givingin
Giving in
by Bob on April 1, 2007
Giving in. Then there's giving up. The difference seems to be obvious to the casual observer, but it actually might not be so decisive if one digs deeper.
Giving up seems to be an act of hands in the air, white flag and all that. It's even an act of desperation. It might be useful sometimes to end a otherwise tied arm-wrestling match or Oxford Union debate point.
Giving in would seem to be a more contrite act. It's benignly empathetic with life. But it is a decision just like giving up is.
Sometimes the big picture and insensibility of life is just too unbearable and one either gives up or gives in.
One chooses.
One is reminded of the story of the lilies of the field in Matthew Chapter 6. The same chapter which introduces the Lord's Prayer. From the King James Version, Matthew 6:25-31.
* * *
"Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?
"So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
"Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."
* * *
Since we really put our scientific finger on an exact Moment, except conveniently for world-models of physics and other sciences, and knowing what the White Queen said to Alice, specifically that "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards", and Dr. C.G. Jung and his work on Synchronicity, and Nietzsche's riddle of the dwarf on the elusiveness of a Moment, and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and Dr. Alan Turing and his test, ... all that respected, one likely is daft to worry about the past, present, or future since it's a practical invention or convention of mankind and society. So one should not worry. One should simply Carpe Diem.
That's all very hard to do always for everyone except a high level spiritual mystic or saint. But one aspires.
The late brilliant musician Bob Marley was always being asked how he was doing, and he frequently answered "Just passing through". I think he wasn't talking about travel in the conventional sense. He had a deeper understanding of the Human Condition and had faith in the afterlife. That was the true answer. Life is just a passed/passing/to-be-passed moment. Then poof ! It's gone. Or so it seems. Even the hugely talented rock group, R.E.M., sang about this condition, although seemingly rationally in their 1989 song Stand. That song became a theme song for the TV sitcom Get a Life in the 1990s which is cosmically not necessarily comically, ironic.
So give in ? Or give up ? Or carry on regardless ?
These are the stuff that life itself is made up of. And too hard to answer.
Perhaps a re-reading of William James and his brilliant The Varieties of Religious Experience.
Here is a little yet unpublished poem I wrote in April 1989 about the dissolution of the self, or a loss of societal identity due to outside (whatever that really means philosophically) causes and circumstances. It's succinct.
* * *
I
April 1989
I don't have a circle of friends.
I don't have friends.
I don't have a circle.
I don't have.
I don't.
I.
.
* * *
Time to watch Woody Allen and his films "Zelig" and The Purple Rose of Cairo".
That's when he went totally philosophical, at least in my book. They are possibly relevant to this all.