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There's this series on NPR called I Believe, wherein listeners write mini-essays about their beliefs and post them in hopes that the essays will be selected and read aloud on All Things Considered or is it Morning Edition or Weekend Edition? They all run together, sometimes. Anyway, I listen to these stories and they're what you might expect; some are pedestrian and some are lovely and some are electrifying, or mawkish or unsentimental, but I always listen to them outwardly skeptical, with little underlying twinges of envy: I am used to thinking of myself as a person who believes strongly in nothing. I have no faith, not in myself, not in any higher power, not in that Thing that Frankl talks about in Man's Search for Meaning, that Thing that drives logotherapy, the Thing that you have to learn to live for. Maybe Frankl could prove me wrong in this, but as far as I know, there is no Thing driving me to survive. No Thing bigger than myself that's holding me all together.
But. I was thinking about this tonight after I got off work, driving around the city looking for an open grocery to sell me a packet of spinach for my beloved Christmas dinner Spinach Madeleine. That I don't really believe in myself, or God, or anyone's ability to protect me from the constant lacerations and traumas and tragedies of life. I feel, always, that I have no Purpose, and, sometimes, kind of gaspy and up against a wall, as Judy Abbott would say, because of that. And the thing that I believe in is just this, that whatever thing that keeps the wall from crumbling away, the cold from seeping in too far, the night terrors from overtaking the days, whatever makes people able to get up in the morning and face life, is something worth holding on to, hard. If you have that thing, whatever it is, you are one of the lucky ones.
Or, as philosopher John Lennon said: Whatever gets you through the night'salright, 'salright.
:::
I will get up and go to my parents' with my dog tomorrow morning, and we'll exchange presents, kind of, and watch movies and eat turkey and my beloved Spinach Madeleine, and the shadows will draw away from us all for a while, because being with people I love and who say they love me--and who am I to argue with that, anyway?--is the best way I can think of to while away the time. And I hope that thing that gets you through your nights, I hope you have it now, and tomorrow, and for the rest of the year, and all the years after that.
But. I was thinking about this tonight after I got off work, driving around the city looking for an open grocery to sell me a packet of spinach for my beloved Christmas dinner Spinach Madeleine. That I don't really believe in myself, or God, or anyone's ability to protect me from the constant lacerations and traumas and tragedies of life. I feel, always, that I have no Purpose, and, sometimes, kind of gaspy and up against a wall, as Judy Abbott would say, because of that. And the thing that I believe in is just this, that whatever thing that keeps the wall from crumbling away, the cold from seeping in too far, the night terrors from overtaking the days, whatever makes people able to get up in the morning and face life, is something worth holding on to, hard. If you have that thing, whatever it is, you are one of the lucky ones.
Or, as philosopher John Lennon said: Whatever gets you through the night'salright, 'salright.
:::
I will get up and go to my parents' with my dog tomorrow morning, and we'll exchange presents, kind of, and watch movies and eat turkey and my beloved Spinach Madeleine, and the shadows will draw away from us all for a while, because being with people I love and who say they love me--and who am I to argue with that, anyway?--is the best way I can think of to while away the time. And I hope that thing that gets you through your nights, I hope you have it now, and tomorrow, and for the rest of the year, and all the years after that.
