thoughts about resurrection
2009-03-17 11:41 p.m.

reading about nekhlyudov

after so many years of spiritual degradation, he is able to find his way anew, and remember who he was, and build from scratch who he will be.

and i thought such dramatic changes only happen in movies! but leo is right, they happen in real life, sometimes.

and i realize how my own loss of faith, in life, in myself, in rationality, in feelings, is in itself not of a solid state, and it can go on and get worse until i'm 70, but it also might not. it's a half lie to say i have the key, but also half truth.

but it is possible to resurrect, and i realize that ( maybe? ) my current state of despondency results from the stagnation in the same spot, and how real joy from life must come from constant change, and of reinventing your identity, each moment like it was the first, and if it results in the same man, then so be it. but on the other hand, maybe not, and maybe it would be better not to quote Charlton Heston reading sartre. but anyway,

i still remember vaguely times, long long ago, where i felt i had the power to change myself, times in which i would walk in the street, with my newly won armpit hair, and talk to myself and get wet from late night sprinkles, and write here, and think what are the things about myself i want to change, and i worked hard and changed them. when 'self-therapeutic thoughts' didn't seem like a sham. the problem now is that i know that i don't know what i what to change about myself, and have even less memory of how i went about to make such changes. And i think why that is, and i know that i've been corrupted by cynicism, from so much pain, as to not even treat my own feelings as something worthwhile. and i know, it makes sense, how else would one deal with sleeping everyday in the same room with the one you love but who cannot love back, and with so many failures to find happiness, etc. etc. etc.
but yeah, and yeah.

so constant change, and faith, if nekhlyudov can, so can i? do i have enough balls to even add like ten exclamation marks, like i did when i was something which was worth something, before i was too cynical to think that was lame?!!!!!!!!!!!!!
.......
and riding my bicycle, i think about how in all the buddhist stuff i did, i always revolted against how buddhism always preaches equanimity, which seemed to me like another word for control, which seemed to me wrong, since what's life worth, if you don't lose you nerve, fall madly in love, cry you heart out while lying on some north italian road, yada yada yada.

but then, when talking to bengal, and thinking about going to see a psychologist, it seems natural that one strives for happiness, and wants to solve the obstacles which lie in his way, which make one lie down and sob, on north italian roads. and it makes sense, it seems like something i might want to do, had i been convinced it would work.

But then, i realize that there's some inconsistency there - i have a different emotional response to the same goal, once it comes from buddhism, and once it comes from psychology, or even from friends who want my happiness.

why is that?

probably because buddhism tries to push those thoughts in a "that's the way it should be" kind of way, instead of the " hey, it would be cooler" way. i mean if all the buddhist teachers had talked to me about how happy they were, instead of the eight-fold path, it probably would have felt different, and would have given me more motivation.

and still, there is the decision to be made - is happiness worth it?