As it happens, I have some connection with Phoenix. A salient memory was this sense of feeling superior because I read dense books (I didn’t understand). As I begin–baby steps, very beginning, Beginner’s Mind because I KNOW I am stupid–to find a better way of living, one thing that has become clear to me is the extent to which the rejection of others was protective. Insular intellectualism is a form of weakness. We are fortunate in America that the “intellectual” is not a cultural icon. We are in my view quite literally better off viewing people like Jerry Rice (my favorite all-time football player, although Joe Montana is a very close second) as heroes than assholes like Sartre and Noam Chomsky. The former do not make us smarter; the latter make us stupider.
I will state as a general guideline that it is ALWAYS preferable to remain in place to going backwards.
Anyway, I was enjoying a pleasant evening at a pleasant night spot, and watching the people. You know what? People are people. Most people have a short list of emotional drivers, and think only as much as they have to. This is OK. This is BETTER than people who think compulsively, particularly if they are imbibing the pessimism and angst of the last century of intellectualism.
I remember sitting next to a guy at a bar who was more or less trying to read the Penguin Classics. To him, this was the way life should be lived. To me, I was thinking that virtually the entire output of fiction and art generally from roughly 1850 to the present has tended to make of life something puzzling or infuriating, or saddening, for which there is no answer. Not to put too fine a point on it, this is unhelpful. I will discuss my meditative discoveries in another post, but suffice it to say that Existentialism was invented 2,500 years ago, except that the thinkers then were competent, and dealt effectively with the consequences of their ideas.
Anyway, the evening out ended with two completely random women paying for my meal and drink. Maybe they just watched “Pay it forward”. Maybe I looked poor (yes: I am not a clothes hound). Maybe I looked disconsolate (even though I was quite enjoying the after-effects of what I had at the time thought was a weak meditation; as often happens, I go outside, and everything looks different). Whatever it was, it was a nice thing to do. This has never happened to me, and my server was surprised too.
I will ask this: what is more profound, wanting to do something nice for someone; or struggling through a Ph.D thesis on some obscure facet of Jude the Obscure? What best works to build a better society? Who is more likeable?
I may go so far as to describe myself not as an “aspiring curmudgeon”, as I once did, but a recovering one.
And Thank You, two random ladies.