Oh. That's Why.

Last night as I went to bed, I kept asking myself why I care. And just as I got comfortable, my little dog pawed at the blankets, crawled under, and curled up in a little ball at my side. I got the great big warm love feeling in my chest and I thought, "Oh, that's why."

I still thought about it more as I was falling asleep, and will continue to examine why I would not be comfortable not doing some of the things that I do even if nothing means anything.

Why Do I Care?

Some things really, really upset me. I can pretty well live with disagreement, but the level of hatred out in the world toward much of what I believe to be true for me - it throws me every time I witness it. I have a really hard time putting words to what bothers me so much when I peruse message boards and websites for various causes and ideas. Even the stuff I agree with bothers me, but in a different way. So, a list:

1. Self-Righteousness. Whether I agree with the ideas or not, self righteousness makes me cringe. The idea that there is only one right way - whether it is political, philosophical, moral, nutritional, cultural, etc. - is profoundly unappealing.
2. Anger. So many people are so angry at the things they don't agree with. It is not nearly enough to disagree with an idea, or set of practices. It must be belittled, proven wrong, and the people behind the idea must be made into the enemy or the fool.
3. Alchemy. This ties in with number 2. More and more, especially in political circles, formerly neutral words are transformed into slurs. "Liberal," used to be a word that described a particular set of political, and to some extent, cultural ideas. Agree or not, it was just a word to differentiate a set of ideas, like "Buddhist" or "physics" or "Freudian." Now "activist" has been transformed, too. What the hell? What is going on with this practice of taking a word that belongs to a group of people or ideas and using it as a slur? That which is positive or neutral is transformed into something negative.
4. Division. Us and them. No middle ground. No understanding that the "them" may be just as offended by "us" as we are by "them." So, each side gets to be the cause of suffering for the other.

I have seen the enemy, and they is us.

I feel like I am perpetually out in this no-man's land of perception. I am deeply troubled and moved and even angered by the currents of self-righteousness, anger, and alchemy. Yet, when I look for people whose ideas would align with mine on the issues assailed by self-righteousness, anger, alchemy, and divisiveness, those who agree with me are just as likely to be self-righteous, angry, divisive alchemists.

And this leaves me... kind of lonely. I've been obsessed for so long with finding the objective truth about things, the practical, definable things, like nutrition, and why exactly the supreme court decided that something should be legal or not, and not only is everything I'm looking for nearly unrecognizable under all of the opinions and the anger and self-righteousness, but even the information about the deabtes about the topics is completely obtuse and faulty.

There is no objective truth. There is only what is believed to be true.

Everyone has their own truth and it is no less true to them then my truth is to me. If there are many truths, there is no one truth. THAT is the one truth that I believe. Which isn't really the truth at all because there is no truth.

And if there is no truth, then everything is just an illusion. The illusions are based on all of these beliefs that we have. And the beliefs are based on the illusions. If everything is an illusion, then nothing really matters. And if nothing matters, why am I here, and why do I care?

If nothing I do, or think, or believe actually matters, then why I do I choose to spend my time doing, thinking, and believing the things that I do? And why do I get upset when what I do, think, or believe comes under attack, if it doesn't matter? Why do I get angry at other people's anger?

Huh. I guess I should just go off and be joyful then, because I don't have anything to worry about.

Just Because

I believe I have finally come to understand why I'm not an activist:

It's pointless.

I don't mean that in a doom and gloom kind of way. I mean that any form of activism to change institutions or change laws or change a government is totally pointless. Governments eventually go away. And institutions and laws. They all go away. They're all just these artificial things that we've set up to worry about, but none of it matters. One day there will be no United States and there will be no blogs and there will be nothing to really get angry about because I'm only going to exist on an atomic level anyway. So, as worked up as I get over injustices and cruelty and stupidity, it's hard to commit myself to a lifetime of fighting against something that is... well, is sitting in a completely imagined and artificial framework.

I was struck by this thought today, "What would I do with myself if the whole world was vegan, and compassion was the m.o. for every human? What would I think about if I didn't have the spectre of defending my ideas hanging over me at all times? Who would I be, if everything in my world were exactly as I wish it to be?"

And WHY on earth would I not be that person now?

The idea of change creating action rather that action creating change resonates with me very deeply. Abundantly happy people seem to have everything they want, but they're not happy BECAUSE they finally got everything they wanted. They're happy because they're happy. Their happiness will BE CAUSE for happy things to happen around them.

Likewise, I could sit around feeling defensive and downtrodden because my views of the world don't really parse with the views of so many people around me, or I could not do that. Realistically, no matter how hard I work I will not change the whole entire world or bring the whole entire world into line with my views, nor would I ever want to do such a thing. So, I could work to change the world right around me or I could BE CAUSE for the world right around me to change.

So, then: who would I be if my world were exactly the way I would like it to be?

Clothes Cap Shunning

Today at the gym I was watching the 11 am news, which finished with a story about the hipness of all things Turkish these days. Oddly, the lead in to this was "In the early 90s the band They Might be Giants had a hit with the song Istanbul Not Constantinople..." Although I was pleased to see TMBG get a nod on the midday news, albeit 15 years late for a song they didn't even write, what really got my attention was the closed captioning for the Turkish story, which told me all about a wonderful and hip Tush Irk restaurant in Andersonville.

Tush Irk. I think that beats last month's story about Lance Armstrong's victory over Tess Particular Canser.

Tiny Happy People

Over the course of 48 hours this week, Rob and Alissa, and Joel and Lauren both had babies.

That's a lot of babies!

So, Joel is the first of the Calling Circle to have reproduced (that, um, we know of). Thus begins Calling Circle: The Next Generation. Many of my friends have had babies, but this is different - not because I've known Joel since I was 14, spoke at his bachelor (roast) party, and remember him talking about Lauren after their first couple of dates. It's the way I think of his kid. When Eric sent out the "Max Finkelstein Update" email, Max Finkelstein suddenly became an actual guy to me. Not the abstraction "Joel's kid," but this guy, Max Finkelstein, who is in the hospital recovering from surgery.

Although I recognize consciously that my friend's kids are people, the thought of Joel's kid strikes me differently. Perhaps it's the name - I could have gone to high school with a Max Finkelstein, or learned my haftorah portion from a Max Finkelstein - or perhaps it's something else. Either way, I'm glad he's around.

Corporation Demoralization

This again.

Some day, at some point in my adult life, I would like to go one entire calendar year without moving. Just one year in which I pay taxes only for the address where I'm sitting paying the taxes. One dwelling, in one city, in one state. Just once.

I realized this morning that I have not gone a full calendar year without moving since 1997. That was the last one. And before that, 1992. High school. It's getting ridiculous.

That said, I know Scott is doing the right thing by looking for another job. And I am not upset about the prospect of leaving the midwest sooner rather than later; why sit around any longer not getting invested in anything because I know I'll be leaving? I suppose I can still do some of the projects in this house that I wanted to do, although spending the money at this point seems a bit foolish. Ok, so no new shelves in the pantry, but it may still be worth the money to do some of the decorative stuff that will make the house show well.

Gad, it's just hard being so damn supportive all the time, even though I know it's right, and I want to contribute to Scott's well-being more than I want to be a martyr. Nothing I've said has been untrue - I won't love him any less if he makes less money, and I do think that the universe has spoken loud and clear about his career path, and I honestly do believe that he would be happier in a non-regional position, if only he could change his definition of success from what he is supposed to do to what pays the bills and doesn't make him want to crawl under a rock. It's not as if the big regional corporate job is feeding the larger goal of going into business for ourselves, anyway.

An interesting by-product of this situation is that I have been depressed for the past two days. This, weirdly, is a good thing, because I've been wondering if I haven't just been fooling myself for the past year, that maybe the logical decision to lay low for a while was just a big fat cover for another big fat depression. But then, the last two days great big capital "D" Depression hit, reminding me that I used to feel this way all the time, but I haven't in a long while. And it's a relief, because I know it's directly realted to stuff on the homefront (and possibly excess sugar intake since yesterday morning) and I can recognize it, which means that I can fix it.