A sunset, and perhaps a sunrise

Introduction

I kissed her with eyes closed in tears before they opened to that same loving face and a rich rocky mountain sunset behind her. “I will only be a few months, and then...” I said, trying to comfort her, or maybe trick myself as I also pointed out what peaceful rapture it would be to be with her again. She lunged forward as her arms shot around my waist and the side of her face rested against my chest. “I’ve never felt as safe as I feel with you.” She said. Something of honor and pride swelled in my heart to know this person that I loved so deeply, and felt secure to have me near. All my fears of being a bad person slipped away as I grappled with this new sense of who I was in her eyes. We both knew that it wouldn’t be a goodbye without an end. I opened the door for her, as she stepped inside, but not before turning and kissing me once again with a deep pull of breath to pull that moment deep into her heart for all the time it would have to make it for. When I met her, when I went on our first date, when I asked her to be mine, each time I would struggle to find the words to tell her how I felt. I struggled for the three words I hadn’t heard enough up until that point until they burst out of me with a zeal and power that showed their depth. She smiled as she said it back to me. I smiled with teary eyes as her deep blue eyes and brown hair framed face looked at me with that same smile that made me wonder if I was good enough to exist as I closed the door one last time, and walked away.

I had to move a thousand miles away to try my hand at a difficult job with the hope of giving her one-millionth of the life I wanted for her. I showed her pictures of the small cabin in the Appalachians where I would fill with books for her to read and continue writing song after song to let my guitar say what my words could not. Everything went to hell as quickly as it could. My brother left me just a few days into getting there, leaving me alone and with no support in a job that I needed. The Texas heat was brutal and baked out the little bit of optimism I had left, but it could never scorch or purge her from my mind. I continued to fight and work, hoping to make us any money I could. I didn’t want to call her until I had some good news and good news was hard to come by under that southern sun. I finally made a little bit of money and promptly went to a humble shop and started looking at little bands of silver and gold to express with their shine, how divine I found her.

Beaming with pride despite how torn down I was, I called her to tell her how well things were going, how wonderful she was, and how excited I was to see her. We both talked at once, but I didn’t want to tell her about the ring when she had something on her mind. “Go ahead, I’m listening.” I told her. “Sam, I...” She went quiet as I could hear her thinking. “I just don’t love you anymore.” The silence of the city greeted me as I tried to wrap my mind around a thorny idea. “No problem, we can take some time apart, I am willing to wait.” “I would be awhile.” “Forever wouldn’t be too much. I could wait weeks, months, hell even years.” “Sam... It would be more than that. It would never happen.” An old panic like being lost at sea, crushed by the waves enough to not know which direction was up, set in on me. “What is it? I will change anything. I can drive through the night and be there before you know it.” “Please don’t do that. You have a dream I just can’t follow you in.” I knew she meant my choice to make my life about helping people think out problems via reason. It was what mattered to me most. However, here she was, the person that mattered to me most. “I... I could give it up.” I said with desperation and shame to leave my chosen destiny. “Goodbye Samuel.” The phone went silent as I stared at the skyscrapers and lights in the distance.

I went back to the little cabin on the lake I lived on and stared out at the water as the alligators slowly cruised past in the night. Pain consumed me as my breath couldn’t stay in my chest, I felt like I was burning up, and any desire to fight this suffering was quelled by the question of whether or not I deserved life. The next few months and years were bitter and lonely times as I came to grips with not only the loss of my love, but that I had been disloyal to my mission. Sadness past tears loomed with no break in the clouds as food repelled me, sleep haunted me, and every thought reminded me of her. She never lost her divinity in my mind. If she was without blemish and didn’t love me, then I must have not deserved her love. When I was with her, I had this sense that the sun itself only rose to grace her face and illuminate the world made all for her. Now, I stared at that fiery ball of gas, wondering why in hell or earth it cared to rise if not for her. I wrote more songs about her now than I ever wrote for her, including a song that went,

“Why does the sun rise

I ask through misty eyes

Why shine all the day long

Now that she is gone”

Like a star myself, I collapsed from having nothing more to give, nothing more to burn in my fight to stay alive. I had one strength that was my saving grace as my one mind became a hell to walk through. When I go through hell, I go through it. My suffering doesn’t lead to a lowering of effort, labor, and caring, but an intensification of it. I fought the good fight without a reason other than the love for the battle. My one book became many, my few songs became an album, my love for her became a love for all living, and my hard work became an obsession. Many hours on bended knee and many thoughts of those blue eyes pushed from my mind culminated in a person, a life, and a mission I know and love more than ever.

More than just an illustration on the need for suffering and striving, this exemplifies to me a mistake I made with her. This love of mine was indeed a wonderful person who deserved a good life, but there was a disparity. This variance came from how she was in the world, and how she was in my mind. How she is, and how she is in thought. Additionally, how she is, and how I wish she ought. By this, I mean that the concept of her within my mind and instance of her, were not the same and how I wanted to be with her was not the case. This is an instance of one of the oldest and most painful of psychological distress. The variance between mind and world. This is where the pursuit of knowledge comes in. If I had sought to see her as she was, with all her imperfections, I would be able to see she was not the goddess that could judge me as unworthy. This is not to say I have to overcorrect and say she was horrid, but to see her as she was. I held to this idea that didn’t exist in the world, and when the world came to ask, from pain, what I thought, I was left ashamed to find I didn’t know. The two ways to fight this painful variance are to align or mind with the world or align the world with our minds. In short, knowing and doing bring a mind from a deceitful suffering, to an honest striving.

Knowing

Knowledge is to have a thought, have that thought exist independent of you thinking about it, and have a reason to believe it. For it to be knowledge, it would need to be a fact of the world, need to reside in your mind, and for you to have a sufficient reason to conclude that you justify that it is in both worlds. This gets into many questions about the transference of knowledge between self and world. The conversation is rich and full of needed things to ask oneself. The current Kantian constructivism seems to be most prominent, saying we see the world not only as it is, but as we are. This is a fact alone that I add onto saying that if it happens, then we can make it deliberate, which I put as the highest of values. This is what Esse Maxim is. A willed relationship between self and world one is carefully building and structuring over time. All the knowledge that comes through that lens, I call the content of thought. It is the stuff we think about. On the other side, we have what I call the context, or how I think about it. For example, I may take facts, as I perceive them, from this story of me and this girl as content, but then use reason as context to make sense of what is going on.

Because it is more in our control, I usually make a larger case for context as we can’t control what we have access to know (at least completely) but we can control how well we think about those facts. It does, however, still matter what we have access to. There is a reason many ancient traditions and schools of thought make such a case, even saying that truth will “set us free.” Knowing one fact of reality will then help one inductively know about more. For example, I learned with this experience with this girl, that I needed to see how people see me and not focus solely on how I see them. Speaking of seeing the world as it is, I have noticed that people anthropomorphize. We want the rocks, trees, and sky to be like us. I think this is where a few of the world's religions came from. We also assume that as we think, others do as well. I have found people say that people tend to be evil or good deep down, but in the end I wonder if this is what Nietzsche called “confessions.” As a very loving person, I thought for a long time that everyone was loving. I have since found that people vary so much, the most I can say is that most people strive. This variance is mind-boggling and doesn’t fit into concepts well, but it makes a case for freewill or at least against biological determinism.

Knowledge is not so simple as saying, get it and you will be healed. Think about anything you believe. Now, ask yourself if you know of a person who thinks the opposite. Nevermind if you think they are good or smart, do you think they have an epistemic reason for believing that thing? Does this mean that you are wrong? Not necessarily, it just points out the contingent nature of facts. Most things we think could be otherwise. If I think the future is bright, a case could be made for a dimming. If I think there is a God, a justification could be made for atheism. When I thought this girl loved me, it was still possible, despite my knowing, that it wasn’t true. This doesn’t prompt a giving up of knowing, but a need for an awareness of its limits. This sea of contingent facts and skepticism has nothing to grab on to. There are facts to know to save us. Esse Maxim is the process of then learning to tread water and maybe even start propelling oneself further and forward. So while we seek after knowledge, we will find that it is the seeking we can control, but not the finding. We can never ensure we have the output of all knowledge, but we can ensure we can do what is possible via a special little thing: Curiosity.

I grew up as a cowboy and loved my cows. There is one quality that they had that never got old, aside from their sweetness, energy, and adorable nature. This was their deep curiosity. They would sniff out a new barrel I put in the field, perk their ears out at me playing my harmonica, and stare wide-eyed at the new treats I would bring to them. Why would they be curious? It was clear they would never know too much more than the wild rocky mountain terrain they lived on and anything I showed them. They seemed to be curious for its own sake. Part of their will to live and exist was to want to know the world around them, as limited as it was. What if I had been more curious? What if I wondered why she hadn’t called me while I was saving up money? What if I watched how much she liked what I offered rather than who I was? What if I listened to my doubts a little more? I am wary and careful with “what ifs” and don’t mean that I regret or want it to be otherwise. Rather, I am taking what can be learned from this. I needed to not lie to myself.

When I was halfway through college, I was starting up a rather large business with a friend who had my level of finances. We got some investors on board and started moving forward through the process. I began to notice my business partner make harsh comments about disenfranchised people. I am not shy and called him out. He would then begin to suggest ideas for us to spend the funds on ourselves to get nice cars. He then began to push for more control of the company and ideas I thought were much worse. I kept putting up with it until I looked in the mirror and realized I had been lying to myself. I called him and told him it was over, saving everyone from a legal and financial mess.

I had let my wanting of what I wanted overshadow what was. Like my love for a girl whose heart wasn’t there, I fought to see what wasn’t. In this, I had damaged the delicate relationship between what is, and thought. My mind has since fought to revel in what it best thinks as truth. This wanting to see the world better as it is has led me to read hundreds of books and be open to many different thoughts. Seemingly more important, it has allowed me to look out over a landscape and soak in the beauty as I realize that this whole world was outside of me this whole time, just existing, never asking permission, and being wildly unknown. A deep and primitive urge within me brings about this wonder that turns to curiosity which swells to learning and finally finds its place as humble, perhaps false, but simple knowledge.

Doing

There are few things I want to be more than a father. Outside of what I call the “biological imperative” being the closest thing to the empirical meaning of life, it is also a chance to be a part of the development of a conscious being in all its stages. This has led me to an obsession to work on my own character, read books on parenting, and practice patience, communication, and commands with my friend’s children. There are so many things I want for these potential children of mine and so many lessons and experiences I would want to share. However, if there was only one thing I could pass on to these people I love most without them existing yet, it would be for them to live a deliberate life. Being an abstract concept with many steps, I would probably do this best by inviting them to learn hard work.

My agrarian and blue-collar background will perhaps give me bias in this, but I think the effort is the cure to almost any issue. If you are foolish, labor to be smart. If you are evil, act good until you realize you are. If you are broken, build an environment for you to be healed. I will sing the praises of labor until my last breath. It delivered me not from poverty, which I now love in its simplicity, but from a life trying to find an excuse to exist. Knowing things is wonderful. That is where a fact exists in the mind. However, knowing is not realizing. I have spent decades trying to fully comprehend and actualize basic concepts I have had since my earliest philosophizing as a child. When I was two, one of my first thoughts was that it was better to work and go without now, in order to have later. I am still trying to actualize this via conscientiousness in places such as my finances. Philosophy is then the means of building and weighing the best thoughts, but a good life is one then that brings them about. If it is so difficult to bring about the simple thoughts, how can I get all the larger and more complex ones? I think the objective need not be to succeed, but to die with a full-speed trajectory toward it. Ask yourself, if you lived forever, where would this life of yours lead? Would your being find itself into knowing the world, itself, and act in accordance with what it valued?

Labor then has the vital task of bringing about the thoughts that want to be. To know is to accept the world as it is the case. This can be of particular merit toward the past. However, as far as the future is concerned, until it is the past we can shape it. This deep pain from the variance between mind and world still needs to be watched as one could burn themselves down to the candlestick and still have a cold room. Labor is then what brings about what we want in the world.

I love to fish and have a particular spot just close enough to a beaver dam to see them every now and again. I used to sit there and watch them with this girl, but I have found it in my heart to enjoy it alone again. They are always clearing smaller trees from the side of the bank and trying to drag them to their seemingly chaotic log home. I am grateful to have fewer branches to tangle my line when I cast it, but I also marvel at their effort, and for what? I have seen many beaver dams abandoned and blown out. The impermanence of life makes it seemingly meaningless (along with death) to ever try. Then why do beavers and great people still labor? This labor is like curiosity where it has merit past its utility and unto itself.

I have found myself loving the striving of work so much, then when I get the result of the work, I am somewhat apathetic. I worked like hell as a barely literate farmboy to make it in college. However, now that I am about to graduate in twelve days, I am more excited about my new and challenging job as well as the prospects of post-graduate work. I agree with Nietzsche and Schopenhauer who say that the aim of life is not happiness but striving. Where we disagree is that they say this is simply a fact, but I revel in it. I have noticed a pretty strong relationship between how hard people strive for life, and how fulfilled in their core they are about existing, despite being shaken up. On the opposite side are the hedonism and decadence that bore one until they ask if not living were preferable having not had to fight enough to survive to want it. This is where the question of meaning comes to a point. Does anything inherently matter? I can honestly say I have no idea. However, I do know that things begin to matter when we breathe life into them via commitment. Does the little cabin I live in matter more than a domicile? No, but as the person who built it alone with his calloused hands, it is special to me. Labor then makes sacred beyond the mundane into the mystic via our commitment to them. I find it no coincidence that the more people follow their faith in action, the more they have a sense of its divinity. Work is then to take the conceptual and then persuade or coerce the world to make it happen.

Conclusion

I have learned that our opportunistic minds tend to suggest the solution that we have a part of or can get power from. The technological robber-barons in my day say the solution is their tech. The doctor says it is his pill. The politician says it is his power. However, I think in this need for knowing and doing to fight the dissonance between our minds and the world around us, there is no better tool than Esse Maxim. To fix this pain I felt from the loss of my love, I could accept what was, or work to bring about what I wanted. I did both as I begged to be in her life and sought to know what was going on. Most importantly, I think you and I need to know we can do something. In suffering, any sense of control will keep the scars from cutting deep enough to hit bone. Knowing and doing are facets of what makes us human, but there is another side that balances these two.

Despite believing in God, I love to think of our species as little monkeys. It allows me to find a sense of adorableness in our plight and have some needed mercy for our kind. I have noticed that when we seek to know too much, we become sad little monkeys. When we seek to do too much, we become stressed little monkeys. This is because we are focused on being so aware and acting, that we forget how to be. I think of all the great philosophers who were so aware of what the human experience was, but they couldn’t be a part of it. I think, on the converse, of all the humble farmers I know who are more focused on being human, than knowing what that means. This may seem to tear down humanity from our special place in the animal kingdom, but at least in some way, and in part, we are animal. Knowing helps us fix our pain by seeing the world, doing helps by building the world, but being lets us be with the world. At some point, I drop all my existential dread and fear of never finding love, to simply be a human being looking at the sunset. There is limitless more to say on the balance between knowing, doing, and being, so I will invite you to think on it rather than giving you all my silly little thoughts.

Like any mind, my thoughts are caught up primarily in present concerns. Like many thinkers, I wish I could sail through the universe as a mind to see and think without limit. That is, however, not the case. I am then left to resign myself to my facthood with as much dignity as possible. I am no God in my cognition or perception, but a person with limits and thoughts unlimited. I am left to not have, and yet to know what it is like to have.

I ran across her photograph the other day. The yearning in my chest and the churning of my stomach was much less. Rather, I looked at her with a sense of wonder and admiration. She was every bit as beautiful as I remembered. Time had done its remedy in part, but there would always be a place in my heart for her, even if the renovations made the space smaller. I now think of what I can do to bring about love once again. I learn what I can to see the world as it is. This pain, deeper than any I have felt before, became something more. It turned into a richness of life that I am rewarded with every day now. I have been able to mine this experience for anything of value to share with a world and people I love so deeply. It hasn’t made the issue go away, but these thoughts and Esse Maxim have made this tragedy turn into one that has something to say.

I turned away from her beautiful face to see a light from the window, bright and warm like I had forgotten it could be. Here it was. Even without her. There was the sun.

Sunset - Samuel Bird