it's empirically easy to trick yourself into wasting time under the guise of "relaxing" or some other purportedly enjoyable activity, I think it's also pretty clear to us when we're doing this. It would seem, then, that we just need to make sure we're happy - but actually happy, not some facsimile.
And part of this goes beyond what we actually do with our time. Part of it is just a choice. Maybe it's not emotionally honest (something which hopefully I'll get to write about later), but in most cases we actually can swing our emotions one way or another through force of will.
Now, having said all that, you will be disappointed to know that it was a justification for the following pointless story from today. Half of the things that run through my mind are (as you are mostly aware) inane. Since I no longer talk to most of you regularly, I don't really get to share these things with you. And, perhaps more importantly for me, I no longer get to hear about the things you think about or do. So, as worthless as this is, here's my clarion call to start these blogs up again.
-------------------------------------------
We have a mailing list here called reuse. It's premise is simple - give away free things to whoever can pick them up the fastest. This list has actually proven immensely amusing and occasionally useful in the past, providing me with a whiteboard, a box full of rubber-dart guns, and a foosball table, among other things. Anyway, today someone posted that they were giving away a number of things, one of which was the 7 LOTR books (there are 7??). I haven't read these yet (cue angry mob) so I sent out an email claiming them, jumped on my bike and pedaled hard for campus (trip is min 10 min (im enjoying the double use of min)). Unfortunately, someone picked them up 2 minutes after I left home, and by the time I got to campus, only a few other items were left. I grabbed these and went to lab.
After a few hours, I pulled these items out and took a look. I had gotten a bag of yarn balls, a physics book, and a story book (?) in German. I feel the yarn balls will be good for something amusing, but I can't actually think of anything, so suggestions are welcome. The German book, however, reminded me of something I'd been told over the weekend.
I had two guests over at the apartment, and they were commenting on the things that had been left to us by the year-round residents, two Harvard Grad Students. In particular, they'd commented on how these two seem to have ridiculously varied literary tastes. They have books in pretty much every language, and on so many random topics, that looking through their collection made me wonder how they could possibly be so versatile.
The German book I'd scavenged made me think twice about this, and about other large book collections I've seen (Ved's basement, anyone). Maybe the people with these massive collections don't actually read in depth or breadth - maybe they just have a lot of random books.
I'll leave you with that =P. You have my word that the next post will have substance.
~jnub
This isn't without context either. As I get older, I definitely feel less and less sure of what I'm doing. One of the nicer things about high school was that there were clear goals. We had a lot of choices pertaining to which goals to pursue, sure, and it wasn't always clear which goals were best or why, but even when we tried to figure out what we cared about, what we wanted out of life, there was structure.
That structure has all but vanished for me by this point. You have some idea of what you're working towards generally, and you make plans based on what your vision is at any given moment. But your vision changes with time, because even if you're not changing (a highly questionable assertion, as has been brought to my attention by one of my more hideous friends), most everybody else is. So you end up with a collection of plans, based on different visions from different times, and then you stop and ask yourself, well...what does it all mean!
I'll challenge that idea though. Frankly, who the hell cares. Hopefully at some point, things will change less and less, and plans will become more consistent with each other. Until then, though, lack of long-term fruition doesn't mean the short-term fruition is any less valuable. There's a really moving instance of this in Children of the Mind:
'"Not one moment of my life with my family has been wasted," said Olhado quietly.
"But the point of it is to go on, isn't it? To connect with the future?"
"That's one part, yes," said Olhado. "But part of the purpose of it is now, is the moment. And part of it
is the web of connections. Links from soul to soul. If the purpose of life was just to continue into the
future, then none of it would have meaning, because it would be all anticipation and preparation. There's fruition, Grego. There's the happiness we've already had. The happiness of each moment. The end of our lives, even if there's no forward continuation, no progeny at all, the end of our lives doesn't erase the beginning."
"But it won't have amounted to anything," said Grego. "If your children die, then it was all a waste."
"No," said Olhado quietly. "You say that because you have no children, Greguinho. But none of it is
wasted. The child you hold in your arms for only a day before he dies, that is not wasted, because that
one day is enough of a purpose in itself. Just because we might all die here on this little world does not undo the lives before the deaths."'
Even the word fruition is a little misleading. Sometimes it's very clear when an individual act is worthwhile, but other times we pursue silly, meaningless things which, in retrospect, were incredibly fun for no readily apparent reason. I don't think anyone can validly claim that these things aren't worth our time. And while it's empirically easy to trick yourself into wasting time under the guise of "relaxing" or some other purportedly enjoyable activity, I think it's also pretty clear to us when we're doing this. It would seem, then, that we just need to make sure we're happy - but actually happy, not some facsimile.
And part of this goes beyond what we actually do with our time. Part of it is just a choice. Maybe it's not emotionally honest (something which hopefully I'll get to write about later), but in most cases we actually can swing our emotions one way or another through force of will.
Now, having said all that, you will be disappointed to know that it was a justification for the following pointless story from today. Half of the things that run through my mind are (as you are mostly aware) inane. Since I no longer talk to most of you regularly, I don't really get to share these things with you. And, perhaps more importantly for me, I no longer get to hear about the things you think about or do. So, as worthless as this is, here's my clarion call to start these blogs up again.
-------------------------------------------
We have a mailing list here called reuse. It's premise is simple - give away free things to whoever can pick them up the fastest. This list has actually proven immensely amusing and occasionally useful in the past, providing me with a whiteboard, a box full of rubber-dart guns, and a foosball table, among other things. Anyway, today someone posted that they were giving away a number of things, one of which was the 7 LOTR books (there are 7??). I haven't read these yet (cue angry mob) so I sent out an email claiming them, jumped on my bike and pedaled hard for campus (trip is min 10 min (im enjoying the double use of min)). Unfortunately, someone picked them up 2 minutes after I left home, and by the time I got to campus, only a few other items were left. I grabbed these and went to lab.
After a few hours, I pulled these items out and took a look. I had gotten a bag of yarn balls, a physics book, and a story book (?) in German. I feel the yarn balls will be good for something amusing, but I can't actually think of anything, so suggestions are welcome. The German book, however, reminded me of something I'd been told over the weekend.
I had two guests over at the apartment, and they were commenting on the things that had been left to us by the year-round residents, two Harvard Grad Students. In particular, they'd commented on how these two seem to have ridiculously varied literary tastes. They have books in pretty much every language, and on so many random topics, that looking through their collection made me wonder how they could possibly be so versatile.
The German book I'd scavenged made me think twice about this, and about other large book collections I've seen (Ved's basement, anyone). Maybe the people with these massive collections don't actually read in depth or breadth - maybe they just have a lot of random books.
I'll leave you with that =P. You have my word that the next post will have substance.
~jnub
