The Resolution Will be Bloggified

I was watching “Into the Wild” in the afternoon of the last day of 2009.  This is uncharacteristic for me, to watch TV or even movies in the afternoon, because it feels sinful.  The TV is on in the afternoon when you should be working?!?!?!!

But I thought it was a good thing to do something uncharacteristic, and I have been working hard, chipping away at moving me into my new house, and so it didn’t seem horrible or unreasonable.  (Interesting that going to see movie matinees doesn’t have that same feeling.  That feels quite rightly like something I should do, to go see a movie and keep up with the zeitgeist, blah blah blah.)

I had read Into the Wild but forgotten how immersed Chris McAndless was in philosophy and how, to paraphrase ever-so-loosely the sister’s narration, He had a fierce moral code and no patience for those who did not.

It reminded me of how I used to joke, in early days of AA, that I didn’t have character, I was one.  It didn’t occur to me to make choices about how I wanted to live – as someone with addict-brain, really, you do have one moral imperative and that’s get the next drink, where’s the next drink, who’s holding, how long until they hand it to me, if I follow these people will there be more booze and drugs, and so on.  It’s a rigorous code, but not particularly well thought-out or, well, inspiring.

And now that I’ve renounced the old code (My sober birthday is in three days, my actual birthday in two, could there be a connection?) (Yeah, it’s called New Year’s…) I find myself in need of another.  Code, that is.

What I mean is, while I was watching the movie and how this character, who we have to remember was a real person who really wrote about what he believed, in fact lived and died it, what I found myself thinking was,

What do I believe?

Now I have most of the same basic Ten Commandments-derived answers that other people have.  It’s bad to murder.  Don’t steal.  Etc. 

But that has nothing to do with what I really believe.  On the big question, I’ve defined myself as an atheist.  I don’t believe there is some Deity overseeing all of this..  Or maybe it’s more pro-active to say I believe in a world without an ultimate authority.  (It’s tough, you always feel like you’re trying to define a vacuum, simply because nearly everyone else has defined a “Who” to “There.”)

I’ve been drawn to Buddhism for years, and I really think that there’s something there.  It makes sense to me.  It resounds.  Yet I don’t really know what I believe about it.

And this is maybe putting the cart before the horse, because I think I’m talking about something more basic.  What do I believe?  If I believe in right and wrong, what is right? What is wrong?  What is my moral code?

How do I make choices about what I am doing?

I don’t know, really.  I feel like every day I’m reacting, or winging it; that my choices do not come from thoughtful consideration.  And I’d like them to.  I’d like to believe in something.  I’d like to have a code.

So (a) develop a moral code.  Read some philosophers and discuss  what I’m reading here.  Try and figure a few things out.  Make some choices and live by them.

Then, (b) figure out this Higher Power thing.  What I say now is I believe in the Universe, and there’s a novice’s understanding of Buddhist principles thrown into that, with a tiny grasp on quantum physics, just what’s needed to support the Buddhism, actually, also added.

And I want to figure out (b) because I feel so close to despair these days.  It’s always just there if I’m not careful. If I’m not conscious.

What am I doing here? How do I find meaning for my life?  For years I’ve blown off that question – part of my nihilistic streak – as being unimportant.  And also, I think, because I thought at the time that the meaning of my life was found in what I was doing, how important I felt while doing it, and in other peoples’ reactions to it and to me.  Meaning – not so much.  Letting outside achievements and people be how I defined myself – not so useful. 

Right now I feel simultaneously full of despair and close to joy. 

Wait.  Maybe that’s too neat and easy.  Do I really?   

I feel empty,  a lot of the time.  I’m wondering, asking, screaming, What is this all about?  (I think part of the reason I bought the house was to try to fill that emptiness.) (And because I really wanted my own bathroom.) 

But there have been no definitive answers on What is This all About.  And I realize that’s something I want to define for myself.  I want to find some purpose and meaning.  But again, it’s hard to know what that will be without knowing what I believe, what I think is right and wrong.

(all this is making me sleepy)

So the emptiness.  There’s the despair.  But joy?  OK.  It’s like this. 

I feel myself a part of the world in the same way that every other person, rock, tree, bird, Labrador retriever, drop of water, sound, is a part of the world.  “You are here and I am here and we are here and we are all together.”  In a sub-atomic particle kind of way, or so I understand it.  And all these particles, all this us, is swimming in a soup of love.  Of spirit. 

Now when I choose to think about that, to feel my relationship with every thing I can see or hear or feel in each exact moment, I actually feel content and joyful.  Not “less than,” but “part of.” (Very important AA precept, that.)  And that in that sense of being, I experience peace.

Squidgy, in’nit?