I Choose Not To Despair
January 2, 2004

''Do I shine a light in the dark forest?'' That's the question I ask at the top of my index page? Do I? But only I can answer that question. Whatever faint glow might be seen from where You're at will do YOU little good. You have to bring your own candle, oil lamp, nifty new fangled nuclear light source or what have you. DON'T try to go by someone else's light.

It's not reliable. It may have a bad habit of going out when you most need to see. And it was never meant to be strong enough for anyone else to see by.

I am not setting up 'answers' for anyone else's mystery. If you find a clue here, it's entirely due to your own hard effort. I, however, salute you in your struggle.

Perhaps we have only one real choice in life. I choose not to despair. A young poet may say all control is 'illusion'. But my choice of choosing hope seems not an illusion. I think my real Will is doing it. Yes, it's a constant process. I have to constantly choose to not despair. It is a conscious process. Of very little else I may be certain. But I am certain of THAT.

A while back ago, I declared PRIDE to be 'the finest and highest motivation there is'. I and some Satanist of 'ill repute' said that.

Some other dude of supposedly 'better' repute declared:

Pride can often be used to beat down the simpler vices.... Many a man has overcome cowardice, or lust, or ill-temper by learning to think that they are beneath his dignity -- that is, by Pride. The devil laughs. He is perfectly content to see you become chaste and brave and self-controlled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride.... For Pride is a spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.

-C.S. Lewis

''Or even common sense,'', oh, that is quite the emblem of dreary despair. But I cannot go by Lewis' candle, even if he does declare it to be a sanctified, holy, good for all, gen-u-wine DIVINE, Omnipotently reliable Light Source.

Sigh! Okay, Mr Lewis has not had much success with his Pride. That is ALL he is qualified to say. He cannot really determine the reason for anyone else's lack of contentment or love or sense.

That people may evidence such may be objectively determined, maybe. So some ol' sourpuss Scrooge of the 'oh so mighty, we don't have TIME for love', he'll have to tell us the reason for that. And why would anyone determine THAT is in their self interest?

Would it develop, like a slow cancer, the bearer unaware until too late, as Mr Lewis more than strongly suggests? Is this man tossing out 'answers' for all? Do we run, or do we take a look?

He, in his disatisfaction with Pride, is claiming not to be 'Arrogant'. Another deep thinker I've been reading, declared ANSWERS to be ARROGANT: "Return question with questions inspired thereof; all answers are arrogant." Arrogance is a form of pride. Maybe it's a twisted form of pride. The dictionary says it's ''exaggerating or disposed to exaggerate one's own worth or importance in an overbearing manner''. It gives 'PROUD' as a synonym.

Okay, let's see what 'PROUD' means:

1 : feeling or showing pride: as a : having or displaying excessive self-esteem b : much pleased : EXULTANT c : having proper self-respect
2 a : marked by stateliness : MAGNIFICENT b : giving reason for pride : GLORIOUS
3 : VIGOROUS, SPIRITED

Ah, am I getting anywhere today? Or are we just going around in circles? I am getting confused. Are you getting confused? What can I do to make this better?

First off, I shall not despair. That is the first conscious choice of the day. The writer who has not had much luck with Pride, can he say anyone else would have similar results? It's possible they would. I hope to avoid similar pitfalls.

So how does one avoid a 'loveless' and dreary fate? Not to mention all ate up spiritually? Obviously there must be balancing factors. And my conclusions are most emphatically not 'ANSWERS' for anyone else.

Do I have any conclusions? Or does today's meditation end up nowhere? How do we remain 'pleased' with ourselves, in the midst of mind boggling chaos? And how do we remain sufficiently 'displeased' with ourselves to avoid mind numbing stasis? And how do we keep a delicate balance between the two?

I don't know. I keep working on that. Maybe the best we can do is to keep ever mindfull of the process. By keeping alert to the razor edge uncertainities of life, perhaps we have the best chance of avoiding any pitfalls. It's possible keeping a sense of hope and humor amongst all this may be all we can manage. I choose not to despair.

Today, that will be enough.

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