I am told that waiting to die is a condition to be avoided. But I feel like I am waiting to die all the time. I feel this way even though I am applying myself to work tasks. I don't want to rot in a puddle of my own vomit but I still feel like I am waiting to die. I feel like I am among the most irrelevant people inhabiting this earth.
I sometimes feel like my career has had unfair bounds around it, and this feeling damages my motivation to keep working. I start to feel like one of the characters Ayn Rand favors in Atlas Shrugged. But, when I see that life is depressing, and that work is the only way I can make it not so, then I am able to get motivated to work again. Work is how I keep my life interesting.
Honor starts with the recognition that life is depressing.
When we (I) hear the word honor, I have a knee-jerk reaction which is to picture a Japanese samurai. Such was an honorable life, right? I don't think honor should be associated so firmly with such a stereotype, though. If you simply recognize that life is depressing and walk forward through it anyway, illuminating what's around you as you go, then you are as honorable as that samurai.
The Lord of the Rings franchise and the character of Gandalf was a reminder of this second type of peaceful honor. Gandalf used to say that Hobbits were a source of courage for him. At the end of the Hobbit, Thorin tells Bilbo to go "back to his books" and to plant his trees. Thorin sees in Bilbo plenty of honor.
No comments:
Post a Comment