I wish I could say this has been a great year. Or a challenging year. Or a year that’s changed the way I look at life, the world around me, or myself. I’ve passed from 18 to 19– nineteen proving to be fully the bleak and desolate age it promised: caught between the romance of 18 and the maturity of twenty. Oh, you’re 19. I see. they say. I wish I could say that this has been a hard year, or I guess, in any way an exceptional year.
I can truthfully say it’s been a memorable year. Though perhaps not the best or most fond of my memories, studying in Bangkok, and now traveling in India has assured that this year won’t be one easily forgotten. But as I look back, and ask “what have I learned? What have I gained?” the answers are not as forthcoming as I’d like them to be– if they’re forthcoming at all.
If I haven’t learned anything– a few historical dates and figures aside, and maybe that Singapore is just a displaced American city– then the crowning feature of the year is that I’ve lost faith– or further lost faith. I’ve long since given up any notion of a god or deity or afterlife. I’ve long since realized that there’s no meaning or “purpose” to our time here– that there’s no to that age old narcissistic question: why are we here? No, that’s a lie: there’s no shortage of answers to that question: long-winded answers, optimistic answers, pessimistic answers, philosophical answers, religious answers… but in the end, none of them amount to more than a greater or lesser mastered sophistry. That’s not the point. The point is that I’ve not spent 2005 in search of a “transcendent meaning.” I’ve not spent the year reading crusty old philosophers, or analyzing their claims. No, my quest has been more modest. Simply: what makes me happy? Or, more accurately, what makes me feel contented, regardless of happiness?
I had thought, for a while, that I could gain my own contentment by helping others reach theirs, or simply helping others. Of course, the irony of this is that, while holding such a conviction, I did very little toward that end. A few Saturdays volunteering, or an impromptu park clean-up or two doesn’t stack up to a hill of beans on the Everest of human suffering. But what staying in Asia has provided me with has been an opportunity to observe is just how much international aid– whether motivated by greed or idealism– is a failure. Of just how petty and trifling it is. Of how, for its altruistic intentions, it can be more damaging and undermining than beneficial. And of how superfluous and unnecessary it often is.
I could (and probably should, but won’t) spend paragraphs elaborating the evidences that have led me to this conclusion, but that’s outside the scope of the question: 2006. What now? The long and short of it is that I don’t think people can be helped. In many cases, I don’t think they should be helped. I don’t believe in panaceas.
Talking with Sagar, I managed to list quite a tirade of things I no longer believe in. I don’t believe in God. Or “a god.” Or an afterlife. I don’t believe in good, and I don’t believe in evil. Or “bad,” unless an adjective to describe taste or the quality of an object. I don’t believe war to be good or bad, or killing, either. No more than I believe charity to be good. I don’t believe in progress: human progress, or progress in general. At best I believe in evolution, which is a neutral and unavoidable process. I don’t believe that people can be helped, nor should they. I don’t believe in language, and I can’t bring myself to love science. I don’t believe in so many of the vaunted human sentiments or emotions that Hollywood says we’re all supposed to experience on a daily basis. I do believe life absurd, but I don’t find laughing at its absurdities a sufficient raison d’etre. I believe in mountains, and I believe in the ocean, though the latter will soon be destroyed by human industry and “progress.” I’m deprived of idealism, and barren of hope. Hope for myself, for my future happiness, and hope for the happiness of humanity. Whatever “humanity” means. Whatever “trust” and “love” and “anger” and “sorrow” and “hope” means. Oh, I hear all these terms, thrown about here and there, but just as food has become tasteless in my mouth, these terms have become meaningless in my mind. I’d say “meaningless in my soul,” because that sounds more profound, but for “soul:” another thing I don’t believe in.
So. 2006. What now? The beauty of it all is that life doesn’t require a reason. Regardless of happiness or purposefulness, I’m going to spend the next six weeks of my life at the Parikrma Humanity Foundation, teaching orphans and street-children math. Then I’ll spend the next six months of my life working, and return to Montana State in the fall. I’ll pass a delightful fall semester trying to chew as much as I plan on biting off, and then it’ll winter break, and such will be 2006. Wow.
2005 has been a year without charm. But also largely without event. And I should be grateful for that, I suppose. Regardless, it’s come and gone, and another year is upon us.
From Kochi, India, I wish you all a:
Happy New Year.
