Tuesday 25 September 2012

It never rains but it pours

I awoke this morning with the fuzzy-visioned annunciation of that homunculus, migraine, sitting pregnant upon my head.
Three hours later, I look out at intermittent streaks of sunlight trying to break through this dark depressing rain of the soul that sucks the very breath away from one’s lust for life.

Reminded of the thoughts of the dying Amelia in my book, The Flight of Birds (White Edition):
Amelia watched her daughter hunched over the books, writing furiously, pausing, looking up into the air and then resuming her scribbling.
“Such purposefulness,” she thought to herself, “such concentration – as if there were some meaning to it all.”

We strive and strive and just as we think we achieve some success or stability and come to convince ourselves there is, after all, some meaning or purpose to our lives, something randomly steps in to destroy it.

The ludicrousness and the beauty and the triumph of man is that, in face of this utter meaninglessness, he can still pick himself up and carry on trying.

But how much the more so if he is able to do this without the crutches of faith or belief in some ultimate purpose or teleology, whether that be through religion or science.