I realized something about myself yesterday afternoon: the mood that American culture tries so hard to suppress, the mood from which our endless sources entertainment distract us, that mood is what really puts a fire in my belly. For me, the best term for this mood is "melancholy."
By "melancholy," I mean that sense that something isn't right, that something must change, and, what's more, that I can do something about it. It's the feeling I get when I hear a story that's waiting to be told, a song needing to be sung, a wrong needing to be made right, a woman needing to be loved, a child needing to be hugged, a difficult choice needing to be made. It's when I know that someone needs to speak up about injustice, and that I have such a voice for speaking!
Truth be told, it's not a "pleasant" feeling, at least not in the sense that it puts me at ease and puts a smile on my face. But it is a feeling of knowing that, to quote Albus Dumbledore, sometimes we have to choose between doing what is right and doing what is easy. Such an emotion—if that's even the best term—is ultimately what moves me to act, and to use whatever talents and resources I have to make this world better for as many people as I can.
In some ways, "melancholy" taps into my Messiah complex; but if I can realize that I can only do my best, come what may, then I think I become my best self. And, frankly, I'd rather be that than Messiah any day.
Recently, I've found myself struggling a good deal with my "purpose" and identity. In some ways, I'm finally realizing why so many people throughout history have pursued the question of the meaning of life. After all, when you've spent the better part of three decades having this issue sorted out because of your religious system, things get pretty fuzzy once you leave that system behind.
What on earth am I doing here? What do I want my legacy to be? (Is that even a legitimate question?) What sort of work do I want to do? What is the "good life," and how will I live it?
These questions have begun, slowly, to haunt me. I thought I had things figured out, and that it wouldn't be too hard to de-Christianize some of my earlier motivations and presuppositions, and simply carry on with life as usual. Unfortunately, those foundations are too eroded, I think, for me to continue to build my life upon them. So what, then, am I to do?
I obviously don't have many answers to this; not yet, at least. When I was speaking to a friend a few days ago, the best thing I could come up with was this: I want to live in a way that promotes the thriving of humanity and of the earth. This is a huge commitment, with a lot of nuances and competing concerns, and I don't think this notion of "thriving" can carry the whole load of discerning my own purpose in life.
I suppose, too, that my wife would appreciate it—and, of course, I would too—if I oriented at least part of my purpose to love. In a lot of ways, these notions of thriving and love, one rather objectively determined and the other radically subjective, might offer a bit of balance to my life that either one alone couldn't. At any rate, they offer at least good starting points (though there's also the bit about figuring out what "love" means outside of a Christian worldview...).
Many I've the posts I've written so far have been expressions of things I already think. This post is different, though, because I think I actually have to write it in order to understand better what in fact I do think. It's about the hard work of making hunches and intuitions into an articulation of coherent thought, a task easier said than done.
I'm struggling to figure out how exactly to continue to do biblical scholarship as an ex-, or rather, post-Christian. (I say "post" because, while I no longer remain a Christian, I'm very much aware of the ways in which I continue to be shaped by my Christian upbringing.) The struggle has to do primarily with a perceived (and possibly actual) lack of models.
In my experience as a graduate student, I've seen basically three kinds of biblical scholars. The summaries of these three types, given after the jump, are not intended to be biting criticisms, but only to indicate some of my discomfort with each of them.
About six months ago, my wife and I gave away our television.
We came to the decision one night, while we were rearranging our apartment. We looked at the wall that was dominated by our TV—not that it was large; I'm still in school, after all—and realized that we were trying to organize our living space around this one thing neither of us thought was that important. Then, we realized that we were spending hours at a time just watching the damn thing, letting our impulsiveness and laziness get the better of us. So, we did the only reasonable thing and promptly sold it. (I admit I was ambivalent, though, about the person who bought it from us: a fellow student who could use the TV to entertain his two-year-old. Start 'em young, right?)
Life changed the next day. Suddenly, we had time to do a number of things we'd simply never made time for when we had the TV. My wife took up knitting, I read about twice as much, we both worked more effectively, and (of all things!) we began to talk a lot more. (Full disclosure: we still use Hulu and Netflix on demand, but we severely limit our time with these to under 4 hours/week.) What's more, I believe this rather insignificant change (in the grand scheme) made possible two key changes for us.
It's amazing to me. When I wake up in the morning and loll around, doing whatever I feel like at the time, I never have motivation to work when it's time to get started. For someone like me, who writes for a living as an aspiring scholar, motivation is everything.
So, this morning, when I wrote about "Tomorrow," after having put it off for some time, I suddenly found myself with all kinds of ideas for blog posts, with motivation to do writing and research, and with energy and focus to do a number of chores I had around the house. And all this because I finally got up the initiative to write a damned blog entry!
This reminds me of a quote from Wendell Berry, though I won't get it just right (nor do I remember the source): Every farmer knows that the motivation to do hard work comes only after the task is begun. I only wish I remembered this more often.
See also this fascinating link from Less Wrong on motivation and procrastination.
"Whenever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Whenever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there... I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an'—I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready. An' when our folks eat the stuff they raise an' live in the houses they build—why, I'll be there."—Tom Joad
Today, I watched John Ford's adaptation of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Only a few minutes in, I could see why the film is frequently in the top fifteen of a wide number of "greatest films" lists. Yet the beauty of the film aside, what struck me was the degree to which I found myself resonating with many of the not-so-subtle political and social critiques leveled by both film and novel alike. It's probably my synthesizing mind—which finds things from disparate sources and weave them together into a more cogent whole—that makes me aware of some of the most important ones, critiques that are no less apropos today than they were in 1939/40.
