Thought du jour - 13 October 2011

"Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present." - Ludwig Wittgenstein

Thought du jour - 23 August 2011

"Death gives meaning to our lives. It gives importance and value to time. Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it." - Ray Kurzweil

Thought du jour - 15 August 2011

"After your death you will be what you were before your birth." - Arthur Schopenhauer

All Afraid

"All afraid
alone, cemetery heart,

prudence hasn't paid

mistake from the very start,
and you sit and stare
and you sit and stare,

but there's no-one there

but there's no-one there.

All afraid
where do you go from here,

patience hasn't paid

can someone die of fear,
you sit and look around
you sit and look around,
every sight betrays a sound
every sight betrays a sound.

What are you so afraid of
what has brought you to this state,
where are your natural emotions?

You're such a sad, sad thing

you're such a sad, sad thing.

All afraid
you feel your back against the wall

caution hasn't paid

its set you up just to fall

You sit around with your rope

your sit around with your rope

one loose knot and no hope
one loose knot and no hope."

I think we're tying those loose knots in our metaphorical ropes, each and every day. The ones who use the real ropes are perhaps just a bit more honest about it all.

Paul Kimball

Guillotine

"All through this space of time
there were other echoes menacing,
from a distance
in the corner,
they have an awful sound
uncertain chorus of no consequence,
only a warning
of the true storm forming,
it is a hard day
straight and strong and narrow,
it is a hard way
confident in your conscience,
resolute in your innocent deceit
no thought to you next move -
remember the people you meet
on your way to the guillotine.

A troubled shroud it calls out loud
amidst the music and the singing,
it is ignored
by the guilty ones,
condescend to turn around
deduce the nature of this conversation,
try to remember
what you once were,
it is a hard day
straight and strong and narrow,
it is a hard way
confident in your conscience,
resolute in your innocent deceit
no thought to you next move -
remember the people you meet
on your way to the guillotine,
on your way to the guillotine."

Still one of my favourite songs that I wrote.

Paul Kimball

Carl Jung: The Origin of Evil & Self-Awareness

Following up on The Modern Man. The one thing that the pre-war Albert Speer lacked, by all accounts, was self-awareness.

Paul Kimball

The Art of Dying

Paul McCartney is my favourite Beatle, but when it comes to my more existential side, it's George Harrison to whom I usually turn. One of my favourite Harrison songs is "The Art of Dying".

I've always had a fascination with death, and what may or may not come afterwards. I think we all do, even if we won't admit it. The central question of human existence, after all, is whether this life is "it", and what that means for us one way or another. For the longest time, the idea that death might really be the end frightened me, but then one day my father said something to me, with his usual blunt common sense, that started me on the path of being free from that fear.

"Paul" he said, "it's nothing to worry about, because if there's nothing after this, then you'll never know, will you?"

Without knowing it, my Dad had gone all zen with me at that moment, and it resonated in a way that no sermon about the certainty of a life eternal ever could. The truth is that we don't know, and we can never know, until we get "there". And then, if there is something else, we'll know, and if there isn't... well, we'll still never know. So why be afraid?

Being freed from the fear of death opened the door to an actual consideration of what might lie beyond. I accept that oblivion is certainly a possible outcome, and that's a sobering thought (particularly when the left arm starts to tingle). But I also think that there might be other outcomes. As there's nothing I can do about the prospect of oblivion other than to try to live my life to the fullest, which I do anyway, it's those other possibilities that interest me, and that I explore, because perhaps there are clues in our lives, and the world around us, that might just indicate that there is indeed, as the pop poet Bryan Ferry famously wrote, "more than this".

"It is not more surprising to be born twice than once." - Voltaire

The truth is that we're all dying, each and every day. What lies beyond is unknowable... but it is not unimaginable, and that is a critical difference, because in the imagination lies the true "art of dying"... and the art of living.

Indeed, the two might just be the same thing.

Paul Kimball