Month: October 2020

[Oct 27] Dogs and cats are among the most beloved pets. Cats are undoubtedly adorable, but dogs, people say, are more loyal, as they love their owner unconditionally and foolishly, even if the owner beats it or lets it starve, as we sometimes learn in the news.

I have this friend Joan, who now lives by herself, and she wants to have a dog as a company. She had a tense relation with her parents, and she recalled that, this year on her birthday, “my mother wished me a happier life I ought to enjoy in the prime of my life.” She was moved. And later she regretted having been moved.

It reminds me of “Deep-holes”, a short story by Alice Munro. [Spoilers below] There is this son Kent, and the father Alex, a geologist, and the mother Sally. Once as the family went with the father to wildness to collect stone specimens, Kent fell into a cave, and the father helped him out. The kid broke the leg, recovered, and remained slightly but permanently injured. Once, the father said that he saved Kent not due to love, but to familial duty, indicating that they were not close.

When he was in college, Kent disappeared and stopped contact. Years passed, and Alex died. One day, Sally saw on TV that Kent volunteered as a firefighter. She met him, and it turned out he was living a Bohemian lifestyle, together with a community of the homeless, who volunteered to help local people. Kent told her of his anguish, that he derived no joy in helping people, but merely felt that he was obliged to do so.

The question plagued the short story, that why Kent left his parents and desired such a life. I got it when I reread. Because Kent remained feeling indebted to Alex’s favor. The parents are the world of the baby, while the baby is but a negligible bit of the parents. It is terrifying to have been born, if we must suffer such an unfair position.

Or Alex may be God, and Kent be Christ. It is more distressing than fortunate — to continue the allegory — to be saved by Christ, because we ought to “take his yoke upon him and learn from him”, as Christ resolved to be crucified. And what grave responsibility that is.

Thus I am afraid to have a dog. I hug it, I imagine, and it will have the amorous look on my face, yearning and innocent, like I am some immaculate deity. But I am not. I am sinned. It is not that I will not tend it properly. No, I would walk it well, feed it well, “out of duty”, but what if I will not love it, and what if, still, it continues to turn back and gaze at me.

We can do nothing but continue the stifling daily life, by having mercy on those whom we cannot love, and being enslaved by those who do not love. I may not be a father nor a Christian, I gather, but will remain alone, and will not keep a dog.

[Oct 9] My uncle (my mother’s eldest brother) is dying of cancer, and was admitted into palliative care. He and his family live in the US, and I have only seen him twice, therefore I do not feel much sadness, but still there is emptiness which emerges every time I know people is dying. My mother does not appear to be weeping, and I did not bring up the matter.

Meanwhile, I had this stream of consciousness, which unfolded in the following order. (1) A few days ago, I was reading *Simply Nietzsche* by Peter Kail. The first chapter on *The Birth of Tragedy* explains that Nietzsche was answering the pessimism of Schopenhauer’s. Schopenhauer remarked, and rightly so, that our life is essentially no more than suffering, and our existence has no value. Nietzsche responded that it is only through the intoxication in art that may we combine as a unity, in so doing finding the power to overcome the bleak reality. (2) Yesterday, I entered the 校園書房 in front of NTU the first time it finished remodeling, and skimmed one of the displayed book, *The Reason for God* by Timothy Keller. The apologetic book suggests that, since we have a natural tendency to crave for something more than the material world, does it not hint that that immaterial realm may actually exist? Here, I knew religion helps people cope with their short and brutal life; but I was curious how they easily believe in something because they wish it so, without more reasons. (3) Then as I said, last night, I heard my uncle was dying.

And I started imaging how terrifying it is to face death, and recalled that many who in their old age or terminally ill, converted from atheists to believers. In fact, many intelligent people, including Einstein and Grothendieck, became religious in their middle years; what precisely changed them? There was, I recalled, a post on Reddit which asked believers who converted from atheists , what the reason was; so I found the post, and spent some time reading.

I might have realized something. Quite many simply believe what they yearn for exists, when they genuinely yearn for it, and if it does not, they say, they are not worse off. Indeed, why don’t we believe that better world is there, as long as it is not impossible, and the thought makes we feel better? More broadly, why do we believe that our life has value, it is good to help people, what object we pursue will turn out well, and we are not dust when we die?

This is optimism in a certain form, which is hard to blame. Many accept it, when they go through this phase, but not I; it is something I have long rejected. I must myself face the loneliness, depression, anxiety, emptiness, sickness, and death, which I have yet truly tasted, but life will certainly offer me as it does to everyone. What is enough to reassure myself, I am not sure, except perhaps the beauty of music works that remind me of the strength we have, and the sense of connection I feel in creating them, so that I shall linger a little longer on the land of earth, but alas, how evanescent it is, dissolving already into nothingness as the sound dies in the air!

About 6 hours after I posted this on Facebook, he passed away. He was 74, which does not sound particularly old. What makes us sad is that, he was a medical doctor and was attentive of his health, and he was frugal with money and hard working; still, he was suddenly sick (due to a recurring of cancer) about one month just before he retired, and was deprived of the only chance to enjoy more casual days in his advanced age.

Perhaps put more succinctly, my last post raises the question that how we might face life’s predicaments — like depression, loneliness, illness, and death — without the solace of faith. I am not sure I am strong enough to endure such hardship alone (more likely, I am sure I am not), but I have also rejected religions of any sort. Schopenhauer and Nietzsche knew the dilemma, and they claimed that art can have people connected and fill the void deep in our psyche. That said, I doubt that will ever suffice.