Heroes


Dear Eugene,

On a day like today I walked out of the door with Sumi early in the morning and wondered if we could reach the end of the world if we find no reason to stop.

Like a road movie.  Like the man who walks in the desert in "Paris, Texas," possibly the greatest American movie ever made not by an American.  My heart is aching just now, thinking about this movie.

Sometimes I think if I am to turn on a tape recorder and collect everything that has gone through my head during my long walks I could have written a book by the end of it.

But ain't that true about everyone else's life?  Every life deserves its cinéma vérité treatment.

What makes a story a story is that it has meaning.

Even if we say the point of capturing a day in a life is to say how meaningless it all is, we are already trying to mount a meaningful narrative on the "meaningless" life and turn nihilism on its head.

The "Preacher" of Ecclesiastes meant to say something meaningful about meaninglessness.  I can see him giggling with hot tears running down his cheeks.  If we can't read tragicomedy in the Bible we are probably missing the point.

So I believe the most important question for a human to ask every morning is still: "What is the meaning of it all?"

To not ask this question and try to answer it with our action throughout the day is to be frustrated by a narrative framework imposed from without, a meaning that we don't want our life to carry out, a destiny we called "our lot in life," another 24 hours of willy-nilly fatalism all over again, nothing to look forward to, nothing to fight for, nothing to live for, nothing to die for.  A habit of lifelong learned helplessness.

(And the marketers, obviously, would love to offer us a way out for a meaningful dollar or two.)

People get frustrated all the time.  We might think we can pinpoint our reason, as if if not for that particular reason life can be rosy as the morning sun promises.  We call life life because it is meant to be lived out in ways that are full of--what else?--life.

Human is meant to ask Why and there is nothing more heroic in a person than to answer it with the next thing he/she does.  The best superhero movies are the ones not about superheros.

Yours, Alex

Comments

  1. UnknownApril 20, 2018 at 1:10 AM

    Having recently selected Ecclesiastes as my nightly companion of study, I questioned whether I was behaving more cowardly & aimlessly over these brief past days. Then I recalled the grandest, most meaningful scene I had observed this week: the violets & kaleidoscopic blooms of Spring arriving at my work campus - reinforcing life & hope in my troubled spirit - as I scurried towards the administrative building for another meeting.

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