On 12/30/06, Iris McGinnis wrote (most eloquently):
didn't feel right to responding to this on the blog comments
there is no consolation for losing a beloved.
every day i ask myself why was it him and not me.
i am not any ones light.
i am not any ones future.
why is life so cruel?
I,
If you are in a space in which your questions are rhetorical then PLEASE disregard my responses.
There are few things more unwelcome than Philosophy tromping through the midst of the body's grief.
At the moment these questions are not rhetorical for me. Thus, the following responses.
Maybe we hold a bit of each others' light and future? Certainly, you hold a bit of mine.
My dreams will not come anywhere near true without the people I love because they are at least in part defined by them. I dream of family, community, and guardianship of peace. Each of these will be real at the point that other people in my sphere of influence are participating and profoundly getting what they need. Then we may point and say that we have achieved some measure of success. When I notice that I am holding some "light" (with so many meanings) for someone (including myself) I certainly feel called to take the parts of others' light I hold more seriously.
As for the future, if all we can imagine as important can end without further comment at any time then the choices we make are probably irrelevant and essential at the same time. Irrelevance allows a certain freedom of movement. The samurai keeps his own death ever before him in order to be able to move freely into and out of battle - neither of which Matters. Both are simply necessary and can reveal beauty and give weight and context to life. This is the essential part. My life needs context and depth (or meaning, if you prefer). This is unlikely to have consequences for or in relation to Life but is damned important to me.
If I'm serious about withdrawing my projections of Justice (and all other Big Ideas) as divine or universal but simply native to the human scope, then who am I to imagine that Life is cruel? Cruelty requires disposition, attention toward suffering inflicted by something a human could recognize as consciousness. Also it requires a governing standard against which behavior may be compared and found wanting. If there is any consciousness (as we understand the term) attached to our abstractions, gods like God and Life, then to imagine that Life would intend anything toward me is outright hubris. People write plays, or used to (unless you are Sondheim or Mamet), about such things.
In short, His Eye is not on the sparrow. My eye is on the sparrow. And the sparrow may end up as a very minor part of my lunch, or as a reminder of the beauty and brevity of existence, or as anything else my ravenously transformative metaphor-making consciousness needs at the moment. This may seem cruel to me but there is no court of Cosmic standards to which I may make an appeal, compare myself to the sparrow, and reach a desirable resolution of Brandon v Life.
If working conclusions are required:
- All the more reason to work toward compassion here so justice becomes more frequent and basic and peace becomes more likely and widespread.
- specifically not because a God would have it so, but because I want it and you want it, and because God may be declared dead when life appears cruel and all bets are suddenly off.
- You and I are much harder to get rid of.
- Or not.
- Depending on how you look at it.
Labels: budo, cruelty, death, God, gods, life, philosophy
| posted by Unknown @ 12/30/2006 02:17:00 PM
