So Michael Jackson died last week.  I never really got into any of his music - I've never gone out of my way to listen to him so all I've heard is what inevitably pops up on the radio or a parties and such. After a week of listening to everyone talk about how sad they are that he's dead and how they've listened to nothing but his music all day I finally decided to give some of his music a try. 

Watching the BIllie Jean music video reminded me of something, though.  It must have been 15 years ago.  I remember seeing my sister watch that music video on MTV and thinking that the glowing floor tiles were pretty cool.  I think that my sister and my mom had just had an argument and that she had gone off to sulk and watch tv.  She was curled up at the end of the couch with her arms around her knees.    She glanced at me when I walked in but didn't say anything.  The smell of dinner was slowly filling the house.  The video was boring and I was hungry so I went to bug my mom about when dinner would be ready.

It's funny the things we remember.

I ran across this comic the other day and the utter randomness of it made me laugh:



( http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1543 )




I've been somewhat distracted as of late.  I have all sorts of things I should be doing, and in fact I entirely intend to do these things.  The problem is that I don't end up doing all of the things I should be doing.  If I just sat down and worked at it I could make tons of progress on my to-do list.
Example: I've been meaning to clean my room.  Make no mistake, my room is much cleaner than it was.  A week or two ago I spent a few hours cleaning and now it is leaps and bounds cleaner.  A couple of days ago I spent a little more time at it and made it a little cleaner.  Sure, I've made progress, but I could have had this done three weeks ago if I had tried.  Oh well.

For the next 4-days I'll be thinking nothing but training, training, training, so whatever else I have to do will fall by the wayside.  It'll be nice to get back into training mode and have one single thing I can focus on and immerse myself in rather than having my focus split between 5 different things I should be doing.

A few days ago I found myself in a conversation with someone in the midst of searching for something in which to believe.  This conversation made me think back to something that I haven't thought of much in the last couple of years: my own beliefs.

I think back to five years ago when I first realized that I did not believe in God, I had never believed in God, and I was by no means Catholic or even Christian of any sort.  A simple essay on my own personal beliefs for a Western Lit class in high school prompted me to spend an immeasurable amount of time searching for something to believe.  It's not that I had discarded a belief and was trying to fill the emptiness of where that belief had been, it's that I had finally noticed an emptiness that had been there my whole life.

As time went on, the direction I chose to search in was in Western Philosophy, specifically that of the Existentialist Philosophers.  I found myself reading Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Sartre, and the like.  It was in Nietzsche that I found something that resonated most with how I felt at the time.  It was Nietzsche's metamorphosis of the soul, which is all about an individual throwing off the beliefs and ethics that were taught to him and finding his own beliefs.  The name 'NietzscheLion' is actually a reference to the part of the metamorphosis when the individual discards the beliefs he had held.  (In fairness, at the time I made this account I was rejecting a lot of different beliefs in my search and the reference seemed appropriate.)  The thing most people think of when they think of Nietzsche is the term 'nihilism', which refers to the point when belief in nothing.  The important thing to realize is that Nietzsche never meant that to be the conclusion of the journey, but rather a necessary step between rejecting society's beliefs and creating your own.  The idea is that in order to build something new you must first destroy the old, and so for at least some time there must be nothing.

In time, after rejecting much, I finally came to what I considered to be a fairly basic belief system.  What I came to was, more or less, humanism.  I didn't realize that at the time but it became apparent later on.  I chose to put my faith in humans, in humanity's great potential for good, and to me this felt right.  I was sure that I had found what I was searching for, and during the years since then, everything I have done and everything that I have become has been with this belief at its core.  I believe in humans, and I want to understand humans; I believe in love, and I want to understand why humans love and, perhaps more importantly, why they don't; I believe that understanding itself is the key to eliminating much of the suffering and violence in the world, and I want to do whatever I can to foster that understanding.

In the time since then I have not once doubted these beliefs.  I was, and am, sure.

However, as I see another in an existential search I find myself wondering if this certainty is a good thing.  I am beginning to wonder if perhaps I have become complacent.  I wonder if the fact that I have no reason to question my beliefs has caused the growth and development of my beliefs to stagnate.  I wonder if it might be time for me to take a sledgehammer to the very foundation of these beliefs and see if they hold up.

So there I was, listening to someone say "I just want to find something to believe in," and I decided that maybe I should be searching, too.  I may be content with where I am right now, but where is the harm in looking?  The potential payout is far greater than the risk.  I have spent the last few years focusing on emotional growth, but it's time I reopened my eyes to the possibility of a spiritual change.  As sure as I am of these beliefs, I must continue to seek out new truths so that I do not become blind to all else.

With that end in my mind, when my fellow seeker invited me to visit a Buddhist Monastery and learn about Buddhism and meditation, you better believe I said yes.


Get excited!

So in a fit of randomness truly befitting my personality, I found myself on youtube looking for recordings of the Scottish folksong "Loch Lomond"

See, I love most all music, but I'd be lying if I tried to claim that to be true at all times.  No, I love all music but in order to really appreciate a given song it has to be what I'm looking for at that very moment.  Sometimes Celtic music is exactly what I'm looking for, and that was the case tonight.

Anyway, I found myself looking up the backstory of Loch Lomond and it's actually quite interesting.

 

( Click here for the lyrics )



So it turns out that as the legend goes, during the 1745 Jacobite Uprising two Jacobite soldiers were captured by the British.  One was sentenced to death while the other was set free.  This song is written from the point of view of the dead soldier, with the 'low road' being the road of the underworld and the 'high road' being the high, rugged terrain of the living world.  His true love would never see him again because he's dead.  The rest is the soldier waxing poetic about his homeland.
There are one or two other interpretations of the lyrics (such as with the highroad/lowroad line), but they all link back to the story about the two soldiers.  In the end I like this one the best.  I like the idea that even in the afterlife the soldier returned to the land he loved.


Now don't you feel smarter having read this?

Also, gloaming is a cool word.

So an interesting thing happened the other day.  I've been in Midland since Monday afternoon and it has been great.  I've played my saxophone, I played the piano music I didn't bring to EL, I picked up some movies and books I left in Midland, and I made channa masala just hours ago (and it turned out amazing).  The odd thing, though, is that as Monday night, as I was checking my email before bed (I'm a creature of habit, regardless of location) I thought about going downstairs to grab a glass of milk and in my head I pictured the kitchen in my house in EL.  Just days ago I was talking about how in EL I was picturing my house in Midland as my first reaction, but now here I am in Midland and it's the opposite.

What I realized when this happened is that I lived in the same house in Midland for 18 years.  I was never away from it for more than maybe a little over a month at a time for trips during the summer.  When I was in EL it was no surprise that as my first reaction I thought of my house in Midland because it has been my home for the vast majority of my life.  It's much more curious, though, that when in Midland I should think of my house in EL as my first reaction.  What I suspect is that on some unconscious level Bowie House is starting to feel like home.  That never happened when I used to live in the dorms, either because dorm rooms are pieces of shit or because I didn't live there long enough.


This is a new feeling, I've never had a second home before.