I Wonder...

 I see a toy car. It is fun to send down slopes or gradients because it goes fast. It goes fast. Its got a cool “paint” job, and it was a gift.

 

Wonder is looking at this object and thinking, coming up with questions and trying to answer them. For me it is hard to wonder about this object, I know it is a toy with little purpose to me anymore. I still like how fast it goes down a slope, but there is little for me to wonder. It has wheels so that they can rotate and the object will then move. The windows are so that whatever may drive it can see the road he or she is maneuvering. The seats hold passengers, seatbelts restrain them, and doors and hoods protect the interior of the car. The paint is mostly to show or define something. It is just a toy, for entertainment and collectable purposes.

However, if I were six I may have approached this toy with a bit more wonder. I would’ve thought about more possibilities and imposed less boundaries on this toy. If it can go downhill, can we send it downhill then uphill and finally no hill, watch it fly and crash. This car is the vehicle that transports passengers into different worlds, this car is the vehicle that can grow to life-size and crush the miniature characters I’ve created in my head. I wonder if it can drive across the surface of the water, or the bottom of the ocean. I would’ve played with the car and created scenarios and stories in which the car went on some awesome adventure. Imagination and wonder would be hand in hand and the car would crash through both.

It feels as if it is harder to wonder or imagine as we get older because we have been given answers to all our questions or been told to grow up and make connections. Wondering and playing with logical boundaries becomes a childish thing with negative undertones. As we grow up it is looked upon with more respected eyes to explain things in a way that is factual and makes sense. There are concrete answers now and they replace the old, stretched ideas. Once we have learned factual evidence, it is easier to spit that information out than try and think about stretched or absurd ideas or possibilities.

“Concepts create idols, only wonder knows.” –St. Gregory of Nyssa

I think the quote means that the answer to anything is in wonder. Concepts are easy answers that we create so that we can understand and have tangible evidence. This evidence becomes what we worship or idolize. However, I don’t really understand it past that. I have trouble coming up with an example that makes the distinction between idols and wonder. Thus I do not really know if this is true in my experience. What does wonder know? The explanation I gave explaining all the true things about the car wasn’t me wondering, it was me stating what I knew. When I thought about the aspect of wonder, imagination took charge and came up with things that were not true. I do not know what wonder knows.

This is water, this is water

           Human nature invites us to make choices and be judgmental. In some situations this is beneficial, for instance, survival of the fittest; human judges what seems safe to eat or inhabit and what is not, human lives or dies. In other cases it can be negative, human judges everyone around them before learning all the details that may contradict the judgment, human has no friends and creates a bad habit. David Foster Wallace posits in his commencement speech to Kenyon College that all of these choices will allow humans to engage the world differently. The liberal arts education that all the graduates went through allows them the skills of how to think, so that they can choose what to think. David Foster Wallace presents a credible idea with examples and satire that the audience responds to, laughing while he insults him, indicative of the audience not making the connection or understanding his meaning and responding in a way that strengthens his argument of default settings.

 

            Wallace’s idea that life consists of choices that allow humans to engage the world differently is credible because of attitude. Freud says our decisions are made by unconscious desires of sex and aggression, but I think the choices we make are determined by many other things. A broad factor is attitude, how a person feels towards things, places, etc. Attitude influences choices, and then our choices determine how the human person will respond to the world or tolerate the world. And attitude can change, Wallace calls attitude a sort of default setting, it influences choices before we realize we have a choice, and it is difficult to change, but it can. All of this allows us to see the world however we choose.

 

            Until reading this speech last year, I don’t think I ever realized or thought about the choices I made or could make, I just did everything based on mood or attitude. Now aware of this choice, I think more before action, but sometimes emotion gets the better of me and I make a choice that blurs my view of the world. I would like to be able to be more aware of this choice and thus make more beneficial choices or smarter ones when thinking about long-term or short-term effects. However, my default setting will probably continue to influence me. And I do not think this setting is bad, the world doesn’t look so bad so far from the choices I’ve made.

 

            I read this speech last year, then re-read it again this year and listened to it. Thus I was able to begin to understand it and note Wallace’s meaning. The people in the audience are listening to the speech live, on graduation day. I think they laugh when he insults him because they are not all fully engaged or understanding his meaning. In addition, there is selective listening involved, when something that relates to the audience is said, they immediately respond. It is a default setting to selectively listen and respond to things that the person can relate with.

 

And so, David Foster Wallace produced interesting points and good examples to get his point across. Life is surrounded and engulfed in choices that can make or break the way we see and engage the world. Most don’t realize the obvious things and only note or pay attention to things put forth that are relatable, his or her default setting kicks in and immediately responds. Once we become of the obvious we can begin to shape and recognize the choices we make and engage the world in a new way.

Albert Camus' Caligula, Act 1

(1.)

Camus demonstrates Caligula’s “heart” first through the assumptions made by the patricians of younger people. An old patrician says, “[Young people] take things hard. But time smoothes everything out” (Camus 4). The old patrician is arguing that although Caligula is troubled by his sister’s death and may go about coping in a strange way he will give into the system and get over it and move on in life. Then, Camus brings Caligula in to speak for himself. And like everyone he has desires, but he has recently found out that some things are impossible, like bringing his sister back or obtaining the moon. Thus he wants to teach people to make them understand this truth, truth that people lie to console you, that you cannot solve or change everything to be happy.

(2.)

The patricians and those in power view Caligula and his “heart” as young and like everyone else. The death of his sister is problematic because he cannot answer why she died. The patricians say that eventually he will forget about such questions and just give in to the system and cycle of life. For instance, a patrician says, “I lost my wife last year. I shed many tears, and then I forgot” (Camus 4). In time, Caligula will stop trying and give into condolences and lies. I agree with this view on broader terms but not in the case of Caligula. Caligula has realized that he in unable to answer the question, “why” and says, “Men die; and they are not happy” (Camus 8). He knows they die unhappy because they have lost things that cannot be accounted for nor brought back. Therefore he sees the lies and deceit around him and refuses to buy it; instead he will teach what he has learned.

One Object, Multiple Factors.

• This object can hold or contain an object or objects, but nothing big.
• It is made of wood and has been painted on.
• It opens and closes.
• Man made.
• Looks old.
• Rectangular, with a rounded lid.
• Small, as if it could be wedged in a small place or used as a door stopper or paper weight.

What Will Make Me Happy?

          The answer to life, the universe, and everything is not 42. However, we want it to be, we want it to be something concrete and resolvable, something that is logical and can be worked out. Life, the universe, and everything is not simple, cannot be solved like a math problem. Likewise, the answer to happiness is not 87, or any other number that was created from an equation. Happiness may not be expressed with numbers, but we can plug ideals, activities, and people into an equation that might fit our personal happiness ‘problem’. My equation of happiness might look something like this:

2Love + ∞Learn/∑Life = Happiness (Love and be loved plus an infinite amount of learning all over the sum of my life and hobbies I love is happiness).

            I believe that I will always be loved by God, but in addition to God, I think being loved and loving just as much if not more in return another person would make me happy. From what I have observed, love is tough but overall it looks like the greatest adventure in life. Watching couples interact and be together also makes me happy because it is fun to watch the give-take and judge or guess if the partners are really committed and loving. Having someone to share everything with sounds too like a relief, you share burdens and enjoy twice as much when you help or watch each other succeed. Love just seems like a key variable in the equation of my happiness.

            The second variable I would add is learning as much as possible and keeping the curiosity I have for most academic subjects. People in history were passionate about coming up with theories and ideas, laws and principles, and explanations to questions. It would make me happy if I could respect all the hard work they did and make an effort to learn and understand what they thought. Not only is it just to fulfill happiness but also to solve problems and try to create new ideas that can simply old ones, to use these ideas to solve problems. Learning something new every day feels very good.

            Lastly are a broader and changing idea of what would make me happy, a life fulfilled with hobbies and activities I enjoy. For instance, I did not excel in team sports that required bodily contact with a ball; I picked up golf instead and find personal joy in playing and practicing. I also find a fascination with sharks and learning all about them, I think it would be really cool one day to interact with them or research them in their habitat. Playing the French horn makes me happy because I make music and contribute to an ensemble, a team. There are many other things that I can sum up to create a fulfilled life and a happy one too.

            The most important variables in the equation of my happiness are the love and the learn, a fulfilled life acts as a prize I can work on and gift myself after hard work and care. There are many life variables that can be summed up and changed and added and subtracted. So maybe happiness can be an equation, but there is no concrete number or definition as to what will make me happy.

             “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.” -Albert Camus