Sept. 30, 2010
I’m doing a bit of catchup on the blog here. My internet connection has been shaky, and I’ve allowed myself to get distracted enough to miss a couple days here. Today, I plan to write three posts: 2 for the days I missed and 1 for today. I actually want to make each of these posts an important part of answering the question of why I’m making this skate. There’s a reason I’m caught here in Bridgeport, CT just 60 miles from my start point, dead in the water. Despite all my efforts, I have not answered the question: Why, why, why? I want to settle the question once and for all with an answer that resonates within me: The Reasons that Belong to Me.
Reason #1: It Matters because We Choose So
Forgive me: These three posts will be a bit scrambled. I’m trying to cover about six years of psychological ground in three blogposts. Let’s begin by being brutally honest here: I may not be what you think I am. I may be so much less, and I may be so much more. I should like that you would see me as I am: A man who presently sits mid-course on a journey. The goal of this journey is to make a statement, to be a statement, or quite simply, to state. What is the statement? Ultimately, it is a statement of one way to find or create meaning into a life that exists as an open ended question.
No one can convince me that life, on its own, is anything more than a blank slate. It is what we carve into the stone that matters, but then we are begged the question: Who does it matter to? That is the most important question. Does it matter to our friends, society, or societies that have not yet come? Does it matter to God or some outside and independent eye? Does it matter to us, or does it matter simply because it is unique in its existence? Might I make a presumptuous and gutsy statement? I suggest that it does not matter so much who we choose it matters to. I suggest that what matters is that we make the choice. That is the height of significance to me: to be able to choose what is significant. First and foremost, what matters is that we believe that something matters at all.
I have been struggling the past few days, because people have brought to light questions that I haven’t fully answered yet. They don’t understand why I would go on this crazy skate. Some doubt that it could really make a difference in the world. Others look at my own psychology, my own understanding of the world and they quite reasonably ask: “Why should you care if this makes a difference in the world? Why shouldn’t you just follow your independent course and care only about your own experience?” I think my ramblings about life as a statement here are most relevant. If life is a statement, then I must state, and choose how and why to state.
Do you see then? One of my reasons for this quest is first to teach us that life is a statement. What way do you go in the universe today? In what direction do you walk? Why does it matter that you walk that way? Who shall it matter to? If life is a bold thrust out into the universe, it is not enough to simply be willing to leap. We must choose which way to leap. We must have the courage to say: This is the way that I go, and it means this to me. I go this way, because I choose to. Is my reasoning circular? I hope so. I’m here to make an arbitrary statement out into the universe and have the courage to stand by my statement until the end. I go for the sake of going in hopes that someone else will see where I have gone and have the courage to make their own arbitrary stab out into the universe. In so doing, they make the way for someone else – always forward into the unknown. Are you awake or are you asleep? Do you choose? Do you go?
