Again

This is the 4th or 5th time I've started a blog. It's starting to get ridiculous. Chances are this will fall through the gaps like so many other blogs before it. I think this is because my inspirations and cravings to write are inconsistent; by the time I get another urge to write it will have been weeks or months and I'll start anew. I tout myself as being stable, consistent in though, solid in life philosophy. The truth is probably much more believable, I find myself content in the moment, subject to the whims of the future. That's not to say that certain things remain constant. I'm comfortable with who I am, I understand who I am (to the best of my ability), I've resigned myself to the fact that tomorrow I will be someone different. That's the excitement of it. Is this was what makes life worth living, the understanding that each day brings new challenges, new influences, knew outrage and new hope? Yes. It's one of the things in any event.

Of late I've become, dare I say, obsessed with humanism. My interest and goals in anthropology have always hinted at it, a genuine concern with humanity, an understanding of (rather than devotion to) the supernatural, confusion and criticism to all things good and bad. (I live a life of contradiction, where my only certainty lies in my inability to accept anything at face value.) I started with atheism, a distrust of religion brought on by a catholic upbringing. I moved on to socialism, perhaps a futile political association, but one that makes the best sense all the same. Finally, deeply embedded in academia, thought and liberalism I find humanism in Kurt Vonnegut Jr. His novels are the only thing that I have read and understood in a subconscious way that allowed me to accept them. I finished Slaughterhouse 5 for the second time and it nearly changed my life. Perhaps the fact that I finished it while living in a rural town in western Kenya, isolated from the capitalist and busy world at home had something to do with it. Perhaps the fact that I have surrounded myself with thoughtful and confused company helped as well.

"Well. Here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why." There is no why, only now. Only what I can do now, only what I can think now, only who I know now. Is why a silly question? No. Without asking why one is stuck. Imagine just living in the amber of the moment, unaware of the why. Maybe it's there maybe it's not, you don't know, you haven't asked. There's an easy answer to the why; someone put me here. It's an easy answer, a comforting one, it gives purpose. But it still leaves open the path to ask why again. Here is where faith and reality split. Some say, if I ask why the only answer I'm prepared to accept is the answer I already know, that someone put me here. So I won't ask why, I'll just have faith in what I already know. Others, continue asking why. We find that we're led around in circles, why's lead to more why's lead to more why's. We realize that there are a plethora of co-existing why's, individual why's. There is no great why, no final why, only the why's that surround us in the moment. There are plenty of them, enough to go around.

Each one of us is why really. Within ourselves, our humanity, the only thing that is shared universally.

I think I'm confusing myself. It happens. Why? There is no why, only the moment. If only I could come unstuck in time.

In the end there really is no figuring it out, no final answer, no concrete identity. There is only the comfort and ability to accept that we are one thing today, another tomorrow, and that's okay.