New Year's Day is for the optimists. A day for well wishing, resolutions, and hope for better days to come. An interesting day to run into Arthur Schopenhauer, a long gone German philosopher known for his pessimism, to be sure.
But run into him I did. And he told me happiness was something that exists inside the moment in which pain is relieved as we walked briskly up the hill along the power lines. He made me consider the year to come and two significant events on the near horizon - regime change and large scale Covid-19 vaccination. I hoped most of us would experience that precious moment of relief this year with its intrinsic happiness.
Arthur went on to say something along the lines of happiness occurs somewhere between pain and boredom. Those are the two places he believed we spend most of our time. It's just a transition and it's relative, he told me. You can't keep it.
He spat on the ground after he'd said that in what seemed like bitterness. I got the feeling Arthur felt this whole thing was ultimately not worth the boredom and the pain. He'd been through some pretty dark shit himself, and I could understand how his experiences might color his world. I wanted to counter his argument with something though.
Arthur, what happens to us when we die?
We rot. Our so called spirt? Of that I cannot be certain, he admitted.
Right, I said. We cannot know how, or even if, this life resolves in any meaningful way, my long suffering friend. But while we suffer our pain and boredom, can we not at least author a story that helps us to live? And if we can do that, can we not write one of great beauty?
Humph, remarked Schopenhauer, stumbling over a fallen pine bough. Knock yourself out, hot shot. Shit.
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