And it was a funny movie. Black humor, for sure, but funny. And completely unpredictable. It was perhaps the most ideosyncratic movie I have ever seen. I was initially thinking it was a vastly superior “Badlands”, or perhaps even “Thelma and Louise”–as it starts similar in premise–but then it went its own way.
Good movies stir up things in the viewer, and this one did in me. It is not inaccurate in some respects to say I live on an island, and send out bottles, via this blog, to the vast ocean around me. I look at people madly trying to find meaning in their lives, to find the FEELING of being alive, and failing. Everywhere I see failure, and I do not want to surround myself with it, with glib answers, and emotional superficiality. I don’t like feeling misunderstood, and I can’t find anyone who understands me. Not yet. It seems I will need to fashion that world myself, with great effort, great difficulty, but victory will be sweet, if I can reach it in this life.
And I think of the Tibetans, living alone for 3 years, 3 weeks and 3 days. Do you think that they, as human beings, fail to be confronted by all the same existential anxieties, fears, confusions? Is it deep to suppose that style, and wit, and basic questions constitute profundity? It is easy, watching the French in particular, although they are not uniquely guilty, to think that many people want to answer yes. The “deepest” among us see little, and seemingly as a rule find small struggles to be insurmountable mountains.
When I made that post on Hitler, I felt death in me for hours afterwards. What sort of world do we live on? We live in a world where we have to face death, face despair, face hopelessness, face confusion, and stare them down, to the best of our abilities, all while doing our level best to become stronger by helping one another, and sharing what wisdom we can.
This is HARD. It is very hard. This is a difficult game, one hard to play well, easy to fail at. But it is not an impossible game. It is reasonable to look to the saints and spiritual heroes among us and see that a way can be found. And seeking it is our job. It is the point of the light in the sky, the flow of our waters, the air in our lungs, the ground under our feet.
And I cannot help but feel, again, that Kum Nye is the most direct path I have found to what everyone wants and craves. The sense of being alive is the POINT of the whole thing. And that is only preparatory. We are so fallen, that we have to begin far, far behind where more advanced peoples would have begun. What is confusing to us was self evident long ago. Of this I feel certain. All of our technology, or most of it, is making us stupider in all the ways which really matter.