I don't want to die.
Clearly.
But my greatest fear is not mortal end. I fear worse.
I fear that with my mortal end comes an end of me as an Idea. I fear leaving no meaningful legacy.
I don't want to be forgotten. I don't want to be known for my riches, which shall pass as quickly as body. Riches mean nothing. The achievements of man would just have well have been without riches. The ideas and the ores that bring them to life, the ingenuity of man and the means by which he achieves them--all free of charge, no money liberates them from mind. It's all too easy to think of things in terms of the money they require to use, to buy, to "make real." But the goodness of man and his brilliance--all exist in the absence money: in the absence of what we feel represents the work we've done. Riches mean nothing.
I fear a stagnant mind, nearly as great as that of the end of my Idea. I fear the rotting of my mind. I don't want to be bored. I don't want to be predictable. I don't want to stay in one place. I don't want to be happy with being in one place my whole life. The world is too vast and too varied to think that some passing glance, some vacationer's view, is enough to satisfy my curiosity. I fear only one home.
And no home of the world.
I don't want to die, for fear of hurting those I love. I love them so. I want to live everyday, if only for them. But I don't only live for them.
My friend--who I always thought was cynical, irreverent to the point of embarrassment, ironic for the sake of irony; and sometimes just wrong...just so wrong--once said that when he had children, they would become his life. That he would live for them and find his meaning through them.
Maybe what I'm looking for is not so different. I seek legacy. But not for the advancement of my name through time--not for my name to be held in reverence.
(Though an equation named after me would be cool.)
I seek a meaningful legacy. I seek not only to not be forgotten, but to be remembered for the things that matter.
And maybe I want to be remembered as one who achieved. Not really for the greatness of myself--what human can deny that they want to be acknowledged for their achievements? But also for the greatness of others, and for continued greatness in the future--for the beauty that exists locked in the minds of future man, only restrained by the boring boundaries of our "education."
Maybe that's why I like engineering so much. As the snotty 17 year old graduating high school, full of arrogance, devoid of meaning though thinking I must be full of it--I didn't choose engineering for it's effect on the world. I wanted to make music! And that's still what I want to do, and will always want to do. But I also realized that that ultimately would only serve myself. Sure, argue for the life changing aspects of great music. But what countries and masses have been saved solely by the good grace of music. (Possibly the lives of a few middle class college students with illusions of artistry, and illusions of profundity. Possibly. But) There must be something more.
There must be something more true. And I came to find the truth in numbers--"truth" that must be at least marginally true despite the disturbances of human thought. "True" if only because we can design things that can be used predictably and in the ways we designed them to be used. Sometimes for harm, yes. But many times, for good.
And so maybe my legacy will be there one day. Maybe I'll aid in making the good. Hopefully I'll be remembered for that.
Maybe I seek to be remembered as one who loved. Maybe as the one who made people laugh. Maybe as the one who sought peace amongst those in his sphere of influence (however small). Or as the one who helped.
Maybe I'll be remembered as any number of bad things as well...maybe people think I'm annoying (if you made it this far into the post, hopefully you don't). Maybe someone will think I'm arrogant and stubborn. I won't lie, I know I can be both...I want to say that came from years of being told I should strive to be the best, and being led to believe as a child that I was the best at certain things. I'm not particularly proud of that aspect of myself, but those are things that reveal themselves without my thinking. And maybe I should think in those times.
In either case. To be remembered well in death, and known in life to those that matter. I hope it's no selfish desire. Only one of many primal human desires.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Home of the World
[Continuing from my last post]
Two homes. Really, you probably could have seen that coming, but I didn't, not at the time at least...especially when you're a person who feels homeless. The idea of a home always being that one place. That was the limiting factor for me and keeping me from seeing that I had two homes. We always feel that home is a central point, a hub for our lives from which all other experiences radiate...but when that happens, we can only be tied to that hub. In that vein of thought, we can only evaluate our current experiences based on one relative point, regardless of how vast and meaningful that one central point is. Home.
That's one way you can think of home...as something that we find so comfortable, so known to us--that thing we're truly wise about and, as a result, is so much a part of us that we come to unconsciously evaluate all other things in our lives based on it. That's home.
So in a way, to have one home "keeps us grounded"...but at the same time, it's so limiting. How sad, and heck, depressing to only be able to perceive the world based on the one thing we call home.
So to have two homes...it's not as simple as moving to the next city over from your current "home" and calling the new one "home." It takes familiarity, and yes, an innate connection to this place to make it a home...and that connection is not only knowledge of location, but of the attitudes of the people, their aspirations...knowing the way any one place carries itself--and in knowing all of that, you find a sort of comfort and belonging. If you can know that, whether after one month or one year (though more likely after the latter), then you can call it home. At that point, you can evaluate your life based on your experiences there. That's home.
I feel like I'm at this point now...having two homes. I've spent nearly two solid years in Los Angeles, with almost full independence for the first time. I've lived through more and grown as much in these two years as in the 17 years prior, though maybe in different ways. I feel all the wiser...being around people from all corners of the United States, and even the World! How grand. It's enlightening. I know USC inside and out, the people there decently, and even the neighborhood around USC, if only because it can be so similar to how it is around Oxnard. I'm a little more wise now, and I would like to think I've found another Home.
I know it may all sound petty, but it's huge to me. I'm 19 years old. Shit, I'm nothing aren't I. Who am I to say what home is, to say that yes, I've truly found home in another place, no less going to school. In the pursuit of riches. Well. More in the pursuit of *get ready to groan* true knowledge. It's true though.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And then I thought of something new. To make a long story short, I had been trying to make sense of what there was to live for, what good there was in the world...as mentioned in the previous post, "What is the meaning of life?" Even moreso, what's the meaning of life completely independent of any religion or belief system? What can be considered one of the noblest goals in life, whether Taoist or Muslim? Obviously, can't cover all the bases but, shit might as well try huh...
(Now I don't know if this is a novel idea, but it isn't borrowed from anywhere except my conversations with a handful of friends. Anyone else who has the same idea...well, good on ya, we're in the same boat...)
To make a home of the world. To make the world's experiences mine. I think most, if not all, the world's evil is driven by some sort of greed. And if that's the case, then I'm greedy for all those experiences, but instead of evil, maybe this kind of greed could lead to some good. To understand the wants, the needs, and the attitudes of the world...the desires, and then to be able to do something meaningful about it. That is a noble goal.
And if you haven't gotten my point by now, a "home" needn't be a place where you live for x months or years, though it will entail some of that in order to make a home of the world. It just means understanding the cultures, the attitudes, the locales and their implications...enough to allow you to judge all things in your life not based on one set of meaningful values, but a whole wealth of them.
It's impossible. That's for sure. But the pursuit is worth it. And in the pursuit of making a home of the world, I hope all other good things would follow...pity and justice, modesty and confidence, wisdom and proper impulse, an understanding of the limits of mankind and yet the unlimited possibilities.
Ultimately, hopefully all these things would allow me to leave the world with more than I had taken...to give more than I had consumed, and to give in meaningful ways. To enrich myself and enrich the lives of others. And not just one person or a handful of people, but whole populations...to enrich the welfare of the world. It just all may be possible by a pursuit of a home of the world. If it all turns for naught, what harm was there...but I would be hard pressed to believe that no good could come of it.
A home of the world is more than just a search for a place, and purchase of a plot. So much more. And it's good enough reason for living.
Two homes. Really, you probably could have seen that coming, but I didn't, not at the time at least...especially when you're a person who feels homeless. The idea of a home always being that one place. That was the limiting factor for me and keeping me from seeing that I had two homes. We always feel that home is a central point, a hub for our lives from which all other experiences radiate...but when that happens, we can only be tied to that hub. In that vein of thought, we can only evaluate our current experiences based on one relative point, regardless of how vast and meaningful that one central point is. Home.
That's one way you can think of home...as something that we find so comfortable, so known to us--that thing we're truly wise about and, as a result, is so much a part of us that we come to unconsciously evaluate all other things in our lives based on it. That's home.
So in a way, to have one home "keeps us grounded"...but at the same time, it's so limiting. How sad, and heck, depressing to only be able to perceive the world based on the one thing we call home.
So to have two homes...it's not as simple as moving to the next city over from your current "home" and calling the new one "home." It takes familiarity, and yes, an innate connection to this place to make it a home...and that connection is not only knowledge of location, but of the attitudes of the people, their aspirations...knowing the way any one place carries itself--and in knowing all of that, you find a sort of comfort and belonging. If you can know that, whether after one month or one year (though more likely after the latter), then you can call it home. At that point, you can evaluate your life based on your experiences there. That's home.
I feel like I'm at this point now...having two homes. I've spent nearly two solid years in Los Angeles, with almost full independence for the first time. I've lived through more and grown as much in these two years as in the 17 years prior, though maybe in different ways. I feel all the wiser...being around people from all corners of the United States, and even the World! How grand. It's enlightening. I know USC inside and out, the people there decently, and even the neighborhood around USC, if only because it can be so similar to how it is around Oxnard. I'm a little more wise now, and I would like to think I've found another Home.
I know it may all sound petty, but it's huge to me. I'm 19 years old. Shit, I'm nothing aren't I. Who am I to say what home is, to say that yes, I've truly found home in another place, no less going to school. In the pursuit of riches. Well. More in the pursuit of *get ready to groan* true knowledge. It's true though.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And then I thought of something new. To make a long story short, I had been trying to make sense of what there was to live for, what good there was in the world...as mentioned in the previous post, "What is the meaning of life?" Even moreso, what's the meaning of life completely independent of any religion or belief system? What can be considered one of the noblest goals in life, whether Taoist or Muslim? Obviously, can't cover all the bases but, shit might as well try huh...
(Now I don't know if this is a novel idea, but it isn't borrowed from anywhere except my conversations with a handful of friends. Anyone else who has the same idea...well, good on ya, we're in the same boat...)
To make a home of the world. To make the world's experiences mine. I think most, if not all, the world's evil is driven by some sort of greed. And if that's the case, then I'm greedy for all those experiences, but instead of evil, maybe this kind of greed could lead to some good. To understand the wants, the needs, and the attitudes of the world...the desires, and then to be able to do something meaningful about it. That is a noble goal.
And if you haven't gotten my point by now, a "home" needn't be a place where you live for x months or years, though it will entail some of that in order to make a home of the world. It just means understanding the cultures, the attitudes, the locales and their implications...enough to allow you to judge all things in your life not based on one set of meaningful values, but a whole wealth of them.
It's impossible. That's for sure. But the pursuit is worth it. And in the pursuit of making a home of the world, I hope all other good things would follow...pity and justice, modesty and confidence, wisdom and proper impulse, an understanding of the limits of mankind and yet the unlimited possibilities.
Ultimately, hopefully all these things would allow me to leave the world with more than I had taken...to give more than I had consumed, and to give in meaningful ways. To enrich myself and enrich the lives of others. And not just one person or a handful of people, but whole populations...to enrich the welfare of the world. It just all may be possible by a pursuit of a home of the world. If it all turns for naught, what harm was there...but I would be hard pressed to believe that no good could come of it.
A home of the world is more than just a search for a place, and purchase of a plot. So much more. And it's good enough reason for living.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Two Homes
Of
home,
homelessness,
Los Angeles,
Oxnard
Well, this is one way to look at one of the damnedest questions in the world: "What is the meaning of life?"
I'm no traveler. No saint. No enlightened being. A believer, but in what exactly I wish I knew; not even in beings, per se, and definitely not in words. Ideas, yes. Numbers...close. I'm an engineer, it's hard to not love numbers in some way...they're an approximation of the closest things to truths humans can know. So do I believe in numbers? Hard to say. That's another story though.
I've not seen lots of the world; only know two languages, and one of them only partially (English and Spanish, and clearly, Spanish is the forte). I don't even have a passport. I'm a student. Student at USC. And when I'm not, I'm a student. In Oxnard. Always a student.
Attending school, moving away from home...man, what an experience. I am happy with who I am today because of going to school. I am vastly different from who I was before I left, hopefully in ways that have made me better--stronger, smarter, wiser, and dammit sexier! (Ok, maybe I'm being a bit modest about that last part.) Funny thing is, "school" and "home" are separated by no more than 60 miles. Yet my lives in either places, are separated by ideas vaster than that. In fact, "school" has become a "home" to me. My great experiences, my great growths--growths as great as learning to walk and becoming literate and conscious--the exact reasons I am who I am today and, no less, satisfied with those things that have made me the wiser...They are here. And I'm sorry, by "here" I mean "school." Although I write this from my "home" in Oxnard. Home...hmm.
So you see...you may not be able to figure out what is really home for me from that last paragraph. We've grown to understand the idea of home as that one location, usually with family and friends from days we don't even remember for lack of consciousness; that one place where we were born. Raised. Developed. Whatever. And if for lack of location, that one place where we find (or found, at one time) family and things that provide us with comfort unbounded, a comfort unexplainable. Home is as much idea as location.
After two years of school in Los Angeles, away from parents and closer to independence, "finding myself" (blah blah) and becoming who I am and forming a belief system/philosophy around my vast experiences there--I've had a crisis of Home. I am absolutely nobody worth noting without my experiences in LA. At the same time, I am not (almost-David) Edward Cruz Gonzales without my experiences in Oxnard/with my family. So where is home? I'd always taken comfort in knowing there was that one place that I could always find (a near) infinite (perception of) comfort. That place where I could be counted among the wise with respect to the outsider; I who call this one place home am truly wise about it in ways you are not--I am superior in this respect. Yes, that one place. But now there was another home. I have a home with the ghetto fabulous farmers. And now a home with The Angels.
My first thought then, especially after freshman year of college, was: Well, shit...I have no home, anymore. I have no one place to run and find comfort during times when I lack it.
For having two homes, I have the penalty of homelessness. At least, like I said, that's what I thought. And for a while, I had come to terms with that. I didn't really fret over it, but it was definitely a strange feeling, to know for the first time in my life, have no one Home.
I could potentially live, live till death and eternity with that idea. And I would be ok...alive and sane at least. But...I eventually became greatly unsettled by the idea of no Home. With the help of a friend I found another perspective--a perspective so simple it is, for lack of other words, fucking ridiculous. Perhaps by running with this idea I could find greater reward in life than settling for the one thing I know.
And maybe my idea of Home becomes much more than that...and my "crisis" evolves into not even a crisis of Home anymore, but an idea stemming from it.
Fucking ridiculous.
I'm no traveler. No saint. No enlightened being. A believer, but in what exactly I wish I knew; not even in beings, per se, and definitely not in words. Ideas, yes. Numbers...close. I'm an engineer, it's hard to not love numbers in some way...they're an approximation of the closest things to truths humans can know. So do I believe in numbers? Hard to say. That's another story though.
I've not seen lots of the world; only know two languages, and one of them only partially (English and Spanish, and clearly, Spanish is the forte). I don't even have a passport. I'm a student. Student at USC. And when I'm not, I'm a student. In Oxnard. Always a student.
Attending school, moving away from home...man, what an experience. I am happy with who I am today because of going to school. I am vastly different from who I was before I left, hopefully in ways that have made me better--stronger, smarter, wiser, and dammit sexier! (Ok, maybe I'm being a bit modest about that last part.) Funny thing is, "school" and "home" are separated by no more than 60 miles. Yet my lives in either places, are separated by ideas vaster than that. In fact, "school" has become a "home" to me. My great experiences, my great growths--growths as great as learning to walk and becoming literate and conscious--the exact reasons I am who I am today and, no less, satisfied with those things that have made me the wiser...They are here. And I'm sorry, by "here" I mean "school." Although I write this from my "home" in Oxnard. Home...hmm.
So you see...you may not be able to figure out what is really home for me from that last paragraph. We've grown to understand the idea of home as that one location, usually with family and friends from days we don't even remember for lack of consciousness; that one place where we were born. Raised. Developed. Whatever. And if for lack of location, that one place where we find (or found, at one time) family and things that provide us with comfort unbounded, a comfort unexplainable. Home is as much idea as location.
After two years of school in Los Angeles, away from parents and closer to independence, "finding myself" (blah blah) and becoming who I am and forming a belief system/philosophy around my vast experiences there--I've had a crisis of Home. I am absolutely nobody worth noting without my experiences in LA. At the same time, I am not (almost-David) Edward Cruz Gonzales without my experiences in Oxnard/with my family. So where is home? I'd always taken comfort in knowing there was that one place that I could always find (a near) infinite (perception of) comfort. That place where I could be counted among the wise with respect to the outsider; I who call this one place home am truly wise about it in ways you are not--I am superior in this respect. Yes, that one place. But now there was another home. I have a home with the ghetto fabulous farmers. And now a home with The Angels.
My first thought then, especially after freshman year of college, was: Well, shit...I have no home, anymore. I have no one place to run and find comfort during times when I lack it.
For having two homes, I have the penalty of homelessness. At least, like I said, that's what I thought. And for a while, I had come to terms with that. I didn't really fret over it, but it was definitely a strange feeling, to know for the first time in my life, have no one Home.
I could potentially live, live till death and eternity with that idea. And I would be ok...alive and sane at least. But...I eventually became greatly unsettled by the idea of no Home. With the help of a friend I found another perspective--a perspective so simple it is, for lack of other words, fucking ridiculous. Perhaps by running with this idea I could find greater reward in life than settling for the one thing I know.
And maybe my idea of Home becomes much more than that...and my "crisis" evolves into not even a crisis of Home anymore, but an idea stemming from it.
Fucking ridiculous.
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