Inability to Cope

We interrupt the crappy stories I've been writing for a real blog. In the words of my friend Jenn: 'shit just got real'.

2 days ago I was overcome by this.... mood?/spirit?/feeling? I don't know what it is. It's like fear, but it isn't the same as fear. Maybe it's just depression again. Anyway, there's like 3 different things causing it and they'll just be boring details to anyone but me.

But I just thought it'd be hillarious/interesting to analyze my reaction to it, it'll be an interesting test of human nature/my nature.

When I began to get this - let's just say 'fear' (even though it's a little inaccurate) - my first reaction was to pray. Then nothing happened, so I tried porn, etc. nothing happened, so then I tried eating, nothing happened. Then I tried some legitimate stuff like exercise and homework, etc and that helped a little. But then all of it got alot worse and so I just started watching every episode of Top Gear and every movie my friend gave me on a burnt dvd. I tried going to Mass and praying more but everyone just wanted me to be optimistic. (I hate contrary advice. My old psychotherapist said that if I'm having a bad day I should just tell people 'I'm having a bad day'. But people don't get Stoicism like that anymore.) Then when I was at my wit's end I tried to just drive away, but I ended up at home. Then I tried to call my brother Jer, my last hope in the world. But he's out in the bush, so I can't call him. So then I just sat on the couch, unable to move or study anymore, blankly staring at the tv screen.

So this morning I resolved to face all of my problems head on. That lasted for about 34 seconds. So I just watched Fast and the Furious (all the Top Gear has put me in car mode), and I'm wearing my Rosary today, I don't care what people say. And I am kind of shaky. I just want to become a monk or a priest in like Arizona or Tokyo or something, and have to be around people I don't know and don't understand. Then no one will bother me. I want like an item list of things I have to do, and I want it to never be longer than 10 things. Like: clean room, walk to chapel, say mass, hear confessions, eat breakfast, go for a long walk, learn a bit of (insert language), eat dinner, teach someone something maybe?, go to bed. A very simple life, a contemplative life.

I want to get rid of everything. I don't want to be where people know me. No one will be able to say: 'that's just crazy ol' Andrew'. I want the food to taste bad and the bed to be uncomfortable. I want to have many moments a day when I meet Hispanic or Asian people or pseudo-criminal people whom I don't understand and can't relate to, and then try to grow as a person until I can reach deep enough into human experience to relate to them. I'm fucking crazy. I don't know. bleh.

...

the worst part is I know - come friday - I'll have all the assignments done (probably just barely pass some of them) and they'll be a new manifestation of these same problems. It's all a cycle, it's all a rut, I'm like a train set on tracks and I know where they're headed and all I can think of is how kick-ass it would be to have freedom like a car...

once again I find myself just trying to survive, just trying to get through today, and hoping. Hope is all I seem to ever have. If I run out of that, I'm scared to think of what will happen.

Busy-ness as Quasi-Virtue

I haven't been in depression lately so I haven't posted as often on here - usually I have less interesting thoughts when I'm functioning 'normally'. But I was thinking about tonight and how I had nothing I had to do today. I just sat around, I read a bit, the most enjoyable part of the day was doing my laundry and making my bed and cleaning my room. I mean, I hate doing those things, but it made me feel like a human again after sitting around all that time. I look forward to moving out again so that I am forced to take care of myself, because as I act and remain busy, even though it frustrates me, it's good for me, and in the long run I enjoy life alot more.

I think sitting around and not doing anything is probably the worst thing for me. I am hopeful that I'll probably do my Master's and Doctorate (God willing) in some far off land where I have to worry about bills and shop for groceries, and work, and be ridiculously busy.

Perhaps being busy is a quasi-virtue. It's a habit that helps me sustain other beneficial habits. I know the longer I'm at home, the less virtuous I'm becoming. I anxiously await busy-ness, because only when there are bad things in my life, can I enjoy the good things and be hopeful. When everything is fine, it seems to be a slow downward path, the path to Hell really. And as good students of the Greeks, we all know that Virtue is the path to Happiness / Eudaimonia.

So if you're immensely busy and stressed and you barely had time to read this, perhaps you should consider it a blessing. And perhaps I should read this again next time I'm bitching about how busy I am. In the mean time I'll be loafing around (until work tomorrow) and reading Evelyn Waugh (a MALE R.C convert like myself) or possibly watching a movie.

Idiocy of Human Limitations ; Fall ; Time

Time is a strange thing, in St. Augustine's Confessions he basically envisions walking out onto a plain and imagines that in the open air around him etc is all time (ie. somehow not linear but 3 dimensional). I just butchered that insight.

Anyway, I have a 2000 word essay due tomorrow that I've barely started and I'm a bit worried. I don't WANT to do it, and I have to work today so I'll be up most of the night I'm sure. But still I find comfort in thinking: Time will be defeated, the time will come when I hand in the paper and it's all over, done. Time passes so quickly and sometimes I think my life is just trying to rush through time only to realize that I've lost it.

I wish I could enjoy every moment, especially Fall/Autumn, it's so beautiful. The trees and the corn fields, it's my favourite season. I only got to take 1 or 2 walks and they were awesome, but now I'm noticing too many of the leaves falling and realizing I've wasted another year's chances. I like looking at things from a different perspective, I like laying out on the ground and looking up at the sky and thinking about how big the world is and how stupid all of our human obligations are. For example: Today I have to go to work in 38 minutes, I then have to hand in my history paper in 24 hours 38 minutes. But that's all human responsibility and obligation, biologically, I could just sit here on the couch. My work could call, I could get fired, my prof could email me and say that I failed the course, but that's it....that's it.... I'd still be sitting here at 12:01 on friday and nothing would have physically affected me. In no way would I be in danger or hopeless.

I like remembering that. I wish I could levitate, if I could levitate/fly I would quit school right now. My World of Warcraft priest could levitate where you would hover about 2 feet off the ground and you could jump off cliffs and just slowly float down.



I think it'd be so wonderful to just quit everything and slowly float around on a beautiful October day. I dream of that freedom WoW simulated, to just have endless free time, to be autonomous truly, to only fear about real life dangers not something as synthetic as work or school.

I'd like to cash out everything from my bank account and wander from town to town enjoying every moment, because one day my time will end, and I'll die and that's it. School, work, money, even family, will be nothing. Just my soul, just God. that's it.

(I'd also prefer travelling to WoW cities which are probably much cooler than real towns, case and point:)



To roam and chase after Eudaimonia and to love and to hope, this is what feeds my soul. Not essays about American History and Deli work.

Latin, The Girl, and the Trip That Never Is

I switched my courses tonight for Brock. I decided to take Latin. I HAVE to learn it eventually for a masters in history or theology, so it was only a matter of time. Personally, I would've liked to put it off for a couple more years.

Languages are a funny thing for me, because I love them, I love the idea of speaking another language or reading it. But mostly Latin because it is the language of our history, the eternal langua Romani (Language of the Romans). I feel impowered when I know another language, I feel as if I could be a whole different person. For me, language is a many splendoured thing. But in honesty I suck at Latin. I tried alot, but never came up with enough effort to master the material. I hated the tenses and the necessity of precise endings, etc. I'm terrible at Latin, and so I'm conflicted, it's as if this door is open in front of me, and everyone tells me (including myself) that if I just tried hard enough I could get through it. But at the same time I'm weighed down with sloth and grammatical ignorance and I can't make it through.

There's a girl I saw tonight, the chances of her reading this blog are minimal so I don't mind posting it. Though it would be a typical chapter in my life if she saw it this one time. Anyway, this girl I saw tonight is a genius, and we have everything in common. I can't think of a time when I've been more foolish than when I tried to ask her out. It might possibly be the dumbest I've ever been. It was generic, obvious, and awkward. I was heart-broken for a while...actually I don't know if I have a heart, but I was very upset. In any case, she is not at all interested in me, but whenever I see her it's like the open door. I have this beautiful image of how happy I could be if we were even just friends, but I can't seem to make it. Again I'm weighed down and in my mind I keep telling myself ('it's your own fault' just like Latin). It makes me hate myself as I look at my gross unshaven gay-tee, and my morbidly obese sized t-shirts. I want to speak Latin, I want people to like me, I want to run again, I want to be healthy and suave and fit.

Finally, I have a trip that got postponed again, it's the 4th time now and I'm furious. I can't ask my boss for the 4th time to reschedule me. I'm so angry at my parents. It's totally out of my control, and it shows how little they respect me or my life. But obviously if I can't do anything right, why would they?

It's painfully clear to me what my Summum Bonum, my greatest good, is. To love myself enough to start running, to love my future enough to study Latin night and day and ace the class, and to then win the affections of the girl and live much more happily, for a little while at least.

God if you're listening, please help me. But I'm never as certain about anything as I am that I will fail. I will drag myself through latin, possibly dropping it, failing, or barely passing. I will embarrass myself infront of the girl and focus her annoyances on me into dislike, and I will remain the same blob, sitting in bed, crying out to God, crying out on this blog, crying out to the no one who is listening. Such seems my life.

But maybe everything will change, maybe I will acheive my Summum Bonum, that I will feel Eudaimonea. That small pathetic hope lives on somewhere in the cynicism and pessimism of my soul, and that is why I will wake up tomorrow, and read a chapter of my latin book, and go to work, and try to eat healthy. In the hope that everything might change. Tolkien taught me hope, and I don't know whether to blame or thank him for it.

Domine misere mei.

Remembering I'm A Creature

It's amazing how life works. I had just written in a previous blog post that I was super depressed and lonely as a human, and that I wished to be like God, and to be removed from relationships and just have peace in solitude. Little did I know what I would be shown next....

So I've been waiting for hours for a phone call, so I decided that in my depression I would pick up a theology book. I started reading one of my favourite authors thoughts on the Garden of Eden and Original Sin and the Human Condition.

"at the very heart of sin lies human beings' denial of their creatureliness, inasmuch as they refuse to accept the standard and limitations that are implicit in it [ie. Moral Law]. They do not want to be creatures, do not want to be subject to a standard, do not want to be dependent. They consider their dependence on God's creative love to be an imposition from without. But that is what slavery is, and from slavery one must free oneself. Thus human beings themselves want to be God."

This perfectly summarized my situation psychologically, strangely enough he had me pinned. But wait there's more!

"Human beings who consider dependence on the highest love as slaver and who try to deny the truth about themselves, which is their creatureliness, do not free themselves; they destroy truth and love. They do not make themselves gods, which, in fact, they cannot do, but rather caricatures, pseudogods, slaves of their own abilities, which then drag them down. ... sin is, in its essence, a renunciation of the truth."

It's the Christian thesis that man is man, not God, cannot be God and will always be at unease while he is trying it. Real peace comes from submission to God which is submission to truth. We want to be alone and independent and autonomous, but the theologian goes on to show how original sin makes this impossible.

"all the sins of history are interlinked....no human being is closed in upon himself or herself and that no one can live of or for himself or herself alone. We receive our life not only at the moment of birth but every day from without - from others who are not ourselves but who nonetheless somehow pertain to us. Human beings have their selves not only in themselves but also outside of themselves: they live in those whom they love and in those who love them and to whom they are present. Human beings are relational, and they possess their lives - themselves - only by way of relationship. I alone am not myself, but only in and with you am I myself. To be truly a human being means to be related in love, to be of and for. But sin means the damaging or destruction of relationality. Sin is a rejection of relationality because it wants to make the human being a god."

So in short he's saying that since Eden, humans have wanted to be independent, masters of their fate, gods, but that it is impossible, and that human beings are actually not fulfilling their purpose in such endeavours, and that on the contrary, to be relational is to be human. This goes against all of our Western Individualism.

He then summarizes our experience of original sin by saying that:

"At the very moment when a person begins human existence, which is a good, he or she is confronted by a sin-damaged world. Each of us enters into a situation in which relationality has been hurt...Sin pursuess the human being, and he or she capitulates to it."

So our whole lives we experience this relational damage and we develop around it (capitulate to it).

"But from this it is also clear that human beings alone cannot save themselves. Their innate error is precisely that they want to do this by themselves. We can only be saved - that is, be free and true - when we stop wanting to be God and renounce the madness of autonomy and self-sufficiency. We can only be saved - that is, become ourselves - when we engage in the proper relationship. But our interpersonal relationships occur in the context of our utter creatureliness, and it is there that the damage lies. Since the relationship with Creation has been damaged, only the Creator himself can be our savior. We can be saved only when he from whom we have cut ourselves off takes the initiative with us and stretches out his hand to us. Only being loved is being saved, and only God's love can purify damaged human love and radically re-establish the network of relationships that have suffered from alienation."

So basically, we have to go back to our original purpose, to be slaves to God as it were, to be dependent on our Creator. But the constant effects of sin make us want to be alone, do things our own way, by ourselves. Even society - Liberalism - is built on the proposition of human freedom and autonomy.

He then moves on to describe Christ:

"Jesus Christ goes Adam's route, but in reverse. In contrast to Adam he is really "like God". But this being like God, this similarity to God, is being a Son, and hence it is totally relational. "I do nothing on my own authority" (Jn 8:28). Therefore the one who is truly like God does not hold graspingly to his autonomy, to the limitlessness of his ability and his willing. He does the contrary: he becomes completely dependent; he becomes a slave. Because he does not go the route of power but that of love...The cross, the place of his obedience, is the true tree of life. Christ is the antitype of the serpent...The cross is the tree of life, now approachable. By his Passion, Christ, as it were, removed the fiery sword, passed through the fire, and erected the cross as the true pole of the earth, by which it is itself once more set aright. Therefore the Eucharist, as the presence of the cross, is the abiding tree of life, which is ever in our midst and ever invites us to take the fruit of true life. This means that the Eucharist can never merely be a kind of community builder. To receive it, to eat of the tree of life, means to receive the crucified Lord and consequently to accept the parameters of his life, his obedience, his "yes", the standard of our creatureliness. It means to accept the love of God, which is our truth - that dependeence on God which is no more an imposition from without than is the Son's sonship. It is precisely this dependence that is freedom, because it is truth and love.

May this Lent help us to free ourselves from our refusals and our doubt concerning God's covenant, from our rejection of our limitations and from the lie of our autonomy. May it direct us to the tree of life, which is our standard and our hope."
- Pope Benedict XVI "Sin and Salvation"

Yes it was the Pope, formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who wrote these words. To me it was absolutely amazing a Godsend. I hope you can get it, and that some of the wonder I feel about it all, reaches you as well.

May you be dependent on God.