Today, I was busy. From my first class to my last, I had only a brief respite between work at the Arbiter and Analytic philosophy, my three hour night class. This break was spent at BRC, the vastly improved campus eatery. I arrived twenty minutes before the official dinner hours and spent about an hour total dining alone. It was interesting.
I am writing down some of the thoughts that I had while sitting alone, watching the world go by, not from any hubristic tendency; but just so that, in a few weeks, when I return to this post, I can wonder at how such immature and inarticulate thoughts could have come from the same mind that will presently be reading. And I guess I am making it public-ish from a similar sentiment. To pretend that my thoughts are in any way unique is to ignore the fact, or at least theory, that others are simply, or perhaps not so simply, unique variations of the same model from which I come, making it likely that we will all come to a point where the sum of our life experiences leads us to a place where such nonsensical and irrelevant seem suddenly pertinent and demanding further introspection. Thus, the sentiment behind the public listing is that most people are likely far past this point and, as I will in a few weeks, this will all seem remarkably immature and, hopefully, so childish as to be humorous.
I have not even arrived at the aim of this post and already I have written far too much. Sorry.
Anyway, to the topic at hand. Eating.
My days are busy. I wake up and do school, do work, do school, waste time, do work or school, and sleep. Sometimes I fit in a meal. Very occasionally, I fit in two. In direct contrast to my school/work schedule, my days, weeks, seem remarkably free of any spontaneous diversion. What I do when I am not in my daily routine is itself becoming startlingly routine. And an increasingly large percentage of my free time is spent on facebook, which, in itself, is not an altogether bad thing.
All this is to say, really, that today, I had a little over an hour break between work and my last class and, for lack of anything else to spend it on, excepting school work, I sat by myself at Boise River Cafe for almost an hour exactly. I arrived twenty minutes before dinner hours began and found a table by myself. I was already situated when people began to enter in number.
Eating was a strange experience.
After another packed day of work and school, with more school waiting in the evening, I found myself with nothing to do, no reason to hurry. So I didn't hurry, deliberately. I feel so rushed, constantly, but aside from work and school, I have almost nothing move towards. So I sat alone, eating slowly, watching life swarm around me. Suddenly, the rush of life felt strangely alien to me!
I like to feel that everything I do is very important. If not in some vague way important to the entire world, then at least to me personally. When I study, I am working towards the creation of new knowledge. When I work, I am giving my time and labor to something else, hopefully something important in some way. When I sleep, I am investing in my self. And, somehow, it feels like everything is culminating. At some point it will all come together, all the games, work, play, academia, and it will be crucially important. My days are intentional, every minute somehow vastly important.
So I rush, from class to work, from work to sleep. Full of purpose, but no real direction.
Today, I had nothing to do. For an hour, nothing I did was for the sake of anything else. There was no reason to do anything. So I enjoyed my meal, slowly, and watched life continue without me.
After nearly 700 words of preface, this is what I am trying to say:
Sometimes, most times, I like to feel that I am a part of this world, that what I am doing is important. Here's the thing: it isn't. Removed from my directionless crusade towards something important and indefinite, even just for an hour, life went on, without me. Hundreds of other people uniquely just like my walked past my table, where I sat along, unmoving, silent. I contributed nothing. And life went on.
It is kind of strange to openly admit that nothing I do matters, that less than one thousandth of one percent of the people now living on this earth will ever know my name, even if I poured my entire life into creating some lasting monument, or blow myself up in a violently glorious cause. Of the few that will, almost none will remember me. And when they are gone, none will. And humanity will continue into the ages, possibly into eternity and, just like the unnamed milliards that have passed before me, I will be washed away by an endless stream of humanity, flowing as quickly as possibly to anywhere but here.
Now I am not trying to be original here, or pretend as some kind of deepness, but there is something reassuring about knowing that the world owes no ontological dependence to me. Perhaps the entire world is just a set of ideas, as Rev. Berekely seemed to think, but that is God's deal, not mine.
On that same line of thought, I suddenly realized how empy everyone else seemed, how remote their minds were! First, I was strangely overwhelmed by the amount of clothing, all branded, all manufactured. It would be, and probably has been, the culmination of several lifetimes of work and achievement by various people, likely largely belonging to poor, undeveloped countries, to create such a quantity of clothing! And what has been the fruit of that labor? Survival, for a time. Then nothing. To live a life so unremarked and without gratitude breaks my heart, but what more can be said of my situation? I am infinitely more privileged, but no more deserving. And the fruit of my labor will be no greater.
This was all followed by more aimless introspection, about how I could never escape perception and never access the mind of another person. How strange it is that I can pick up any object and access directly what makes it what it is! I can feel a bowl, discern its physical makeup, its purpose. But a person, everything can be perceived except what makes a person a person! The only thing worth understanding is imperceptible. Knowledge is strange.
But I am not going to go into detail with anything else I was thinking about. It is all even more childish than the first things I talked about, which is pretty strong statement, but most likely true.
So I will conclude by saying that, were I to have more things to do when not scholastically engaged or working, I wouldn't waste so much time typing useless things. So invite me to do things. That is the real purpose of this blog, to convince you that I need to make more friends. I am sorry for anyone who wasted their time reading this, thinking there was something intelligent contained within. There wasn't, and isn't, and I am sorry for that.
So it goes.
