Little Red Book

Nine o’clock.

I could go to church this morning, but I really don’t like it anymore. Pastor’s sermons tend to piss me off more than anything else. Today I’m going to be proactive and do something different from my usual… The main reason I dislike psychology is for its fatalism. If I subscribed to this perspective then I would probably drink again, believing it was inevitable. “The beer jumps in your hand.” But if you don’t succumb to fate, it’s not a done deal at all. A squirrel patters across the rooftop and makes a noise on the patio cover. The difference between him and me is that I have free will over my instincts. The past two weeks were pretty hellacious for me, trying to get stable on my meds. Funny but I never did read Mirandola’s Dignity of Man book. It’s an argument I could’ve used against a very bad therapist. Someday I might be able to let that trauma go. The point is that human beings are not animals knee jerking their way through life. There’s always a rational dimension of freedom to our experience, unless it gets subordinated to the unconscious… and then life is a Sophocles tragedy. But any vision of reality is totally up to the individual. There’s more than one book on the shelf.

Ten o’clock. It is gray overcast this morning, though the forecast says sunshine this afternoon. Somebody is mowing his lawn nearby. Kat offered to give me a ride to a bigger grocery store if I wanted; she said not to be shy about asking. And Heather told me about her housing troubles. Now a shaft of sunlight pierces the cloud curtain. Aesop doesn’t like the peanut butter cookies anymore, which is fine with me.

Eureka! I was poking around my bookshelves when I found my wonderful little Lucretius hidden under Mirandola! I was so thrilled to see it again because of my dad’s anniversary this month. And a very difficult month it has been. 

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Death Is Nothing

Noon.

I feel really good today from the switch in medication, and it’s even better because the change was my decision alone. I had a nice little excursion to the agency to see Misty. She talked me into returning to DDA group, so I’ll see them again in two weeks from Thursday. Actually, it didn’t take much talking. The incidence of COVID-19 has been insane lately; I’ve heard about more and more cases from people I know. I’m finally beginning to think, What if I caught the virus myself? But still I won’t let it get me down. I don’t have much of a life, so I should go for broke and do everything I can. It’s great that I feel so much better now. Everybody ought to feel as good as I do right now. The psychology of the pandemic is a very strange thing. We get to see what human beings are really made of now that we are so tested. And it reminds me of the book by Nevil Shute again, On the Beach, about how people respond to the fallout after nuclear war. Basically, they choose to live life to the hilt while they still can. I think it’s up to us to live up to a book like this and prove ourselves worthy. So far I’ve seen more of cowardice and depression than anything else from people in general. The worst that can happen is you die, and then everything goes black forever; a dreamless sleep from which you don’t awake. People ought to read their Lucretius on not fearing death, for death is nothing to us. It is nothing, therefore there’s nothing to fear after it. Thus reinforced, we should be able to do some good and maybe turn this ship around… I don’t think my church would agree with the Epicurean point of view, but really it’s tough luck if they feel that way. His philosophy, if you are open minded, makes excellent sense. Over the centuries since his time, Christians have blackened his reputation by calling him a hedonist, but what motivated it was his denial of the afterlife. This is a big stumbling block for most people who want to live forever, but they need to grow out of their greed for eternal life, and while they are here, live for today. 

Illusions

Eight thirty. The floor plan of the old workplace seems much smaller to me now than before. My memories of it are so much bigger than the real thing. When I walk in there now, it seems so spare and stark and barely populated. How could so much stuff ever have happened in such a small place? But it occurred over five years, with no individual in the same place at the same time. I go there expecting a crowd and find one person at a time. It’s such a strange organization, and my feelings about it are always mixed… Aesop just caught his reflection in the window and suspected something spooky, so I told him it was a natural phenomenon. Anything with shadows and wind, anything invisible and ghostly, stirs the primitive imagination in dogs and people alike. A trick of the light with a mirror can trip up any intelligent animal until the illusion is understood and there is no further curiosity… before a certain threshold is reached. At that point we start using metaphors and abstractions, reasoning by analogy that the wind and the reflections really are spirits, images of the phantom life we wish could be immortal. But Lucretius taught us not to fear death, for death is nothing. The power switch is clicked off and there is no more self awareness: no heaven, no hell, no dream that comes. It is the peace of dreamless sleep. And knowing this much, we can proceed about our lives and enjoy every moment without the need of idle illusions. This is the way I want to live.