Most men and women lead lives at the worst so painful, at the best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments, is and has always been one of the principal appetites of the soul.”
–Aldous Huxley

Interestingly (to me), I first posted the above quote on this date four years ago. And it still resonates. I’m not sure if that is an indication that I’m stuck in a rut or that Mr. Huxley’s thought is a universal truth on the meaning (meaninglessness?) of life. Anyway, I like it.

The quote was good fodder for thought as I did my morning walk. My life here is better than the life I left behind, no question about that. But there is no denying the repetitiveness of my daily routines is indeed monotonous and leaves my soul hungry for meaningfulness. Now, I don’t mean to say I’m in despair or that I’m living a life of quiet desperation. Far from it. But the recent death within my small circle here is a stark reminder that I need to get off my ass and make the best of whatever time remains for me in this life.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

Henry David Thoreau

For some reason I got to thinking about some of the training sessions the government wasted money on saw fit to send me to during the course of my 35 year career in Uncle Sam’s service. Many of these would include some type of “inspirational” segment where an overpaid speaker would presumably motivate us to greatness through the power of their words.

One that I recall involved a theme of “don’t sweat the small stuff”. The speaker drew a time line on his whiteboard with annotations for birth at one end and death at the other. He said being born and dying are big things. And everything in between is the small stuff. Well, I’m not sure how valuable that insight was but I do remember it all these years later. And yeah, I do try and remind myself that in the grand scheme of things my “problems” don’t amount to much of anything. As one Filipina friend told me “I worry everyday about how I’m going to feed my kids. And you complain because some woman hurt your feelings? You are blessed.”

Another training I recall had a more practical work application. It talked about manager’s getting bogged down by striving for perfection in their own work or in that of their subordinates. You can spend hours re-working a memo written for your signature or you can accept that the memo as written serves its intended purpose. The word the instructor used for this concept was “satisfices”. At least as a government manager, I found that satisfices was nearly always good enough. These days when I consider my life I can acknowledge it is perhaps not all it could be but I can also accept that it satisfices. It could certainly be much, much worse, that’s for sure.

And then I remembered a short story by Ernest Hemingway I read way back when in a literature class in college. It was called “A Clean Well-Lighted Place” and it was a story about nothing and the nothingness of life. I just did a search and saw that back in December 2006 I was also channeling this story. Funny how that works. And damn, in October 2014 the story was speaking to me once again. This was during that period where Jee Yeun first declined to return to the USA with me. I didn’t know it then of course, but that proved to be the beginning of the end for us. Anyway, here is one analysis of Hemingway’s story:

A Clean, Well Lighted Place” is Hemingway’s paean to a type of existential nihilism, an exploration of the meaning, or lack thereof, of existence. It clearly expresses the philosophy that underlies the Hemingway canon, dwelling on themes of death, futility, meaninglessness, and depression. Through the thoughts and words of a middle-aged Spanish waiter, Hemingway encapsulates the main tenet of his existential philosophy. Life is inherently meaningless and leads inevitably to death, and the older one gets, the clearer these truths become and the less able one is to impose any kind of order on one’s existence or maintain any kind of positivity in one’s outlook.

Here’s another, which strikes me as a little more scholarly. I wonder what ever happened to the paper I wrote for course credit? Apparently it didn’t make it to the internet. Anyway, A Clean Well-Lighted Place is not exactly the story of my life. At least not yet! But I like it. If you have not read it, you can have it read to you. Takes less than ten minutes and I deem it to be time well spent!

This post really went off in a weird direction, didn’t it? Anyway, despite appearances I’m doing fine and I am optimistic I’ll be doing even finer in the days to come.

It was all nothing, and a man was nothing, too…Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it was nada y pues nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee…