The Meaning of Life (according to me)

The Book of Ecclesiastes is deeply troubling. Of course, everyone has a moment, where they sit, eyes troubled, and think, "What is the point?" As my depressing suite-mate likes to put it, "No hope". And I like to put it, while shaking my head at the astrocities of life, "Disaster". You're just going to die some day, and no one is going to remember you, and who cares? I've thought about the meaning of life alot (who hasn't?) and came to several conclusions: 1. Life is what you make it out to be. 2. Life isn't about getting somewhere, it's about the journey. Both points are terribly important. What is the point of life without goals? It's up to you to create some worthy ones for yourself. Good, now that you have one, stop worrying about the end, but enjoy the chase. If you live like that, you probably will be happy. The Buddha said suffering comes from longing, but what the hell are you if don't have desires? You might as well not exist at all, cover yourself in a tarp and pretend you're a rock. I wrote a paper last year on this subject that worked around the movie, "Fight Club" and a short story about Chris McCandless. But I believe I covered it much more elegantly in another blog I wrote:

This year has been full of stories about great men. People journeying off into the wilderness, trying to find themselves, either inside others or in themselves. I am in love with Chris McCandless' story. About a man who tried to find his place in the world by rejecting all the rules. Throwing himself into the wild, blue yonder. Ultimately paying for it in death. The real question: what is the relationship between chaos and order? Order is just an illusion; just like our world is built on top of quantum randomness. Chris was trying to find meaning out of chaos. 9/11 was just another random event, meaningless, little ants scurrying around on a rocky sphere. Earth is covered in marbles bashing in to each other and making noise. What is utterly fascinating is how -- we, as humans -- deal with it. Try to bring some order from chaos, try to make sense of all the meaningless stuff that happens all around us. That's what Chris was trying to do, by becoming it, rejecting order, finding the meaning by living it.

And what are dreams but chaos? Random images from the day splashing around in our skulls, bright spattering of paint hitting the walls, people's faces zooming by, big show tune melodies blaring in the background. In a word: chaos. What brought about this newly acquired spat of awakening? It's really been a mixture between recent readings and recent dreams. I'll delve into both more deeply, and I'll start with my night time hauntings. Thanksgiving night was fraught with nightmares like I have never experienced before. In my head, increasingly bizarre Satanists were speaking fast, heretics, things I couldn't stand to hear. Finally, the devil emerged on the scene, and I couldn't take it anymore. Realizing I was dreaming, I kept on trying to get out of it, wake up and stop. So terrified, my body suddenly became warm and I couldn't move. Inside my mind, a constantly repeating phrase: "I am the devil. I am the devil. I am the devil." Tearing my eyes open, a man stood over my bed, arm stretched before him, pointing at me. He flung himself back, disappearing into the darkness. As you can imagine, I was terrified, shivering, I raced up stairs and got a drink of water. I could barely get myself to go back to bed. At the time, though, I still recognized it for what it was, A sleep paralysis dream, more affectionately called, "An old hag dream". My mind is capable of some pretty amazing leaps, but to have dreams appear in reality is something I had not been expecting.

The dreams surrounding that one the previous days were vivid as well. I particular remember freaking out in one because I had signed up for classes but had forgot to go to them. Stupid me couldn't drop them because it was past the date, and my weekly schedule didn't show them because they were after 4 O'clock. In another, everyone I knew was leaving on a boat to go to different parts of the world. However, I was just going to Wisconsin. Oddly enough, the dream morphed into a musical on top of a glacier. And just last night I had another, reminding me of bad moments in my past that still make my heart beat fast. So what is the point of telling you this? The real question on the back of my head is this: what is the relationship between dreams and what we see in waking? The question is this: what if someone didn't know whether they were dreaming or awake? What kind of powers would they yield? Here is a section, a boy named Morgan being tempted by Jacob:

"The Big Thing is everything, Morgan. It is the universe. You, me, your family, my family, everyone we know, every piece of sand on a beach, every tree in the forest, every flittering butterfly, every flower blooming in the prairie, rabbit, dog, cat, mouse, demon, berserker, and decaying body. And like the great Alan Watts said, 'the clammy foreign-feeling world of the ocean’s depths, the wastes of ice, the reptiles of the swamp, the spiders and scorpions, the deserts of lifeless planets... Our feelings about the crawling world of the wasps’ nest and the snake pit are feelings about hidden aspects of our own bodies and brains, and all of their potentialities for unfamiliar creeps and shivers, for unsightly diseases, and unimaginable pains.' Everything is one Morgan, the good and the bad, black and white, death and life, woman and man, light and dark, happy and sad. You are not a soul encaged inside a flesh prison. You weren't thrown into an alien world. An alien universe. You are part of this universe. You are this universe. Look around you Morgan, everything, everything in this room, it all came from earth, from you, the sun, the galaxy, the universe. Stars, black holes, nebula clouds, exploding super novas and dying white dwarves, all you. All you. You didn't spring from no where. No. You are materials made of this planet. We all are. And that's what makes you special, Morgan. Your ability to influence it."

In my English class this year we have been reading up on different men. How they tried to change the world, how to make themselves happy. The first example was, of course, Chris McCandless. There were others, Ted Kaczynski, the 9/11 high jackers, Descartes, among others, but the other major one was Paul Farmer in Tracy Kidder's book, Mountains Beyond Mountains. He is the polar opposite of McCandless except in one crucial way: his extremeness in what he is doing, the way he seams to be the only human in his world that he is equal to, to set out on his own to accomplish his desires. Paul Farmer is a doctor who went to Haiti to help the poor, the sick, the diseased. But the man I really want to talk about is Tim Treadwell.



Upon returning to the dorms yesterday, one of the first things I did was watch the documentary, Grizzly Man, by Werner Herzog. It's about another man who wandered into the Alaska wilderness in search of himself, and also lost his life. This man is Timothy Treadwell, someone I find deeply disturbing, but at the same time fascinating. A creepy dude, he was obsessed with bears which he rambunctiously nicknamed Rowdy, Mr. Chocolate, among other names. In early fall 2003, he and his girlfriend, were attacked and devoured by a grizzly bear. Timothy was flamboyant, the Steve Irwin of Grizzly Bears but not as cool. He claimed to be in love with the bears, picking up their shit as if it was holy, saying "I love you, I love you, I love you". His footage was amazing, and bears are fucking terrifying, but at the same time awesomely beautiful. But I think Timothy was just exploiting the bears, making his documentary in several different bandanas, constantly playing with his blond hair. He didn't have the animal’s best interest at heart at all, he had his own selfish needs to be a celebrity. Timothy Treadwell was using them.



A reply by "cupwithhandles" said it perfectly: "He was warned and was well aware that if bears harmed him, bears would be killed, and that is exactly what happened. I think its safe to assume the guy was just opportunistic and that he exploited bears for fame, ego, money - who knows? In the end he was directly responsible for bears getting whacked. It is correct and good to laugh at such people and their reckless, selfish actions. The bears were hungry and it was their right to eat him." Timothy and his girlfriend were the first people ever killed by the bears in the park. His life was for nothing. When he died, the camera was still going. The lens protector was still on or perhaps it was in a duffle bag, but you can hear his death screams.
The Anchorage Daily News said this about the footage: "In this case, Wilkinson said, troopers are confident a bear was also responsible for killing the Malibu couple. Troopers are also convinced, he added, that the bear seen feeding on their bodies was the bear killed by Park Service rangers. There is no way, however, of knowing whether that bear or another shot by troopers at the scene did the actual killing.
The tape full of screams and rustling sounds details the attack, Wilkinson said, but adds little to explain exactly what happened or why. The tape, he said, lasts about three minutes. Scratching and dragging noises on it have led troopers to believe Treadwell might have been wearing a body mike when the attack began.
After Treadwell calls for help, Wilkinson said, Huguenard can be heard shouting "play dead.'' That is the recommended response to being grabbed by a brown or grizzly bear, but authorities stress the idea of playing dead should be abandoned if the bear continues to press the attack.
On the tape, shortly after the warning to "play dead,'' Wilkinson said, "Huguenard is heard to scream "fight back.'' Treadwell later yells "hit him with a pan,'' Wilkinson said."
You can hear the audio on youtube, and it one of the most disturbing things I have ever heard in my life. I won't post it hear to keep a little bit of decency, but the simple fact that is out there will haunt me. The man is truly insane; it's hard to get him out of my head. What is life meaning? Did Timothy's death mean anything? No. We are all trying to make sense of the universe, but the universe just doesn't make sense. At least not like that. The world is a scary, scary place, and you never know when you are going to die, get hurt, who your friends are going to be. There is so little comfort; you have to find it yourself. Sometimes it feels useless, hopeless, like nothing makes sense. But that's when you got to hold on your tightest, and really find out who the hell you are. You have to make you own meaning.