What is life? The more experience one has with this thing, the more one should know about it. However, I think that is not the case. If one said there is no such thing, I would listen to the argument. Surprisingly, I am growing less confident of having an answer to the question. My doubt is likely a symptom of my stage of experiential development. This long expression is not just an euphemism for age. I’m not trying to say I’m not getting old. I am old, and I enjoy being old. I consider my old age to be the best part of my life. I’ve reduced it to a simple routine. I’ve become more critical of who I accept as friends. Even having friends is not as important. I’m even selective of who I accept as family. I feel closer to my cat than to many people I have known. I have no animosity. I just don’t have time for the casual.
Life is a large subject to define. Logically, it’s too large, but the question seems necessary. Thoreau feared arriving at the end of his life and discovering he had never lived. He sat up house at a pond to see if he had been missing anything. At some point in his stay he must have decided had had missed nothing. I don’t know why else he would have left. He may have feared he had been missing something elsewhere or just got bored counting squirrels. He thought a day would arrive when people felt the need to count squirrels and blue jays. Perhaps he didn’t feel that day had arrived yet. Maybe he was just getting a feel for the exercise. I suppose counting blue jays can be enlightening. I think it could be as revolutionary as focusing on ones breathing. His misfortune was to have been born into the wrong culture.
Birth and death– the entrance into and exit from our situation. Are we in a “situation?” The word feels slightly thin to name where we are. Maybe it isn’t. Perhaps it is merely a situation. I may be the one needing to feel something extraordinary about the condition in which I find myself. This whole question may just be a peculiarity of my own.
I’m sitting at a bar writing this. A young woman sits beside me. She has come, no doubt, in hope of meeting some interesting person who will fill part of this thing. Today is not her lucky day. She has found me, the most uninteresting of people. I feel sorry for her. Alas, she has encountered the most doubt-laden person alive– or do I amuse myself only? This woman’s presence is a small sliver of what I call my life. She leaves as effortlessly as she arrives. We have not spoken. I’m sure she will never recall having been so close to me. I don’t know how long my memory of her will be retrievable. This is life left unaccounted.
I watched a video today of WWII. I’m sure there is no one alive who can say, “Yes, I remember.” For us, it is not a memory; just a brute fact. We are not even sure what status the fact has. But it must be a fact, although a fact of what we cannot be sure. Nevertheless, the video gives us assurance and comfort. Are videos a new category of Being? A little reflection will show they are strange things. Primitive people fear them, and we should too. Our comfort with video reflects our spiritual immaturity, or lack of spirituality. Video lives like a vampire in our midst. Like some deadly virus, it plants itself within our minds until it explodes our reality. We are altered unaware. It’s our lack of awareness we should fear, not our video. That is the paradox of consciousness.
Can we really understand life in any sense than the possessive? Can I encounter a life that is not my life? How could such a thing be encountered? I can begin to envision a life that my cat lives. But does she have a life she calls her own? I don’t know how I would answer that question. Can a question be answered without a strategy for an answer? No matter how I think of my cat’s life, it seems to just be part of this thing I call “mine.” If everything is just an aspect of “mine,” how can I encounter an Other? I feel that to know something, I must escape myself. Should I have to escape myself in order to say, “I know?” Perhaps I can escape my own reality, but I am not yet out.
To me, Life seems to be such a thing that it extends beyond myself. However, this can only be a belief. I don’t think I have ever encountered anything other than myself. Even then, I can’t precisely say what that is. The proposition does seem peculiar. That I can point to something I call my cat and can name it does not prove there exists such. Of course, we can accept it as proof; just change the rules. I don’t see how counting things helps any. That we all seem to “get along” in life proves nothing. We seem to be trapped, and that we can be aware of this trap is amazing. To me, that doesn’t seem possible. However, it seems to be a statement we can make. I am amazed how our life goes on without a clear answer. Learning about the trap in which we have found ourselves seems to be a strategy to move forward.
We seem to be able to make a couple of statements; 1) We are trapped; and 2) We can know we are trapped. I’m not sure my cat can say that. However, that may just be me talking about myself. From now on, I must speak softly about knowledge. I must be careful to not overstate my case. Mathematical formulas can’t save me.