I’ve been spending quite a bit of time exploring this more wet, dark, feminine, touchy-feely spiritual side of myself. I am not ashamed of it. I like to think that I’m a fundamentally logical and scientific person, but I also think that there are limitations when we force ourselves to be perfectly scientific and logical. I believe that it’s necessary from time to time to suspend disbelief and to just explore curiosity and craziness with a certain madness. The challenge of course is to remain sane at the end of it, and to then pick everything up and go on with life.
Moments Of Being – I was introduced to this idea in a book by Gabrielle Roth titled Connections, and she in turn talked about Virginia Woolf’s idea about Moments of Being (which happens to be the title of her memoirs).
A moment of being, as I interpret it, is one of those “oceanic feeling” moments, when life seems startlingly clear, lucid, and you just feel this deep sense of being present. There’s more to it but that will do for now.
I find myself thinking about the moments like that I’ve had- and I find myself wondering if I’ve already written about them. I wrote one in word vomit 0035, when I had just gotten married. I’m very glad I have that piece of writing- it’s a snapshot of my life that I wouldn’t be able to recreate from memory, at least not very well. On hindsight, I regret that I haven’t captured more of such moments.
I would really like, at the end of my life, or halfway through it, to have a collection of my own Moments of Being. But what do I really mean when I say that? I definitely don’t want to spend my life cataloging my life instead of living it. Living is important. But I’d like to know that I have lived. I think in this case a record is a sort of transformational… perspective? You travel the world differently when you travel a camera versus travelling without. And I do think there is a lot of value in “travelling without cameras”. Once upon a time, when people travelled, there was no internet, and they couldn’t stay constantly in contact with their loved ones. A person going on a road trip or something might be virtually uncontactable for years before they showed up again. That had its pros and cons, and the cons were probably far worse than we remember. Rose tinted glasses and all.
The unexamined life is not worth living. The unlived life is not worth examining. What I seek is the balance between the two. I’d like to live my life enough that it’s worth examining, and I’d like to examine enough of my life to know that it’s worth living. I think the best way I do this is by writing. When I revisit my “HDB” piece, I feel love. I feel compassion. I relate to my younger self. I feel joy for him, at what has happened of his life. And I feel a little bit disappointed, feeling like I didn’t completely do him justice. And I thik both of those things are useful emotions and feelings to have. I’d like to look back 5 years from now on THESE pieces of writing and think, “Goddamn, Visa, I wish you could’ve known then how awesome you were going to become. How beautifully you’d be doing. How much you’d serve others. How much others would be proud of you. How proud you would be of YOURSELF. How much self-respect you’d earn.”
Is it possible to achieve that without writing? Quite possibly. But memories are fallible, and mine are worse than most. We reconstruct our memories each time we remember them, and put them in a narrative that makes sense to us at the present time. It makes sense to capture snapshots of the past because they provide us with real and useful things to compare our present against. I’m rationalizing, of course. I’m a writer, and I’m going to be writing. But I might as well write things that will be useful to me, rather than things that I’m going to be skipping over. I can’t be 100% sure what I’m going to be skipping over, and it’s not going to be possible for every single moment to be an oceanic moment of being. But I’d like more of them.
Time may prove that I’m being silly, that you can’t collect oceanic moments, and that trying to do it is sort of futile. But I disagree. I’m young and arrogant and stubborn, and I disagree. I’m reminded of a TED talk of a guy talking about his motorcycle– Stefan Sagmiester, talking about Happiness By Design. I’m looking at the transcript now– he talked about how he experienced a moment of happiness when he borrowed his brother’s motorcycle, and rode mountains while listening to The Police on his new Sony Walkman. Now that’s an oceanic moment of being if I’ve ever heard of one. It’s just so… inferrable? There’s something about the choice of details. You know how he must have felt. Young and alive and free and full of life and possibility.
I think that’s something to strive for in life, it’s worth a shot. I mean, we’re going to be here on this rock for some period of time, some long lazy afternoon. We might as well talk to some people. Play in the sand a little. Swim a little. Feel the sun on our backs. Eat some good food. Laugh. Play. That’s what we’re here for. To have a good time. I mean, we might as well. Part of that means living with joyful abandon, part of it means writing with great discipline. And vice versa and blah blah.
There’s a whole meta thing to be considered about whether we’re ultimately fooling or cheating ourselves in some way, but I’m guessing reality doesn’t give a shit. We figure out some sustainable story to tell ourselves, and if it corresponds with our map of reality, it’s good enough for us. Most people don’t even manage that. I don’t know, I don’t have to solve everything in one night. But I feel like I got a good shake out of this, so good night!