Philosophy is fun... please stop laughing. I am being serious!

I have good reason to believe today might be a glorious day.

Tony Curtis (my cat) was extra cuddly this morning, I have had little sleep but woke up the first time my alarm went off and my first thoughts were of poetry bouncing around my head. All of these reasons forced me immediately to my laptop, not to check my facebook (which I still did of course), but to write this little blog.

Last night I worked on some homework for one of my philosophy classes. The assignment was to watch the movie “A Single Man” and related to the reading of Augustine we have been doing in class. We were given specific questions to answer and asked to put together a short paper on the topic. Something about this assignment sparked something in me. Instead of worrying about writing the paper in perfect format and answering each question in some sort of perfect manner I have created in my head, I just wrote. I actually just had fun with it and in doing that I remember why I went back to school for philosophy and not a degree in business. Philosophy is fun, it is cathartic and if you allow it to, it changes you. I suppose an accounting class can do the same for some, but I am not one of those people.

The movie is about a gay) English man (not gay in the sense of happy or in the vain of My Fair Lady) living in Los Angeles during the sixties. His partner has died in a car accident and he is in the midst of a great depression. The saddest part is given the social climate he lives in, he cannot share his grief with anyone. He suffers alone and in silence.     On the day the movie finds him he is planning on killing himself.

I bet I can guess what you are thinking right now and to answer your question… yes, I did say this was fun.  If you are at this point longing to read a blog about an accounting class, it might be wise to stop reading now. The really fun part comes when I deconstruct pain and suffering in just a bit.

Who says I don’t know how to party anymore???????

So I am attaching the assignment and my paper.  You can google either Augustine or the movie to get more info on either if you care enough to.  And to warn you in advance I give the ending away in my paper.

Happy reading and  to paraphrase the Avett Brothers-embrace the day….. we only get so many and you have one less than yesterday.

Assignment:

Here's the prompt for A Single Man:

Focusing on the film and relating it to our reading of On Free Choice of the Will answer the following questions:

• Consider a time when you lost someone you love and compare your emotions at the time to those depicted in the film.
• Why do we suffer so greatly when we lose loved ones?
• Ultimately, given that they are all transitory, what makes our relationships worth having?
• Is it possible to reconcile the immensity of our suffering with the existence of a benevolent God?

Paper:

The line in “A Single Man” I most identified with was “It actually hurts to wake up.” I think that is as close as anyone can come to explaining the type of pain the main character George is suffering. 

I have experienced much loss in my life. Depending on how you look at it, that is either extremely unfortunate or I am incredibly privileged.  I say that because if one has an understanding of profound loss then they also must have knowledge of intense connection. You cannot have one without the other. To truly know loss you must be intimate with belonging. Belonging that touches the deepest parts of you and gives you have the sense of being whole in some way that you cannot experience on your own. Not having a clear idea of what the afterlife might entail or if there is one at all I find death not only takes the one I love, but it also kills my hopes for a reconnection with that person along with it. However, whether the loss comes from death or simply from a parting of the ways does not really matter. To feel disconnected from what was once so important is a discomfort that words do not do justice to describe.

There is a language of suffering that I think you can only hear if you have felt it. This movie beautifully depicts the exquisite nature of pain and speaks in that language fluently. Not just with the words that were said, but with the moments in time we see. When everyone around seems to be on the inside of a joke that George does not understand, when they seem brighter and more vivid than he does, when the whole world seems to have kept on moving while George is quietly wilting away. With pain, just as with love, you become quite aware that you are in fact- alive. Every moment of everyday you are reminded of your existence. I think it is fair to say a person is never more alive than when they are in love or when they are in pain.

 I practice Buddhism, so Augustine’s concepts of the temporal and the eternal in our readings seemed very familiar to me.  In the film we see how attachment to a temporal relationship, even one that was so clearly deeply felt, can cause the ultimate in suffering. In Buddhism we are taught that attachment is suffering, so I wrestle with attachment to people, places and things daily. Even though I am well aware that attachment is the cause of suffering, my heart and mind still find ways to hold on to the temporal. Just like Augustine, perhaps it is my ego that lets me think one day I shall transcend it.

There is a reason that men and women who want to deepen their relationship with God, or the universe, or their higher-selves retreat into solitude. That reason is because it is impossible to accomplish that goal and keep feeding the relationships we all find ourselves in through the normal course of life. That is especially true of romantic relationships. Even Augustine himself followed the path of solitude and it is something I have considered personally as well.  The only reason I can think of for a person who has knowledge of the nature or truth to continue to participate in these transitory relationships is that it gives them an opportunity to show compassion and grace to another. My role today is not to take love, but to give it freely.  I seek to love, rather than to be loved as was true for me in the past. That growth came only from feeling profound loss.

The more I deepen my relationship to the world around me, to my own Higher Power, the easier it is to remain giving. I would not have gotten to this place in my life without the losses and connections I have had. There would have been no reason to look for a more meaning to my life without the feeling of total emotional and spiritual bankruptcy. That was coincidently the spark for Augustine’s journey.

I think that is perhaps the reason there is loss in this life; it teaches us to be gentle with one another if we allow it to.  In the movie we see George have that same experience and then finally he comes to terms with his grief and lets it go.  I do not find it sad that he dies at the end from a heart attack, I think it speaks to the possibility that his agony was not in vain. That there was a greater good served by his suffering, even if that “good” was only his ability to connect with the world on a deeper level before his own death.  That is, in my opinion the best thing that has come out of my own understanding of the nature of relationships and my place in this world.