Habentes igitur talem spem multa fiducia utimu (I wish).

I can’t see that there’s any mandated age for asking the big questions. It’s not as if you must be “this tall” to board the ride. Although I suppose that I would be wary of anyone over 30 responding with a blank stare or a jingle if the subject arose. Well, really, more afraid than wary of the jingle. The roller coaster is a good metaphor. It’s a good metaphor to use in describing some mental health issues. But 3 years? 19-22? Aren’t you feeling a wee bit nauseous by now? Can you explain what you mean by taking action? Jumping off the ride, maybe? Only after coming to a full stop, I hope.

Whew! I don’t usually feel so beaten before beginning my running commentaries. In this case, beaten to the punch because I feel that I am those adjectives: I am ugly, I am pain, I am confusion, I am empty, I am danger and I am failure. Going further than feeling into becoming my fears. And, at this moment, I feel stupid. You’ve expressed the same. It’s a right horror show to think, after almost six decades, that you were wise enough to feel worthy of life but too damned stupid and selfish to act in accordance with that feeling. Hypocritical, but something more evil than that.

I’m not sure why, but just recently I’ve been reading messages written by younger people – 13-25, maybe – and the numbers that write of such great pain continues to confound me. I don’t know anyone your age. I don’t really know anyone under 50. I feel as if we need a contemporary Marshall McLuhan to explain this vastly more complex global village. I’d really like to blame the pain on media, but I’m not sure if that’s a knee-jerk reaction to something that I’m unable to understand or if there’s a jot of truth there. I completely reject the idea that there’s any danger in “too much thinking” but even though I don’t recall when I first heard of “information overload,” that critique of the late 20th century to present has a feeling of ‘rightness.’ A correct critique.

On November 22, 1963, two days after my birthday, I was laying on my stomach watching television when I heard the news. Our maid came in from the kitchen and when his death was announced she collapsed in tears. I had seen that before, 6 months earlier, when my mother was killed. I’ve never been able to describe, because I don’t know myself, the feelings that I had that day. I stopped. At 5 years old, I stopped. (I’m not sure if bringing up all this crap is good or bad, healthy or not.) Anyway… my dad told me, much later, that I had become a little hysterical, that Betty had called him at work and that he had called Dr. Doggett, our family doc, who came to the house and gave me an injection and left pills for Betty and me. I don’t have any other memories of that time. I remember Christmas but I don’t know if I have a real memory of the day or if my memory comes from the 8mm film that my dad shot and that I watched over and over. Sometimes I tell my shrinks about it and sometimes I don’t. I don’t like to think about it and I know that the single time that a shrink used the word “traumatic” after I talked of it that I had an episode. I’m guessing that I can write of it now because I feel so close to the edge of sanity that acknowledging another time that “something happened but I don’t know what” isn’t anything that matters any longer. But the real reason that I wrote about this is as an example of how a minimum medium intrusion can cause problems for a young person. How do you, at 22, filter the content? You say that you escape into fiction. I can understand that. But it’s only a medium hop, isn’t it? Have you considered ways of escaping media?

I’m considering a leap into the banal. I’m thinking, remembering 22. Okay, last year of undergrad. I didn’t put much effort into college. In May I got my BA,scl, and then off to Europe, establishing a base in London (where I would later return to and live). Banality warning. I had surrendered my crisis in high school, overloaded with theology and philosophy. At 22 my priorities were girls, sex and toying with love. Very much like Stephen Hawking at Oxford! Seriously, though; girls, sex, toying with love and learning how to most effectively utilize public transport in Europe. Bicycling. Reading. Shopping. Catching the tail end of punk. Canoeing. Byron. Running and walking. Living the Girl Scout song in re friendship. Museums. Eating God knows what because everyone else was having it; my first Spotted **** just because I wanted to write and say, “Had my first Spotted **** the other day; delicious!” as much as possible. Didn’t do drugs or drink much. Usually made it to mass every Sunday. Oh. In the UK – Chuck and Di engagement tea towels.

I’m sure that I’ve missed some things. But I think that if you survey my priorities, you’ll see how teaching astrophysics was my logical career. Over 10 years of experience with the Big Bang. Theory?

Sorry about that. Sometimes this crap devolves into giggles and I can’t stop laughing. This is the third time in a month. I’m sure that it’s symptomatic of something. I don’t know what. You might expect a “just kidding” but you’ll be waiting on Chunky Monkey in Hades before you hear me lie. I don’t want to imply that I had stopped considering the big questions, or that I escaped an existential crisis every month; I had my Catholic faith with my private and personal magisterium but, more importantly, I didn’t care at that point. I still had that insatiable curiosity – that may be important, but I’m not certain of that.

I certainly did not have any belief that I had any special or specific purpose. I’m delighted that you understand worth v. purpose. But, no, the idea of being able to find a “purpose” (look up the exact meaning, it’s usually the first, ‘created for,’ ‘exists for’) is like masturbating in order to have a child. In fact, the latter may be more realistic. Maybe more like going fairy hunting. But worth – that’s where value and values come into your life. You’ve named a few instances; you can go crazy with examples. You can also go crazy when you realize that you devalued the worthiest. That is a part of my shame, my guilt, my sadness; it’s the sword that disembowels me, the sword that I was surprised to see in my own hands.

I couldn’t find any reference to brutality anywhere? Did I write that being brutal was easy? I would need to see it in context… Oh. That message has mysteriously disappeared. That proves my psychic powers – I predicted that the message would be deleted. So I saved the text. I thought that I had been careful in making sure that I didn’t violate the terms of use. I’ll need to read them again. Maybe I just violated the ‘spirit’ of the Care Bears.

Alright, in context:

Yes. It’s very easy to be brutal when you don’t care. The most difficult part is being able to convince yourself that you don’t care. I’ve spoken of the four women that I loved in my lifetime. The one that I was referring to is the one that I call “the woman that I should have married.” If my messages aren't being deleted willy-nilly or as soon as posted, you should find references to how I treated her. You choose to love, you choose to marry. You make value based judgements. I’m not going into, again, what I did but I acknowledge, now, that I made the wrong choice of who to marry. In making my decision I – I acted against my values. The transition from loving to not caring couldn’t have taken more than 30 minutes. I lied, of course. I loved her. I loved my fiancé. I told both how much more I loved them than the other. That wasn't true. There was no “much more.” The one that I should have married was kinder and we were far more compatible physically. The one that I married was brighter but far less physically compatible. It was Hobson’s choice and, had I acted in accordance to my values, I probably should have called everything to a halt and spent a week or two at the monastery and mulled the decision over with friends.

That’s my worst example. There are maybe a dozen more, not always devaluing someone I loved but, maybe worse, devaluing any innate worth that a human might possess. If you had known me, even known me well, you’d have never thought that I could be a monster. I didn’t raise my voice, didn’t feel… didn’t feel anything, I guess. Not until I began verbally abusing my wife. Something that I could do in a crowd without raising an eyebrow. I don’t know why I was shocked when she said “divorce.” Let’s move on.

Here's a riddle: I believe that you’re over-thinking thinking. You’re separating thought and action. Maybe you have the statue of ‘The Thinker’ in mind; cold, dark and immobile, believing that thought, or thought about weighty matters, requires stillness, maybe solitude. That’s not the case. Ask someone to pick the greatest genius of the 20th century and indubitably Einstein will come to mind. I don’t remember the title of the book, but a book was written chronicling the journey of Einstein’s posthumous (thank God!) brain. It was expected that it would be physically and chemically different than average. And it was. But the findings didn’t lack critics and the most damning, from what I’ve read, have been from critics who’ve proved that each rain is different than another, that each is unique. One thing that I always found fascinating is that Einstein said that he thought visually. I use a language, a kind of English shorthand. I envy people who think visually. I can’t do it.

There's just no separating thought and action. One of my favorite sports, for example, was solo whitewater canoeing. Maybe you would believe that very little thought would be required to float down a river in a boat. And if you took to the water believing that you would likely leave the river in a body bag. You have to research each new river. If accessible you walk the river. If there are maps, you study the maps. If the flow depends on scheduled water releases, you research what to expect and when. Each river has a unique language and you have to know how to read a river before paddling away.

Whitewater canoeing is full of action, thrills and excitement but it also requires planning and razor sharp thinking to stay alive. And since the thought needs be of a mortal nature, I think that it’s fair to assume that there are similar regions of the brain used in thinking of life and death in the abstract and thinking of how to keep living and avoid death. To end, I don’t see either/or or even “balance” between thought and action. You can certainly get naked and sit still on a rock with your chin resting on your fist to think. It would be foolish to attempt a solo sail around the world having no navigation skills.

I’m so stupid. I didn’t need to write all of that. You’re confusing thought (thinking) with contemplation. It’s that simple.

I’m an idiot. Sorry.